ARTH study guide

Ewer Brocca

Medici Porcelain Manufactory (Italian, Florence, 1570-1587), Soft-paste porcelain decorated in underglaze

China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period

(1573–1620) Vase with dragons amid flowers, porcelain painted with cobalt blue under transparent glaze

Silk Road in the context of fine china

• Chinese potters imported high-grade cobalt blue pigment from Persia via Middle Eastern merchants.

• Used cobalt as the dye to make their signature white and blue pottery

• Became very popular in Europe due to its elegant design and the fact that it was very hard to come by since it needed to be imported

• Many European courts wanted to replicate the "secret recipe" of Chinese porcelain; hence the Ewer Brocca

China China Bust - Ah Xian

China China bust 15, 1999, cast porcelain with hand-painted underglaze decoration,

Casts of his friends and family after he fled China to Australia due to political instability

Contemporary art in China

Contemporary art is not necessarily art now

• In China, this is art that was created after the death of Chairman Mao

• Art up until then was specifically limited to propaganda for the Red Revolution and to boost Mao

• After that, however, artists had 2 options for what to do

  • They could go back to traditional ink paintings

  • Portraiture: hyperrealism or postimpressionism

  • Though some did their own thing

Destruction route

Huang Yang Ping, Huang Yong Ping, The History of Chinese Painting and A Concise History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1987

Took 2 books that talked about what a good Chinese painting is and what fine arts is and threw them in the washing machine

Dadaist Move

Reconstruction move

Yang Jiechang, 100 Layers of Ink No.1, 1994, ink and acrylic on paper

laid down on canvas

Calls upon the materiality of ink painting

Yang had to contend with the expectation that ink painting wasn’t avant-garde enough because ink was a traditional medium

Used old materials to create a new form

Re Materialize move

Zhan Wang, Artificial Rock (Jiashanshi), 1996, stainless steel

Used new materials to create a traditional form: the og scholar's rock is limestone rock that has been eroded into a very evocative and interesting form, highly sought out

The artist is updating this traditional art into a more manufactured form

A real stone is used for the sheets of metal to be hammered onto it before then being welded together

Salvaged material Move

Xu Bing, Background Story, 2022, natural debris, glass panel, and lightbox.

Explored the connection between reality and illusion

The painting is based on another painting by a traditional Chinese artist that idealizes nature. However Xubing uses trash and other shit put together meticulously so that when a light is shown through it, it looks exactly like the traditional painting. Turns our understanding of beauty on its head

Xu Bing, Phoenix, 2008

Comment on the cycle of urban construction and destruction that was happening around him

Salvaged Material Move

Ma QiuSha, Wonderland Black Square

Used stocking to wrap around broken chunks of concrete

What inspired her was a childhood memory of her mom taking her to

School and noticing all the other moms that were taking their kids to school

And how, since she was a kid, she could only see their legs, which had

Stalking on them

This was during a time that childrearing was a really big part of her time

And her piece is like an evocative way of commenting on that and the

Female body

Chaine Operatoire

Chain of operations

A tool for archaeologists to look at every step of an operation and understand how it was made

The Chaine Operatoire of Roman Painting: the true fresco

Collect Materials

Purchase Materials

Prepare Wall Surface

Paint

Display

Garden scene from House of Golden Bracelets: Pompeii

• Depicts an Ideal garden

All plants are flowering, despite some not being in season

The house of the painters at work

• Shows the process of painting due to the house being incomplete

Cinnabar and Red Ocre relationship

Roman artists used brilliant, saturated cinnabar for high-impact central panels or detailed focal architectural zones, while filling surrounding, less-critical backgrounds with economical red ochre

Cinnabar 

• Really nice red color

• Very expensive

• Used to display the wealth of a patron

Red ochre 

• Very similar and cheaper

Materiality

The quality or state of being material, related to, derived from, or consisting of matter

Column of Trajan, Rome

has a narrative bas-relief frieze that spirals up around the column, approximately 620 feet in length.

