Maggie Bickford (Art History, Brown University)

Twelfth- and thirteenth-century Chinese emperors created a new body of masterworks to stand in for lost paintings by the early Great Painters of China. The measure of their success is that we still use these Song-Dynasty creations as touchstones in our history of early Chinese art. How did this happen? Professor Bickford will consider these imperial initiatives and their consequences for the history of art in China today.