Alan Chong

Lorenzo Principi

Myth and Faith in Renaissance Florence

The Sculpture of Giovan Angelo Montorsoli and His Circle

Claire Norton

Anna Contandini

An international group of scholars trace encounters and exchanges between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The new material and insights enrich our understanding of artists Like Gentile and Giovanni Bellini as well as of book design, architecture, textiles, Italian humanism, and the making of political identities.

New Perspectives on Cultural Encounters in the Mediterranean Before 1700

Crossing Boundaries

Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 15001900

Port Cities

Noriko Murai

Essays examine the widespread presence and myths of Asia in American culture in the late 18th and early 20th centuries, exploring the persistence and pervasiveness of America's fascination with the East.

American Perspectives Around 1900

Inventing Asia

Christine Guth

In 1883, Isabella Stewart Gardner and her husband embarked on a trip that would take them from Boston, across the Unites States and the Pacific, to Japan, China Cambodia and finally, the India of the Raj. Travelling in the wake of recent Western expansion into Asia, they were privileged guests in a world convulsed by colliding forces and identities. They visited ancient temples; met missionaries and colonial officials; toured rubble left but anti-Western riots; camped at Angkhor Wat but took first-class trains throughout India. Isabella kept a diary, bought photographs, and assembled a travel album. Back home, she became a pioneering collector of Asian art. 'Journeys East' reconstructs the Gardners' epic journey with illustrations from Isabella's albums and quotations from her diary and her husband's letters and notes. Isabella's evolving relationship to Asia is the subject of essays by Alan Chong, Noriko Murai, and Christine Guth, amoth other major authorities, that consider a broad range of topics, from the Japanese tea ceremony to her selection and display of Asian art at her extraordinary museum in Boston. A new kind of book, 'Journeys East' combines the history of travel and collecting with the study of East-West relations. Nearly all the 400 illustrations in this oversize book reproduce vintage photographs on her travels. In numerous instances, the photographs document sites long changed beyond recognition. The book will be of exceptional interest to readers of Joseph Conrad. ILLUSTRATIONS 400 illustrations

Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia

Journeys East

Celeste Brusati

Cleveland Museum of Art

Rijksmuseum (Netherlands)

W. Th Kloek

Wouter Th Kloek

Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Pays-Bas).

This stunning book presents the very best still lifes produced in the Netherlands at the height of the genre, from the early beginnings in the 16th century, with Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer, to the late highlights in the 18th century, with Rachel Ruysch and Jan van Huysum. Despite the popularity and abundance of flower paintings in modern collections, the book includes a wide range of subjects and styles, from the simple to the complex, the charmingly small to the opulent and extravagant, and from flowers to hunting still lifes or objects in the corner of a painter's studio, along with an occasional trompe l'oeil. The visual delights of still-life painting have a strong historical context. Collectors and connoisseurs purchased them because of their realism, visual appeal, and relevance to their own lives. Poets praised the wonders of still-life paintings and evoked the power of painting to transcend the seasons and the passing of time. Contemporary observers lauded the expensive and elaborate objects often on display. The book therefore considers the visual achievement of the Netherlandish still life painters in the context of contemporary reactions to pictures, art theory, and issues of patronage. Numerous artists were tempted to try their hand at still life, drawn by a new and enchanting genre that allowed an artist to create independent worlds of inanimate objects on the flat surface of a picture -- imaginary realms that had an exceptional following among connoisseurs of the time. These images continue to work their magic on present-day art lovers.

Still-life Paintings from the Netherlands, 1550-1720

Quang Minh Pham

This book provides insights into China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It offers critical perspectives from various directions, not excluding historical investigations, human geography approaches and neo-Marxist inclinations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) represents one of the biggest geopolitical visions since the Cold War and offers the possibilities of an intercontinental vision of Aid politics, along with prospects for pan-Asianism. By and large, any geopolitical vision that purports to foster inter-regional dialogue and materialist development of peoples and economies is bound to have its flaws. The Belt and Road Initiative bears hallmarks of the socio-political tradition of Chinese authoritarian infrastructure politics while also offering a possible alternative to the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ of free markets, deregulation and a shift towards liberal democracy. Additionally, the Belt and Road Initiative opens up wide open intellectual spaces for dialogues between Asians, Arabs and Westerners on the meaning of inclusive inter-continental relationships in philosophy, geography and economics. The significance of this is often underplayed in Chinese official statements whereas this book introduces these possibilities within its assorted sections.

Critical Reflections on China’s Belt & Road Initiative

Alan Chong

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