Certain parts of it can only be viewed from certain angles, and most of it is inaccessible

Victory column, used to honor Trajan’s epic victories and how good of an emperor he is, located in the Roman Forum, which is where important figures were honored

column of trajan materiality

made from Carrara marble which is a very durable and luminous marble. Had to be loaded onto ships and tranported across the mediteranian and through the tibris river to reach Rome.

• showed how much honor Trajan had since this material was very expensive and difficult to obtain and

The Anavysos Kouros

Kouros: means young boy, youth

His left foot advances, and he has an archaic smile.

Ideal male form, not what Kouros looked like

Frontal

Rigid

Symmetrical

Used as grave markers

Materiality of Anavysos Kouros

Parian Marble very valuble for its crystalline structure, very fine grain that allows for very controlled carving

Parian marble is slightly translucent, which is similar to that of flesh

discussion of permanace

It is a sculpture that connects so much people, from the marble miners to the sculptor a lot of people were involved

• hair wa

Japan, Edo period

Tea bowl, Ido ware, 17th century

Glazed stoneware with kintsugi repairs

Japan Muromachi period

(water jar) named “Matsugane” (Pine Root) Bizen ware, 16th century

Ash-glazed stoneware (with lacquered wood lid)

Japan Edo Period (1603–1868)

Tea bowl, Hagi ware, 17th century

Glazed stoneware, with lacquer repairs

Wabi sabi and Kensugi

Wabi Sabi: the philosophy of finding the imperfect perfect

Kintsugi: the practice of taking broken pottery and repairing it with gold enamel

Celebrate that life will never be perfect and that we must embrace its flaws

Tanaka Yū Japanese, born 1989

Tsutsumimono 23Y-15, 2023

Depicts the wrapping used to store pottery

Borobudur, Central Java, Indonesia

Buddhist Stupa

The Stupa invites the viewer to climb up the monument to begin to understand the enlightenment of the Buddha and follow his journey up the monument and t towards the heavens

• On the path up, tons of reliefs show the buddah’s journey at eye level

Some connection to the Column of Trajan

Abdur Rahman Chughtai, illustration in Muraqqa-i Chughtai (1928).

• Was done using multiple lithography negatives that were all specific to a certain color

• paired with poetry

Couplet by Ghalib accompanied by Sadequain’s painting. From Sadequain’s

Ghalib portfolio album (1969)

• made in comemoration of Ghalib a famous indian poet

The Buddha Shakyamuni (sage of Shakyas)

The historical founder of Buddhism, also known as Siddhartha Gautama

Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of woman possibly Maria Trip, 1639

• Lace is a huge part of this piece and was really hard to make, shows wealth (womans trade)

• her dress is made of silk which came from silk worms

• pearls were also a product of trade with asia

• both of these were a product of the dutch colonialism and subsequent wealth which is shown in her outfit

Giusseppe Sanmartino, Veiled christ ,1753, Naples

made of Carrara marble, very durable

Ville D’este, Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, TIvoli Italy

• Gardens were used as a way to show humanity’s triumph over nature

• were meant to be highly excessive and boastful, especially the water features, since fresh water was hard to come by

  • The rich liked to play water pranks on each other

• was a feat of engineering; it had a fully automatic water organ and had to divert a river just for everything to function

Wagner Material.

• Material isn't just matter. It's the specific substance an artist works with, tied to form and idea, and it carries meaning about how and when a work was made.

• Materials have been ranked. Fine arts (painting, sculpture) were valued above crafts partly because of their materials, shaping the art/craft divide.

Material Art From China, Wu Hung

• Material Art: Wu Hung's term for Chinese artists who consistently use one unconventional material as the carrier of meaning, rather than image or style.

• Three phases: '80s margins of the New Wave, '90s global spread (pulp, gunpowder, hair), post-2000 turn toward metaphysical, project-based work.

• Argument against Western bias. Western theory treated matter as lower than form, and this case study shows why materials need transcultural, historically specific analysis.

Technology and Trade, Becker

• Dyes vs. pigments: Pigments were mostly minerals (ochres, cinnabar) or manufactured (Egyptian blue, white lead). Dyes came from plants, insects, and shellfish and were soluble, so they could wash out.

