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Education About Asia

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Calligraphy in East Asia: Art, Communication, and Symbology
An ideal introductory overview of brush calligraphy’s powerful influence on East Asia. As an artistic genre, brush calligraphy holds a central place in the cultural history in East Asia. The form of the characters used in the Chinese writing system—as well as the other writing systems that were derived from it— have long held a place of special regard in the aesthetic traditions of the region. Brush calligraphy has historically been ubiquitous in the visual culture of China, Japan, and Korea, either as a complement to another kind of image (perhaps a landscape painting or part of an illustrated book) or as a work of art in its own right; consequently, it is central to the study of East Asian art history… East Asian brush calligraphy closely integrates aspects of art, communication, and symbology, thus offering educators a particularly rich set of resources from which to draw upon. With PDF download.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/calligraphy-in-east-asia...
Cultivating Enlightenment: The Manifold Meaning of Japanese Zen Gardens
An excellent visual and narrative introduction to Japanese Zen, and perhaps its most iconic symbols. While Zen gardens have been a fixture of Japanese aesthetics since the Muromachi Period (1336–1573), the purposes and meanings of these austere landscapes have been far less fixed, and indeed have changed somewhat since their first appearance as places for meditation in the Zen temples of medieval Japan. ...The image of the Zen garden, however,... “speaks” for itself, and provides us with a representation of spiritual quality that is best experienced rather than discursively argued. This is only appropriate since the transmission of Zen wisdom is supposed to be nonverbal. With PDF download.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/cultivating-enlightenmen...
An Environmental Ethic in Chinese Landscape Painting
A practical but meaningful multidisciplinary educational resource. Landscape painting in Western art did not develop into an important category of painting until the seventeenth century. In contrast, landscape painting in China was already a prized art form by the ninth century… In fact, when Chinese art was systematically introduced to the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the prominence afforded nature—as opposed to humans— in Chinese art startled Western audiences. …Western artists celebrated the human story above all else, while Chinese artists gave trees, plants, birds, rocks, and streams utmost scrutiny. Historically, what beliefs about nature motivated Chinese painters to make landscape such a prestigious art form? … Introducing Chinese landscape painting into a world history or a world art course can serve as a platform for discussing environmental ethics. For example, how does a Song dynasty Chinese landscape painting envision humanity’s relationship with the cosmos? The tiny scale of humans relative to the mountains in a typical Chinese landscape painting suggests that we humans coexist with many other living things. Humans are integrated into a larger whole rather than celebrated as a towering presence. With PDF download.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/cultivating-enlightenmen...
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