The City Of Blue And White

A compelling examination of the ultimate global commodity, blue and white porcelain, from kiln to consumers across the globe.

In this highly readable and engaging work, Linda Walton presents a dynamic survey of China's history from the tenth through the mid-fourteenth centuries from the founding of the Song dynasty through the Mongol conquest when Song China became part of the Mongol Empire and Marco Polo made his famous journey to the court of the Great Khan. Adopting a thematic approach, she highlights the political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural changes and continuities of the period often conceptualized as 'Middle Imperial China'. Particular emphasis is given to themes that inform scholarship on world history: religion, the state, the dynamics of empire, the transmission of knowledge, the formation of political elites, gender, and the family. Consistent coverage of peoples beyond the borders – Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, and Mongol, among others – provides a broader East Asian context and introduces a more nuanced, integrated representation of China's past.

Director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy—Blue (1993), White (1993), and Red (1994)—is one of the great achievements of European film. A meditation on liberty, equality, and fraternity, these three films marked the culmination of the director's career, as well as the zenith of one of the most important creative collaborations in 20th-century cinema-between Kieslowski, scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, and composer Zbigniew Preisner. Thanks to their close working relationship, music for the Three Colors trilogy achieves both a focal narrative and philosophical function. At times, Preisner's music advances the narrative independently of the films' other codes; at other times, it creates a metaphorical space into which the audience is invited in order to read for "deeper" messages. As the first major scholarly treatment of Preisner's music, Nicholas Reyland's Zbigniew Preisner's Three Colors Trilogy: A Film Score Guide fills an important void in film score scholarship. In this guide, Reyland analyzes the historical context of the film scores, the life of the composer, the hermeneutic and narrative role of the music within the film, and the musical scoring techniques used for the trilogy. This volume also draws on an interplay of established "classic" approaches to analyzing film music and more recent approaches in the exploration of its themes and readings. In addition, the composer's willingness to be interviewed by Reyland enhances the musicological scholarship of this book, giving the reader privileged access into the process of scoring. A significant contribution to both film studies and musicological literature, this book celebrates one of the great cinematic achievements of the last few decades.

A bold reorientation of art history that bridges the divide between fine art and material culture through an examination of objects and their uses Art history is often viewed through cultural or national lenses that define some works as fine art while relegating others to the category of craft. Global Objects points the way to an interconnected history of art, examining a broad array of functional aesthetic objects that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries and challenging preconceived ideas about what is and is not art. Avoiding traditional binaries such as East versus West and fine art versus decorative art, Edward Cooke looks at the production, consumption, and circulation of objects made from clay, fiber, wood, and nonferrous base metals. Carefully considering the materials and process of making, and connecting process to product and people, he demonstrates how objects act on those who look at, use, and acquire them. He reveals how objects retain aspects of their local fabrication while absorbing additional meanings in subtle and unexpected ways as they move through space and time. In emphasizing multiple centers of art production amid constantly changing contexts, Cooke moves beyond regional histories driven by geography, nation-state, time period, or medium. Beautifully illustrated, Global Objects traces the social lives of objects from creation to purchase, and from use to experienced meaning, charting exciting new directions in art history.

The Ceramic Narrative is an exploration of past and present ceramic iconography concerned with the depiction of narratives, or with images meant to be thought-provoking, beyond the merely decorative. The book is beautifully illustrated with an extensive variety of work from history and the present day, showing how many contemporary artists continue this tradition with modern interpretations. Examining ancient Greece, the ceramic imagery of the Maya culture, the ceramics of China, Persia, and Japan, European tin-glaze traditions, and the narrative imagery appearing on later European porcelains, Matthias Ostermann attempts wherever possible not only to present ceramic narratives in their cultural and historical contexts but also to refer to some of the older myths and sources that may have served as inspiration. Applied arts writer David Whiting contributes an essay on the development of ceramic narratives in the twentieth century, while illustrations present the work of more than 75 contemporary international ceramic artists who explore narrative in distinctive and different ways. These include the exploration of mythologies and existing stories; personal visions, private stories and memory; the human figure, relationships and identity; political and social commentary; and finally, the ceramic object itself, seen as message and metaphor. This book will serve as a beginning for further study of this fascinating and little-explored subject and as a celebration of the work of all ceramic artists whose passion is the ceramic narrative.