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This companion presents new critical views on crucial aspects of the large and varied field of Asian art and architectural history. The essays collected here provide scholars and the public with an opportunity to engage with the field in all its diversity - from coinage to monastic spaces to imperial commissions and beyond.
List of contents
List of Illustrations viii
Notes on Contributors xiv
Acknowledgments xx
Part I Introduction 1
1 Revisiting "Asian Art" 3
Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton
Part II Objects in Use 21
2 The Material Facts of Ritual: Revisioning Medieval Viewing through Material Analysis, Ethnographic Analogy, and Architectural History 23
Kevin Gray Carr
3 Textiles and Social Action in Theravada Buddhist Thailand 48
Leedom Lefferts
4 Functional and Nonfunctional Realism: Imagined Spaces for the Dead in Northern Dynasties China 70
Bonnie Cheng
5 The Visible and the Invisible in a Southeast Asian World 97
Jan Mrázek
Part III Space 121
6 Building Beyond the Temple: Sacred Centers and Living Communities in Medieval Central India 123
Tamara I. Sears
7 Urban Space and Visual Culture: The Transformation of Seoul in the Twentieth Century 153
Kim Youngna
8 Unexpected Spaces at the Shwedagon 178
Elizabeth Howard Moore
9 The Changing Cultural Space of Mughal Gardens 201
James L. Wescoat Jr.
Part IV Artists 231
10 Old Methods in a New Era: What Can Connoisseurship Tell Us about Rukn-ud-Din? 233
Molly Emma Aitken and Shanane Davis, with technical analysis by Yana van Dyke
11 Convergent Conversations: Contemporary Art in Asian America 264
Margo Machida
12 The Icon of the Woman Artist: Guan Daosheng (1262-1319) and the Power of Painting at the Ming Court c. 1500 290
Jennifer Purtle
13 Diasporic Body Double: The Art of the Singh Twins 318
Saloni Mathur
Part V Challenging the Canon 339
14 Re-evaluating Court and Folk Painting of Korea 341
Kumja Paik Kim
15 Conflict and Cosmopolitanism in "Arab" Sind 365
Finbarr Barry Flood
16 In the Absence of the Buddha: "Aniconism" and the Contentions of Buddhist Art History 398
Ashley Thompson
17 On Maurya Art 421
Frederick Asher
Part VI Shifting Meanings 445
18 Art, Agency, and Networks in the Career of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) 447
Morgan Pitelka
19 Shiva Nataraja: Multiple Meanings of an Icon 471
Padma Kaimal
20 Sifting Mountains and Rivers through a Woven Lens: Repositioning Women and the Gaze in Fourteenth-Century East Java 486
Kaja M. McGowan
21 Dead Beautiful: Visualizing the Decaying Corpse in Nine Stages as Skillful Means of Buddhism 513
Ikumi Kaminishi
22 In the Name of the Nation: Song Painting and Artistic Discourse in Early Twentieth-Century China 537
Cheng-hua Wang
Part VII Elusive, Mobile Objects 561
23 Chinese Painting: Image-Text-Object 563
De-nin Deanna Lee
24 Locating Tomyoji and Its "Six" Kannon Sculptures in Japan 580
Sherry Fowler
25 The Unfired Clay Sculpture of Bengal in the Artscape of Modern South Asia 604
Susan S. Bean
26 Malraux's Buddha Heads 629
Gregory P. A. Levine
Index 655