• Material as status: Cinnabar, Egyptian blue, and murex purple signaled wealth, while ochres were cheap because the minerals were abundant.

• Substitutes were normal: Layering madder over woad, or mixing Egyptian blue with red ochre, imitated purple, and was acceptable unless sold as the real thing.

The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture, The new yorker

• myth that marble statues back then were pure white but they wer once painted

• stakes: White-supremacist groups use white statues as emblems, yet the ancient world was diverse, and darker figures were painted to look lifelike.

Beyond the Cult of the Replicant

• digitization is seen as a second way of preserving something

• Aura and authenticity are constructed: An object's aura depends on its documented provenance and assigned meanings, not just its physical stuff. Choosing what to digitize is also a curatorial act that confers value.

• Material presence still matters: The physical object keeps a special affective power, as with 9/11 artifacts or a bronze's patina, while digital versions often feel like secondary sources. Digital objects can offer other senses and access, such as zooming and remote use.

Experiencing the Multisensory Past

• Argument: Alan Chalmers argues that virtual reconstructions of the past must be multisensory (visuals, audio, smell, feel, taste), and authentically simulated, or they risk misrepresenting how past environments were experienced.

• Caveat: We can never know exactly how the past looked, but simulation lets researchers test and rule out possibilities in a controlled way.

Philadelpheus-AnavysosKouros

• Smuggled in pieces: Looters smashed it into about ten fragments at night, hammering it over a large stone, then packed the pieces in crates with foodstuffs. The author notes the fractures still produced near-perfect joins, so it was re-assembled, with only small parts replaced in plaster and later recovered.

• Material and condition: It is Parian marble with a reddish tint, 1.94 m tall, and surface erosion from the soil in places. Original paint survives or is inferred: red on the hair, fillet, and pubic hair, and the pupils were probably painted.

Chinese Glazes

• traces how clay, wood ash, minerals, and kiln conditions shaped Chinese stoneware and porcelain

Inside Japanese Ceramics

• Focus: Japanese potters work with the clay, glaze, and fire instead of controlling them. Defects like crawling, pinholes, and crackle are admired as qualities of the material.

Arts of Southest Asia

• Focus: Kerlogue's chapter traces Buddhist art across Southeast Asia, where materials and forms track both doctrine and regional resources.

• Stone as cosmos: Borobudur is a stone mountain whose square terraces rise to circular ones, and walking its reliefs enacts the move from the material world to formlessness. At Candi Plaosan, softly carved surfaces were meant to reflect sunlight, so light became part of the work.

Lithographic Assemblages, The Urdu Art Book in the Age of Print, Iftikhar Dadi

• Urdu artists' book grew out of the "lithographic assemblage," meaning the scribes, calligraphers, presses, and materials of 19th-century print, which stayed close to manuscript.

• Why lithography: Metal type handled Nastaliq script poorly (a full font weighed about 200 lbs and was costly). Lithography reproduced calligraphers' handwriting directly, so Urdu newspapers were still handwritten until the 1980s.

• Chughtai: His 1928 Muraqqa-i Chughtai merged Ghalib's verse, calligraphy, borders, and multicolor plates, some printed in Europe. It revived the older muraqqa album in the age of print.

The Art of Gandhara, Behrendt

• Focus: Behrendt traces Gandharan Buddhist art, which is mostly carved from schist, through relics, narrative reliefs, and devotional icons.

• Relics as matter: The Buddha's remains were "pure, material stuff of enlightenment." Schist reliquaries were treated as saturated with that power, so they were reused and repaired, and they held coins, crystal, gold, and pearl.

Journal of Asian Civilizations

• Argument: Moizza Elahi urges studying Gandharan art through materiality and globalization, instead of the old "Hellenistic influence" framing that treats Gandhara as a passive recipient.

• Chaîne opératoire: Reliefs passed through specialist hands: quarrying, squaring the block, outlining, carving, drilling, painting and gilding, then installation. Trial sketches show masters teaching apprentices, and Kharoshti letters on the backs marked where each panel went.