Looking At Asian Art

The essays in this collection examine a broad spectrum of artwork, sharing secrets for "seeing" the arts of Asia as practiced by professional historians of Asian art. Here the novice and the experienced enthusiast can find essays representing a range of regions and media, from Tibetan murals to Japanese prints and Chinese sculpture. Each essay is written for the non-professional as well as scholars in other areas of research who use images, showing the reader how to view these works, what to look for, and how to interpret what one finds. For this reason, even though the volume covers many aspects of Asian art through the centuries, every essay explains how works of art were made so as to become meaningful to the people who created, appreciated, and made use of them. For the authors of this collection of essays, the visual analysis of art serves as a prism through which a scholar may investigate a complex arena of cultural references, signs expectations, ideas and social practices. They draw upon their knowledge of languages, literature, history and religion, as well as a variety of analytical approaches and comparative strategies, to make these works of art live again for today's readers.