The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor

Art's Agency and Art History

Volumn , Issue , 2008, Pages 95-113

  Rawson, Jessica ^a  

^a MERTON COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Chinese court; Shenzong; Wanli; Western paintings; Xunzi

Indexed keywords

EID: 84889270302     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1002/9780470776629.ch4     Document Type: Chapter

References (27)

1. For the excavation report see "Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo, Ding Ling bowuguan, Beijing shi wenwu gongzuodui," Ding Ling, 2 vols. (Beijing, 1990).
2. J. Volmer, Ruling from the Dragon Throne: Costume of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) (Berkeley, CA, and Toronto, 2002), p. 112.
3. A variety of motifs, such as ling zhi fungus, ingots and chime stones were regarded as auspicious emblems. They could be combined either in groups of eight or in different combinations; see Wang Qingzheng, A Dictionary of Chinese Ceramics (Singapore, 2002), p. 254.
4. For a range of different aspects of such ritual portraits, see J. Stuart and E. S. Rawski, Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits (Washington, DC, 2001).
5. C. Clunas, "'Not one hair different . . .': Wen Zhengming on imaging the dead in Ming funerary portraiture," in R. Shepherd and R. Maniura, eds., Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype within Images and Other Objects (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 31-46.
6. For an account of the use of portraits in a variety of religious uses during the Song (960-1279) see P. Ebrey, "Portrait sculpture in Imperial ancestral rites in Song China," T'oung Pao 83 (1997), pp. 42-92.
7. M. Siggstedt, "Forms of fate: an investigation of the relationship between formal portraiture, especially ancestral portraits, and physiognomy (xingshu) in China," in International Colloquium on Chinese Art History (1991), 2 vols. (Taipei, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 717-48; Clunas, "'Not one hair different . . .'."
8. Stuart and Rawski, Worshipping the Ancestors, pp. 93-115.
9. A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998), ch. 4.
10. The principal discussion of the agency imputed to or abducted from Western paintings and sculptures is found in D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, IL, 1989).
11. However, this way of using the word agency is particular to Gell and differs somewhat from other uses in which the notion of intentionality plays a larger role; see discussions in A. Gardner, ed., Agency Uncovered: Archaeological Perspectives on Social Agency, Power and Being Human (London, 2004), pp. 1-15.
12. P. Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: a Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley, CA, 1994);
13. P. Boyer, Religion Explained: the Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London, 2001).
14. Gell, Art and Agency, p. 17.
15. C. Pinney and N. Thomas, eds., Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment (Oxford, 2001), p. 5.
16. See for example the paintings and carvings of the indigenous peoples in the north-west of the North American continent; B. McLennan and K. Duffek, The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations (Vancouver, Toronto, and Seattle, 2000).
17. Semir Zeki, "Art and the brain," Journal of Consciousness Studies, Controversies in Sciences and the Humanities 6, June/July (1999), pp. 76-96.
18. See Ding Ling.
19. Ding Ling, pp. 6-8.
20. Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven, CT, 1981), pp. 30-3.
21. Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance, pp. 125-9.
22. Ding Ling, pp. 43-150; Wang Yan, Wanli dihoude yichu (Taipei, 1996).
23. J. Knoblock (trans.), Xunzi: a Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols. (Stanford, CA, 1988);
24. A. Forke (trans. and annotated), Lun-heng Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch'ung, 2nd ed. (New York, 1962).
25. See especially Jiangxi sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, "Nanchang Mingdai Ningjing Wang furen Wushimu fajue jianbao," Wenwu 2 (2003), pp. 19-34.
26. For the constructure of culture see Philip Chase, "Symbolism as reference and symbolism as culture," in R. Dunbar, C. Knight, and C. Power, eds., The Evolution of Culture: an Interdisciplinary View (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 34-49.
27. The complex and almost contradictory effects of an ordinary person wearing robes and sometimes masks that transform them into a deity or ruler has been described as an embodied paradox: M. Blackmun Visona, R. Poynor, H. M. Cole, and M. D. Harris, A History of Art in Africa (London, 2000), pp. 336-7.