The Art of Mu Xin


Book Description

Mu Xin (b. 1927) is one of the leading artist-intellectuals of the Chinesediaspora. Now living in New York City, he is known for his complex writings and paintings. A formidable figure in the cultural and intellectual history of Chinese modernism, Mu Xin is admired for his unique synthesis of Chinese and Western aesthetic sensibilities and intellectual traditions. This beautifully illustrated catalogue focuses on a group of thirty-three landscape paintings that Mu Xin painted between 1977 and 1979, in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Many of these works have never been exhibited or published in the West. In addition, the book features Mu Xin's Prison Notes, sixty-six sheets that were written when the artist was in solitary confinement in China in 1971-72. This catalogue will accompany an exhibition on view at the Yale University Art Gallery from October 2 to December 9, 2001. The exhibition will then travel to the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago from January 24 through March 31, 2002, at the Honolulu Academy of Art from October 2 to December 1, 2002 and at the Asia Society in New York City. Other venues to be anounced.




An Empty Room: Stories


Book Description

A dazzling cycle of short stories by one of China’s most revered contemporary writers and one of the world’s leading artist-intellectuals. An Empty Room is the first book by the celebrated Chinese writer Mu Xin to appear in English. A cycle of thirteen tenderly evocative stories written while Mu Xin was living in exile, this collection is reminiscent of the structural beauty of Hemingway’s In Our Time and the imagistic power of Kawabata’s palm-of-the-hand stories. From the ordinary (a bus accident) to the unusual (Buddhist halos) to the wise (Goethe, Lao Zi), Mu Xin’s wandering “I” interweaves plots with philosophical grace and spiritual profundity. A small blue bowl becomes a symbol of vanishing childhood; a painter in a race against fading memory scribbles notes in an underground prison during the Cultural Revolution; an abandoned temple room holds a dark mystery. An Empty Room is a soul-stirring page turner, a Sebaldian reverie of passing time, loss, and humanity regained.




Artists in Exile


Book Description

An unprecedented survey of artists in exile from the 19th century through the present day, with notable attention to Asian, Latin American, African American, and female artists This timely book offers a wide-ranging and beautifully illustrated study of exiled artists from the 19th century through the present day, with notable attention to individuals who have often been relegated to the margins of publications on exile in art history. The artworks featured here, including photography, paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture, present an expanded view of the conditions of exile--forced or voluntary--as an agent for both trauma and ingenuity. The introduction outlines the history and perception of exile in art over the past 200 years, and the book's four sections explore its aesthetic impact through the themes of home and mobility, nostalgia, transfer and adjustment, and identity. Essays and catalogue entries in each section showcase diverse artists, including not only European ones--like Jacques-Louis David, Paul Gauguin, George Grosz, and Kurt Schwitters--but also female, African American, East Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern artists, such as Elizabeth Catlett, Harold Cousins, Mona Hatoum, Lotte Jacobi, An-My Lê, Matta, Ana Mendieta, Abelardo Morell, Mu Xin, and Shirin Neshat.




Shanghai Modern


Book Description

In the midst of ChinaÕs wild rush to modernize, a surprising note of reality arises: Shanghai, it seems, was once modern indeed, a pulsing center of commerce and art in the heart of the twentieth century. This book immerses us in the golden age of Shanghai urban culture, a modernity at once intrinsically Chinese and profoundly anomalous, blending new and indigenous ideas with those flooding into this Òtreaty portÓ from the Western world. A preeminent specialist in Chinese studies, Leo Ou-fan Lee gives us a rare wide-angle view of Shanghai culture in the making. He shows us the architecture and urban spaces in which the new commercial culture flourished, then guides us through the publishing and filmmaking industries that nurtured a whole generation of artists and established a bold new style in urban life known as modeng. In the work of six writers of the time, particularly Shi Zhecun, Mu Shiying, and Eileen Chang, Lee discloses the reflection of ShanghaiÕs urban landscapeÑforeign and familiar, oppressive and seductive, traditional and innovative. This work acquires a broader historical and cosmopolitan context with a look at the cultural links between Shanghai and Hong Kong, a virtual genealogy of Chinese modernity from the 1930s to the present day.




Chinese Brutalism Today


Book Description

Chinese Brutalism Today' is divided into three chapters and ends with a methodological afterword that explains the reasons why the research was carried out and the scientific tools used. The first chapter is "Exposed concrete in the design process," the second is "Identity Research: Towards an Ornate Surface" and the third is "Global ambition: towards a polished surface." The narration takes place through a substantial written part accompanied by specific images that facilitate the understanding of the text. Transversally, in the narrative, an interpretation is given to the precise and ambiguous dictates announced in 2017 by President Xi Jinping: to pursue a contemporary architecture made of "international standards with Chinese characteristics."




Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents


Book Description

Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.




The Art of Prolog, second edition


Book Description

This new edition of The Art of Prolog contains a number of important changes. Most background sections at the end of each chapter have been updated to take account of important recent research results, the references have been greatly expanded, and more advanced exercises have been added which have been used successfully in teaching the course. Part II, The Prolog Language, has been modified to be compatible with the new Prolog standard, and the chapter on program development has been significantly altered: the predicates defined have been moved to more appropriate chapters, the section on efficiency has been moved to the considerably expanded chapter on cuts and negation, and a new section has been added on stepwise enhancement—a systematic way of constructing Prolog programs developed by Leon Sterling. All but one of the chapters in Part III, Advanced Prolog Programming Techniques, have been substantially changed, with some major rearrangements. A new chapter on interpreters describes a rule language and interpreter for expert systems, which better illustrates how Prolog should be used to construct expert systems. The chapter on program transformation is completely new and the chapter on logic grammars adds new material for recognizing simple languages, showing how grammars apply to more computer science examples.




Making History


Book Description

This volume analyzes the cultural origins, precedents, influences and aspirations of the contemporary Chinese artists.




‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage


Book Description

In Intoxicating Shanghai, Paul Bevan explores the work of a number of Chinese modernist figures in the fields of literature and the visual arts, with an emphasis on the literary group the New-sensationists and its equivalents in the Shanghai art world, examining the work of these figures as it appeared in pictorial magazines. It undertakes a detailed examination into the significance of the pictorial magazine as a medium for the dissemination of literature and art during the 1930s. The research locates the work of these artists and writers within the context of wider literary and art production in Shanghai, focusing on art, literature, cinema, music, and dance hall culture, with a specific emphasis on 1934 – ‘The Year of the Magazine’.




Reading and Writing About Literature


Book Description

Far less expensive than comparable guides, Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide is an ideal supplement for writing courses where literature anthologies and individual literary works that lack writing instruction are assigned. This brief guide introduces strategies for reading literature, explains the writing process and common writing assignments for literature courses, provides instruction in writing about fiction, poetry, and drama, and includes coverage of writing a research paper and of literary criticism and theory. This volume in the popular Bedford/St. Martin's series of Portable Anthologies and Guides offers a trademark combination of high quality and great value.