This is a past event
Aberdeen China Studies group hosts regular talks during term time.
This talk will be given by Dr Alison Hardie, Honorary Research fellow, University of Leeds.
Dr Hardie will examine the use of images from archaeology and traditional architecture in 20th-21st century Chinese graphic design and other aspects of visual culture.
Exciting archaeological and architectural discoveries and studies in China in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, such as the Shang and Zhou oracle bones, the Wu Liang shrine, the Dunhuang cave murals and sculptures, the identification of the Foguang Temple as the oldest surviving wooden structure in China, and research on garden history, were utilised for the re-evaluation of traditional culture in modern China’s process of nation-building.
Although there was a long tradition of antique-collection in Chinese elite culture, archaeology as a scholarly discipline was introduced to China with the introduction of Western scientific knowledge in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, when architecture as a subject of academic study was also introduced; building had hitherto been regarded as a craft rather than an art or science.
Visual images taken from these new fields of knowledge have been used in fine art, graphic design, textile design and other types of visual culture to develop a new type of ‘traditional’ Chinese visual imagery. The talk will explore some of these uses and the ideas they convey about what it means to be both Chinese and modern.
- Speaker
- Dr Alison Hardie
- Hosted by
- Aberdeen China Studies Group
- Venue
- Room 61, Edward Wright building
- Contact
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Free, Drop in, all welcome.