RAS WEEKENDER LECTURE SERIES
Dates: Saturday July 9th and Sunday July 10th, 2011
@ 9.45am – 2.00pm
Venue: Sashas, 11 Dongping Road (corner of Hengshan Road) 3rd Floor event space
Dr. Ni Yibin
Cracking Mysteries in Chinese Images
The story pictures that illustrated numerous Chinese art pieces can provide fascinating insights into the Chinese culture and society that created them. These art pieces, which bear scenes from Chinese classics, mythology, legends, and contemporary musical operas, originally served as one of the most important sources for civil education in Chinese society; their function was similar to that of the statues, carved reliefs, paintings, and stained glass windows in Gothic churches. Their significance in educating as well as entertaining members of imperial courts and well-to-do families, particularly the illiterate women, children, and servants, are equivalent to contemporary visual media.
Much of the meaning behind this imagery has been lost to the average viewer in contemporary China, and even to most Chinese art historians both in China and the West. That is why when such images appear on the market or in exhibition catalogues, they are often given either an uninformative, matter-of-fact description such as “a man and a woman in a garden,” or they are vaguely attributed to one of several well-known Chinese works of fiction, Romance of the Western Chamber or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The messages that these scenes embody actually extend far beyond the fiction and drama with which they are most generally associated.
In this lecture series, Dr. Ni will share with his audience a visual feast of hundreds of images of original Chinese art pieces that he has collected from the four continents of the world and enlighten his audience with the results of his research during the past decade.
This series will be held in a four parts; titles of the lectures as follows;
[1] Recovering Lost Meaning in Chinese Decorative Arts
[2] Understanding The Meaning of Images in Chinese Art
[3] How do the Chinese say ‘Happy Birthday’ with graphic designs? Let me count the ways.
[4] Without the Female Nude, What Titillated the Traditional Chinese Male Voyeur?
Dr Ni Yibin, born in Shanghai, obtained his degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy at University College London, and studied Chinese art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He taught Chinese art and culture at the University Scholars’ Programme, National University of Singapore. He is very widely consulted, and has published book chapters and articles on Chinese art history and lectured in the US institutions of high education including Harvard, Yale, and UCLA as well as in Singapore, Hong Kong, and China.
In 2008, Sir Michael Butler on the occasion of the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition of Porcelain of the Late Ming, wrote: ‘I first met Dr Ni Yibin about a decade ago, and in an unusual way. The former U.K. Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, who used to live quite close to me in England, telephoned me one day and asked if I would show my porcelain to a brilliant young Chinese scholar from Shanghai whom he was befriending. I said I would be delighted and asked them to lunch, although I was a little nervous of how long Sir Edward himself would be interested in the porcelain as he was not famous for his patience! What would he do while we were looking at the pots?
I need not have worried. After lunch he came and sat with us while we talked and did not show signs of wanting to make a move till after tea at 5pm. When he was leaving he said he never imagined there could be so many interesting things to say about porcelain.
Yibin was already then interested in identifying the narrative scenes on C17th porcelain, a quest which he has pursued with extraordinary success. He has helped me by identifying many of the scenes on pieces in my Shunzhi Exhibition in 2002 and the Shanghai Exhibition in 2005 and again those in this catalogue. He has become the leading authority in the world on the subject, with an enormous data base of pictures of the scenes and of the matching paintings and woodblock prints from which they are derived, as well as identifying ancient legends from the subject matter of the scenes. He is now very widely consulted. In my view he has made a major contribution to the study of the period and has hugely enlivened the entries in this and other catalogues. I value his contributions enormously, and could not be more grateful to him. We have met often in the last decade and had a lot of fun together. I treasure his friendship.’
Entrance: RMB 500.00 (RAS members) and RMB 650.00 (non-members) including lunch and tea and coffee. Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture Series. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at these events.
RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn