Defining Yongle
Author: James C. Y. Watt
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 105
ISBN-13: 1588391531
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Lanterna Rally
eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Culture, Courtiers, and Competition
Author: David M. Robinson
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2020-03-23
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 1684174740
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"This collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged. Rather than observing an immutable set of traditions, court culture underwent frequent reinterpretation and rearticulation, processes driven by immediate personal imperatives, mediated through social, political, and cultural interaction.The essays address several common themes. First, they rethink previous notions of imperial isolation, instead stressing the court’s myriad ties both to local Beijing society and to the empire as a whole. Second, the court was far from monolithic or static. Palace women, monks, craftsmen, educators, moralists, warriors, eunuchs, foreign envoys, and others strove to advance their interests and forge advantageous relations with the emperor and one another. Finally, these case studies illustrate the importance of individual agency. The founder’s legacy may have formed the warp of court practices and tastes, but the weft varied considerably. Reflecting the complexity of the court, the essays represent a variety of perspectives and disciplines—from intellectual, cultural, military, and political to art history and musicology."
Warriors of the Himalayas
Author: Donald J. LaRocca
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 323
ISBN-13: 1588391809
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The first in-depth examination of the fascinating and virtually unknown of armor and weapons from Tibet, dating from the 13th to the 20th century.
The Language of Color in China
Author: Jun Zhou
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2019-01-17
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 152752616X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is the first book to explore color history in Asia. Color is a natural phenomenon and a fundamental element of the universe, and offers a medium to communicate with others globally. It is a language of signals, such as traffic lights, signs or symbols, and an essential part of society. Color attracts people’s attention and transmits important information. As such, color language denotes all of the activities of human history, and has been associated with changes in society, economic development, and dynasties replacing the old with the new. The book brings together many elements of Chinese history with reference to the topic of ‘color’ and has evolved from the authors’ respective interests in art and design, teaching and research, consultancy and publishing. The topic will be of increasing importance in the future as a consequence of China’s increasing influence in the sphere of global culture. For practitioners of art and design, the book will be a valuable resource; for the general public, interested in the development of Chinese aesthetics over the centuries, it will provide a new perspective complimentary to existing studies about art, design and the history of the region.
Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2016-05-30
Total Pages: 610
ISBN-13: 9004316256
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change the editors publish the results of the workshop “Printing as an Agent of Change in Tibet and beyond” held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in November 2013. This is the first study of the social and cultural history of Tibetan book technology that takes materials, living traditions and cross-cultural comparisons into consideration. Bringing together leading experts from different disciplines, it discusses the introduction of printing in Tibetan societies in the context of Asian book cultures with an eye to the questions raised by the study of the European history of printing. This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access. Contributors are: Tim Barrett, Alessandro Boesi, Peter Burke, Michela Clemente, Hildegard Diemberger, Dorje Gyeltsen, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Helmut Eimer, Johan Elverskog, Camillo Formigatti, Imre Galambos, Agnieszka Helman-Wazny, Tomasz Wazny, Sherab Sangpo Kawa, Peter Kornicki, Leonard van der Kuijp, Stefan Larsson, Ben Nourse, Anuradha Pallipurath, Porong Dawa, Paola Ricciardi, Tsering Dawa Sharshon, Sam van Schaik, Cristina Scherrer-Schaub, Marta Sernesi, Pasang Wangdu.
Ming China and its Allies
Author: David M. Robinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-01-02
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 1108489222
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Explores the Ming Dynasty's foreign relations with neighboring sovereigns, placing China in a wider global context.
What the Emperor Built
Author: Aurelia Campbell
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2020-06-30
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13: 0295746890
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor Built is the first book-length study devoted to the architectural projects of a single Chinese emperor. Focusing on the imperial palaces in Beijing, a Daoist architectural complex on Mount Wudang, and a Buddhist temple on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, Aurelia Campbell demonstrates how the siting, design, and use of Yongle’s palaces and temples helped cement his authority and legitimize his usurpation of power. Campbell offers insight into Yongle’s sense of empire—from the far-flung locations in which he built, to the distant regions from which he extracted construction materials, and to the use of tens of thousands of craftsmen and other laborers. Through his constructions, Yongle connected himself to the divine, interacted with his subjects, and extended imperial influence across space and time. Spanning issues of architectural design and construction technologies, this deft analysis reveals remarkable advancements in timber-frame construction and implements an art-historical approach to examine patronage, audience, and reception, situating the buildings within their larger historical and religious contexts.
The Art of Buddhism
Author: Denise Patry Leidy
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2009-10-06
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 1590306708
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →As its teachings spread from the Indian subcontinent in all directions across Asia, Buddhism influenced every culture it touched—from Afghanistan to Korea, from Mongolia to Java. Buddhist art is a radiant reflection of the encounter of the Buddha’s teachings with the diverse civilizations that came under their sway. It is also an intriguing visual record of the evolution of Buddhist practice and philosophy over a period of more than two millennia. More than two hundred photographs provide the visual context for this tour of the world of Buddhist art. Included in the rich variety of forms are architecture and monumental art, statuary, paintings, calligraphy, fresco, brushwork, and textile arts. Denise Leidy’s guide is the perfect introductory text for all those intrigued by this splendid aesthetic tradition. It also an essential resource for all who seek to understand Buddhist art as teaching.
Toward a Global Middle Ages
Author: Bryan C. Keene
Publisher: Getty Publications
Published: 2019-09-03
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 160606598X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.
Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia
Author: Charles Orzech
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 1223
ISBN-13: 9004184910
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume, the result of an international collaboration of forty scholars, provides a comprehensive resource on Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in their Chinese, Korean, and Japanese contexts from the first few centuries of the common era to the present.
