Ebook: Art of China, Korea and Japan

3rd printing edition — Thames & Hudson Ltd.; 1965 — 285 pages — ISBN-10: 0500180245 / ISBN-13: 978-0500180242Here in one concise and lavishly illustrated volume is a survey of the arts of East Asia—of more than 3,000 years of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting, sculpture, pottery, and drawing. Treated together for the first time, the beautiful works of aft from these three distinct national cultures are emphasized in all their originality and vigor, but the author brings out as well the way they were affected by other cultures and how they influenced each other.Naturally, Chinese art dominated and was the major source of inspiration, but in many fields—such as the Japanese art of portraiture—and at many times, the original impulse from Chinese artists was modified and surpassed.The interplay of sources and motives that shaped Asian art is not, of course, only purely aesthetic and technical. Political and cultural developments of every kind come to dramatic life under Mr. Swann's pen.Among many other historical and artistic conflicts, he describes the antagonism between the exquisite but stagnant luxuries of decorative arts in the Ch'ing period and the violent paintings of rebellious Zen artists who refused to serve the government of a foreign dynasty. These and
many other epochs of Chinese art, together with the concurrent histories of Korean and Japanese art, are enhanced by 51 color plates and 208 black-and-white illustrations, drawn from famous collections all over the world, and including plates of pieces that have not been reproduced before.