China Pluperfect: Volume 1--Epistemology of Past and Outside in Chinese Art

Based on a comparative study of Chinese and Euro-American art theory in the 18th and 19th centuries, this book looks at how both cultures looked at their own past and their outside, and how they devised new ways of adapting them into evolving cultural constructs. While the 17th century was still a time when the epistemological backgrounds of both civilizations were so profoundly different, the 18th century saw the emergence in both places of profound changes that would get them close enough to create the conditions for the beginning of a conversation. First quite superficial and taking shape mostly in the decorative arts, this process of rapprochement, while remaining chaotic and unpredictable, led to wider and more profound zones of contact throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Through the reinterpretations of each other's cultural creations, these zones of contact grew wider as the conditions for globalizations became more and more prevalent.