Robert E. Harrist

This is the first study in a Western language devoted to one of the most visually distinctive features of the landscape in China--moya or moya shike, texts carved into granite boulders and cliffs that are part of the natural terrain at thousands of sites of historic or scenic interest. These inscriptions, carved in large, bold characters, served as a vast repository of texts produced continuously for over two thousand years and constitue an important form of public art. Focusing on the period prior to the eighth century C.E., Harrist demonstrates that the significance of the inscriptions depends on the interaction of words with topography, so that the medium of the written work has transformed geological formations into landscapes of ideological and religious significance.

Stone Inscriptions from Early and Medieval China

The Landscape of Words

Gonglin Li

Kung-lin Li

In the eleventh century, the focus of Chinese painting shifted dramatically. The subject matter of most earlier works of art was drawn from a broadly shared heritage of political, religious, and literary themes. Late in the century, however, a group of scholar-artists began to make paintings that reflected the private experiences of their own lives. Robert Harrist argues here that no work illuminates this development more vividly than Mountain Villa, a handscroll by the renowned artist Li Gonglin (ca. 1041-1106). Through a detailed reading of the painting and an analysis of its place in the visual culture of Li's time, the author offers a new explanation for the emergence of autobiographic content in Chinese art. Harrist proposes that the subject of Li's painting--his garden in the Longmian Mountains--was itself a form of self-representation, since a garden was then considered a reflection of its owner's character and values. He demonstrates also that Li's turn toward the imagery of private life was inspired by the conventions of Chinese lyric poetry, in which poets recorded and responded to the experiences of their lives. The book draws the reader into the artistic, scholarly, and political world of Li Gonglin and shows the profound influence of Buddhism on Chinese painting and poetry. It offers important insights not just into Chinese art, but also into Chinese literature and intellectual history.

Mountain Villa by Li Gonglin

Painting and Private Life in Eleventh-century China

Richard M. Barnhart

The subject is a 15.5-foot handscroll painted by Li Kung-lin, the preeminent figure painter of 11th-century China, illustrating a work that dates to between 350 and 200 B.C.--a dialog between Confucius and a disciple on the meaning and application of filial piety in the affairs of the individual and of the state. Barnhart's (art history, Yale) elucidation is accompanied by contributed chapters on the calligraphy of the work and on the conservation and remounting of the scroll. Generously illustrated. 9.25x12.25" Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Robert E. Harrist

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