Epochs of Chinese & Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design

by Ernest Fenollosa

This book, originally published in 1913, is still regarded as the essential and definitive survey of eastern art. It explains the genre's progress over almost 5,000 years, with classifications of time and style periods.

Genres: Art, Japan, China, History

872 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1911

Reviews

[白宇轩]

Premise: I have only read the chapters on Chinese art.

This book is the result of a reorganization of Fenollosa’s notes on Chinese and Japanese art, covering the origins of these traditions through to the end of the 1700s. It was written in the late 1800s, during the last turbulent years of the Qing Empire. (Full disclaimer: there is an orientalist aesthetic throughout the work; however, the author was, from my understanding, anything but an orientalist in attitude.) The two volumes do an excellent job illustrating the main philosophical ideas that underpinned the development of various artistic movements and schools in East Asia. I particularly appreciated the author’s analysis of how other major centers of artistic production (such as Persia, Greece, and India) left a lasting impact on the spread of decorative patterns still seen today in East Asian art.

While it’s possible that some of the author’s observations have been surpassed by contemporary scholarly literature, these two volumes remain a concise, accessible, and enjoyable starting point for anyone new to the subject. The book is especially engaging due to the author’s willingness to share personal opinions on painters and scholars, which I found genuinely amusing. Most art history texts today have about the same level of humor as a vacuum cleaner manual, but this book maintains an entertaining and engaging tone throughout—an aspect I greatly appreciated, as it kept me invested in continuing through each chapter.

[Vathek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an art history in operatic style, featuring a wicked villain in Northern Confucian "Socialism", and a pure hero in Southern Daoist-Buddhist "Individualism", the former responsible for all evil and the latter for everything good. The bias is ridiculous but contributes to a pleasingly unique vision: Fenollosa has a trained aesthetic eye and a good sense for drama, and the text occasionally rises to fine criticism or narrative.

Sadly, the actual history in the book is very outdated: many works are misattributed to obscure or nonexistent authors, false conjectures are made, and nonentities drowned with praise. Many canonical works were also unknown by time of writing: those who want a "history" should look to more modern stuff. For hardcore Poundians only!

As an instance of the book's stylistic qualities I give the description of Buddhist devotion during the Heian period.

The young soul had to win the spurs of its knighthood alone, in struggle, in effort to feel and see, in invocation to the gods to tear his heart open alone before the altar in his cell, or his own chamber shrine. To pray to the spirit beside your bed was as much a part of life as to sleep. But you entered the holy presence naked, with bared motive, with discounted pretensions. Some one of the great Bodhisattva was selected by your preceptor as your most fitting guardian presence, and to him, or her, you made your first trembling prayers, sniffing the rich smoke of incense, learning to tinkle in time your gilded bell, and twisting your fingers into the magnetic language of the in. You gaze into the white, round mirror on which is painted in Sanskrit the golden breathing "ah-h!" and you watch while its surface deliquesces, expands to an infinite crystal sphere, in which floats the living soul of the deity you have invoked - Kwannon, perhaps, who now is so white that she burns out the dross in you; or Jizo, who melts you into the torrent of his own pity; or Amida, who lets you sit as calm in his sun as if you were an atom of helium; or Aizen, who kindles your passion till it bursts and reveals itself as no-passion; or Fudo, who ties you to the stake, and lights the pyre, and cuts out your heart, and you sip in the glorious pain as if it were a holy draught.