A Drop in the Ocean: How Did a Seascape Make Waves in China and Beyond?

Venue: Theatre A, Elisabeth Murdoch Building

Presenters: Professor Eugene Y. Wang

Professor Eugene Y. Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University, will present a public lecture on early Chinese art.

A millennia-old tale of daughter of a prehistorical sage-king, told and retold over the centuries, has inspired poets and essayists, but not painters. For more than two thousand years, the matter has never been made the subject for painting. In the 1980s, however, the matter all of a sudden began to make waves in China. The most spectacular instance is the monumental seascape on the ceiling of the clock tower of the Tianjin Railway Station, rebuilt in 1988. It shows winged female nudes soaring amidst swirling clouds, mist, and surging waves. The traditional dearth of seascape paintings in China accentuates its novelty. Measured against the backdrop of the Eastern and Western traditions of dome decoration, its broader significance is striking. Domes both stand tall and travel afar. Embodying notions of heaven, All-Mighty, or other conceptual domains, dome designs and ceiling paintings reveal cosmologies. Underlying a seemingly universal heavenward aspiration is a nuanced spectrum of culturally specific conceptions and concerns. The dome painting recalls enduring mindsets just as it engages specific historical moments, such as the 1980s. It thus raises both broad and specific questions: what made the Tianjin Railway Station dome painting so distinct in view of the Chinese and Western traditions? How does it speak specifically to 1980s’ China of the reformist era? The dome painting has, it turns out, ultimately transcended its local context to become a global phenomenon. What is it about the painting that resonated with the Spanish in the 1990s, and subsequently, the English, and the rest of the world?

Professor Eugene Y. Wang's extensive publications range from early Chinese art and archeology to modern and contemporary art and cinema. He has received Guggenheim, Gettty and ACLS Fellowships.

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https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/6724-a-drop-in-the-ocean-how-did-a-seascape-make