Book launch: The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll

The book launch for Professor Shane McCausland's The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll, published by Reaktion Books, London will begin with a presentation and panel discussion chaired by Prof. Stacey Pierson (SOAS University of London) and Dr Stephen Whiteman (Courtauld Institute of Art), with discussants Dr Panpan Yang (SOAS University of London) and Dr Bo Xie (Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts & Visiting Scholar, School of Arts, SOAS University of London).

This will be followed by a drinks reception.

The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll is an examination of the picture-scroll, China’s pre-eminent aesthetic format over the last two millennia.

The Chinese picture-scroll, a long painting or calligraphic work held within a horizontal scrolling mount, has been China’s pre-eminent aesthetic format for the last two millennia. This first extended history of the picture-scroll explores its extraordinary longevity, and its adaptability to social, political and technological change. The book describes what the picture-scroll demands of a viewer, how China’s artists grappled with its cultural power, and how collectors and connoisseurs have left their marks on scrolls for later generations to judge. The return to mass appeal of scrolling – a media technology that seemed long outdated yet persists in our digital age – provides urgent and fascinating context to this book.

Cheng-hua Wang (Princeton University) writes: 'Lavishly illustrated and lucidly expounded, this is the first book that extols the remarkable potentiality of the handscroll format in Chinese painting. Covering a wide timespan of more than fifteen hundred years, the book demonstrates how the format can foster multiple perspectives and stimulate thoughts on the historiography, materiality, and affective affordances of Chinese painting.'

This publication is made possible through the support of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and the School of Arts, SOAS University of London, with the Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art.

About the author

Shane McCausland is the Percival David chair of art history and from 2018-22 headed the School of Arts at SOAS University of London. He was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and received his PhD in 2000 from Princeton University in art history with East Asian studies.

His many authored, co-authored and edited books include The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368 (Reaktion Books, 2014) and Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai's China (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), which should both be appearing in simplified Chinese editions. He has curated numerous pre-modern and contemporary art exhibitions across Europe, North America and China, including Telling Images of China: Narrative and Figure Paintings, 15^th-20^th Century, from the Shanghai Museum, a loan exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and Ding Yi: What's Left to Appear, a mid-career retrospective of work by the abstract painter Ding Yi (b. 1962) at the Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai. He is currently collaborating on an exhibition project which investigates the arts of the Mongol world. 

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. 

Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a discount on the night and for signing by the author. Alternatively, you can purchase a copy of the book via the Reaktion Books website using code PICTURESCROLL23 at the checkout to receive a 20% discount.

Organiser

• SOAS China Institute

Contact

• Email: sci@soas.ac.uk