Course Schedule and Catalog

Department: Art History

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Description: THE BRUSH AND THE STROKE IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE PAINTING ***** Traditional Chinese painting was the art of the movements of the brush. This course examines the brushwork from several perspectives; as performance; as expression of the artist's moral character; and as a system of codes and gestures borrowed from the art of calligraphy. We consider how historically shifting understanding of the brushwork served to express diverse aesthetic, social, and cultural concerns: the cosmological and political significance of writing; the function of pictorial expression; the distinction between professional and literati painters; and the notion of the pictorial canon. ***** Also offered as ASIA 371.