The Chinese Art Book: Introduction

I remember one of my professors explaining how viewing cultural history from a chronological perspective generalizes the narrative as progressive, or future work "improves" from the past.  This isn't just a symptom of our capitalist society, where the passage of time provides growth.  It's also been used by Chinese dynasties to criticizes the flaws of the past.  Historical narratives written by dynasties tend to distort the narratives of its previous dynasty.  This doesn't mean that everything in the past must be inferior to the present, but we should at least be aware of such distortion trying to explain the values of a culture.

So the next thing I'll attempt is a series of art critique in The Chinese Art Book by Colin Mackenzie, Katie Hill, and Jeffrey Moser. Chinese art seems completely alien to the Western world because the viewer has to relearn all the historical context and baggage behind the art.  At least Western art is familiarized in our everyday world, like the mosaic in a church or lingerie on a billboard.  But why is Confucius on a can condensed milk? Question for the philosophers.

The Chinese Art Book does not place the pictures of artistic works in chronological order, rather each open page is a binary to the other side.  As the book jacket puts it, "The dialogue between each couple invites meanings that often go far beyond those of the individual works."
The next project I'll attempt on Blogger will attempt to figure out why The Chinese Art Book makes these binaries.  I will try my best to make these themes relatable to those unfamiliar with Chinese culture, but at certain point I'll have to delve into Chinese history.  Understanding Chinese culture is like trying to understand an episode of the Simpsons.  I remember showing The Simpsons to a guy from Shanghai, and I had to pause the video every 10 seconds because each joke derived from a unique aspect of American culture.  When a Westerner looks at Chinese culture, it's like a version of The Simpsons that lasted 3000 years.

My Tumblr thing was a complete failure.  It was boring and completely devoid of context.  Pandering to the internet crowd was pointless. Screw it, I'll write what I want. I want to do this because my bigger project involves delving into Chinese art, trying to pinpoint the artistic details that the Chinese saw in art.