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The Lyric Journey : Poetic Painting in China and Japan
The Lyric Journey Poetic Painting in China and Japan Author:James Cahill Poetic paintings—works done in response to lyric poems, or else as pictorial equivalents to them—compose a major category of East Asian art. In this beautifully illustrated book James Cahill looks at three exemplary traditions in this genre, works from three very different times and places, bringing new understanding of the paintings... more » and of the relationship between the art and the societies that produced it. Cahill vividly surveys its first great flowering among artists working in the Southern Sung capital of Hangchou. He shows us the revival of poetic painting by late Ming artists working in the prosperous city of Suchou. And we learn how artists in Edo-period Japan transformed the style into a uniquely Japanese vehicle of expression. "[Cahill's] numerous books and exhibition catalogues, and his countless articles and lectures have profoundly shaped the study of East Asian painting in the West … This is a refreshing and challenging book in which [he] once again leads the field of East Asian painting studies into new terrain." —Robert Harrist, Journal of Asian Studies "One puts down the book with the sense that … he has taken us on a 'lyric journey' of his own as quintessentially leisurely and enlightening as any of his work's exemplars … The book's illustrations are apt and faultless, some superb." —Michael Keon, Asian Studies Review« less