Pattern and Person

In Classical China, crafted artefacts offered a material substrate for abstract thought as graphic paradigms for social relationships. Focusing on the 5th to 2nd Centuries B.C., Martin Powers explores how these paradigms continued to inform social thought long after the material substrate had been abandoned. In this detailed study, the author makes the claim that artefacts are never neutral: as a distinctive possession, each object - through the abstracting function of style - offers a material template for scales of value. Likewise, through style, pictorial forms can make claims about material 'referents', the things depicted. By manipulating these scales and their referents, artefacts can shape the way status, social role, or identity is understood and enforced. The result is a kind of 'spatial epistemology' within which the identities of persons are constructed. Powers thereby posits a relationship between art and society that operates at a level deeper than iconography, attributes, or social institutions.
Historically, "Pattern and Person" traces the evolution of personhood in China from a condition of hereditary status to one of achieved social role and greater personal choice. This latter development, essential for bureaucratic organisation and individual achievement, challenges the conventional opposition between 'Western' individuals and 'collective' Asians.