Luminescent Visions:Transparency and Transformations in Medieval China
Modern ideas of transparency are often associated with industrial technology and utopian social forms.In the ancient world,however,cherished by philosophers,poets,and aristocrats,transparent objects gave rise to interpretive uncertainties and posed epistemological questions concerning the sense of sight.Based on previous studies in archaeology and material culture,this paper examines imported exotica such as rock-crystal and glass,and its impact on Chinese visual culture in the medieval period.Bringing together sources from Buddhist reliquary burials,medieval literature,Tang tributary systems,and court production,the paper focuses on how the optical effects of transparency were associated with concepts of emptiness,and destabilized perceptions of form and substance,opacity and clarity,the mundane and the miraculous.This process of"seeing through"things led to new developments in painting techniques and stylistic choices that embraced varied textures and surfaces,and new forms of pictorial space.
万方数据
维普
