An Artistic Exile: A Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975): 6 - Rilegato

Barmé, Geremie Randall

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520208323 ISBN 13: 9780520208322

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr, 2002

Riassunto

This engrossing book, a brilliant blend of biography and criticism, tells the story of Feng Zikai (1898-1975), one of the most gifted and important artists to emerge from the politically tumultuous decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Barmé provides a closely woven parallel history, that of the life of writer-artist Feng, who was also an essayist and a translator, and that of China's turbulent twentieth century. He investigates Feng Zikai's aesthetic vision, its development, and how it relates to traditional and contemporary Chinese cultural values and debates.

Although Feng was known for his so-called casual drawings, he was reluctant to classify his art. According to Barmé, much of his writing and painting was rooted in a philosophy of self-expression. Difficult to position in relation to existing Chinese political and social nomenclature, Feng remains, to a large extent, an enigma. He was sympathetic to the average person and the impoverished peasant, yet he was a romantic, and often identified with the increasingly politicized intelligentsia. A devout Buddhist, he was a close observer of nature and children, and while his art appeared gentle, it often carried a strong message.

Much has been written about Feng Zikai, a figure who has become popular among elite and mass audiences in the Chinese world once more, but no other work has examined his place among May Fourth writers and intellectuals nor his position within the context of China's artistic, religious, and literary tradition. An Artistic Exile moves straight to the heart of debates surrounding modernization, religion, science, the essence of a tradition in an age of colonial modernity, and the ethos of political and social thought in twentieth-century China.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Geremie R. Barmé is a Professor at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Institute of Advanced Studies, at the Australian National University. He is the editor ofEast Asian History and is author of In the Red (1999), Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader(1996), and coeditor of New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices (1992). He was also an associate director and writer for the filmThe Gate of Heavenly Peace (Boston 1995), and is codirecting with Carma Hinton and Richard GordonMorning Sun, a documentary film on the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

"A wealth of interesting detail and provocative ideas about the life and creative activities of a fascinating major figure in 20th century Chinese art. Barmé makes a convincing case for seeing in Feng's mixture of traditionalist and progressive concernand interest in Chinese and Western aesthetics, Buddhism and patriotisma humanism that transcends categorization."Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author ofTwentieth-Century China: New Approaches

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0520208323
• ISBN 13: 9780520208322
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 471