ELSLEY ZEITLYN LECTURE ON CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGY AND CULTURE

Buddhist Archaeology in Republican China (1912-1949)

Professor Sarah E Fraser, Associate Professor and Chair of Art History, Northwestern University

Tuesday 28 October 2008

Chinese archaeologists transformed the notion of the nation and its artistic history with a series of dramatic discoveries during the Republican Period, China’s post-imperial interregnum before the establishment of the PRC in 1949.  This talk will explore the work of art-historical archaeologists who studied Silk Road tombs and temples making mural copies and sketches of medieval sculpture.  The painter and forger, Zhang Daqian, mined compositions and styles in Dunhuang wall painting to establish painting history back to the third to sixth century Northern and Southern Dynasties.  He collaborated with Tibetan painters to capture long-forgotten Buddhist pictorial techniques and reintroduce them into modern Chinese painting.

Professor Sarah  E Fraser was the recipient of a 2007-08 fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her major professional interests include historical and theoretical investigations in the history of art with a concentration on Chinese painting (sixth through twentieth centuries), Tibetan painting and pan-Asian Buddhist art. She is in the process of writing a book called What Is Chinese about Chinese Art? which will explore the links between archaeology, national identity and politics after the end of dynastic China, 1928-1947.

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