080026 PS Case Study II/III: Devotional Art of Early Modern China (2023S)

According to the conventional ‘sino-centric’ rhetoric, the year of 1279 is often considered as a humiliating turning point in the historiography of dynastic China. After more than four decades of gallant defiance; Southern China, under the effective control of the exiled Southern Song court (1127-1279), has inexorably fallen under the pillage of the notorious Mongol cavalries under the command of Kubilai Khan (1215-1294), founder of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).

Yet in retrospection, the incorporation of China Proper into a vast multi-ethnic sphere would have been proved pivotal in the historical due course of the Chinese civilization. To name, Tantric Buddhism was adopted as a state religion under the reign of Kubilai Khan (1260-1294). Alongside the court patronage of devotional art in the fashion of the Indo-Himalayan tradition; the Mongol Yuan has successfully cemented de facto control over the Tibetan plateau and incorporated the region under the 'Middle Kingdom'.

On the other hand, whilst facilitating in the emergence of an indigenized version of Tantric art known hitherto as ‘Sino-Tibetan’ style; the legacy of the Mongol Yuan and stance for religious tolerance would have arguably been profound, conferring in the re-interpretation and re-invention of ‘China’ as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entity in the modern era. In the subsequent centuries to follow, succeeding dynasties, both of agrarian and pastoral origins, would have replicated in the paradigm in justification to their territorial claims, in attempt to succeed the vast and expansive sphere of control founded by the Mongol Yuan: a political stance which has fundamentally dictated the nature and notion of 'China' in the modern era, up to the present day.

The prospective course shall therefore attempt to explore and reassess the nature and development of Sino-Tibetan art from the turn of the 14th, up to 18th century, which has momentously oversaw the court devotion in the commissioning of religious art, including sculptural images and paintings, also known in the Himalayan context as thangkas. Further assessments will be put upon its profound influence in the art of popular religion in indigenous China, namely in Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism. Upon completion of the course, prospective participants shall be able to acquire a thorough understanding to the various themes and genres of Tantric art in the Sino-Tibetan style, as well as its cultural-political significance in the wider cultural-historical context, particularly in account of the very existence of 'China' in present day.