Past event
Art History Research Lecture -- Professor Sarah E Fraser The School of Art History and Prof Sarah Fraser present "'Medievalism' and Pan-Asian Concepts of Modernity in the Twentieth Century'.
Medievalism as a pictorial practice during the first half of the twentieth century, represented a pan-Asian shift to indigenous cultural models. It signaled a form of resistance to outside aggression, war, and a rejection of a singular European “origin” of modernity. Seemingly contradictory, a return to roots through the lens of medieval mural studies indicated both a reclamation of heritage in China, India, and Japan and the emergence of cultural nationalisms that envisioned a non-Eurocentric modern Asia. This lecture explores the importance of Buddhist mural studies at Dunhuang in western China during the Second Sino-Japanese war led by Zhang Daqian and Tibetan painters (1941-1943); Xu Beihong's encounters with Tagore at the Institute of Fine Arts (Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, West Bengal, 1919); and Okakura's earlier investigations of Chinese and South Asian image making (1903). I offer an argument triangulating the transcultural threads between their artistic efforts demonstrating the links between heritage sites with the making of modern art.
Professor Sarah E. Fraser is Chair Professor and Director, Institute of East Asian Art History (IKO), Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Her publications include the award-winning Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960 (Stanford). She has also led the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive; this 3D and laser archaeological imaging project is now available on JSTor.
This lecture will be held at 4.00pm in School Ill, St Salvator's Quad.
Wine reception will follow at 79 North Street.