Roaming Objects
Chinese Art West of Mountains
Will be published approx. on 14. September 2026
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-1-78884-331-7 (ISBN)
Description
This book overturns the truism that people carry objects to places. Instead, it asks how objects transport people-physically, imaginatively, and emotionally-to spaces and worlds beyond their immediate reach. It explores artworks as maps of imagined journeys or as worlds inviting inner exploration, grounded in 'deep travel' or psychogeography. Centered on Shanxi, China-a cultural crossroads known as West of Mountains-the book examines pivotal works that model these journeys. Highlights include China's "Stonehenge" tracking solar movements, Zoroastrian-themed sarcophagi, tomb murals depicting afterlife journeys, and Buddhist scrolls for water-land rituals. Lavishly illustrated, the volume combines essays on interconnected themes with close analyses of individual pieces, offering a rich narrative on how art shapes profound spatial and imaginative experiences.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Woodbridge
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 335 mm
Width: 276 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78884-331-7 (9781788843317)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Eugene Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University, where he holds appointments in History of Art and Architecture, Theater, Dance, and Media, Study of Religion, and Inner Asia and Altaic Studies. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the award-winning author of Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China and the art history editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism. As the founding director of Harvard CAMLab (Cognition, Aesthetics, and Multimedia Lab), he pioneers innovative approaches to transforming academic knowledge into immersive sensorial experiences.
Content
1.Introduction
2.Who Roamed Around the North Star?
Early Chinese creation myths and celestial mapping through art.
3.Why Do Alligator-Shaped Vessels Grow Horns?
The zoomorphic language of hybrid ritual objects, encoding cycles of life, death, and regeneration.
4.Why Does the Drinking Vessel Have Anything to Do with a Bird-Snake Fight?
The yin-yang cosmology that informs the design and symbolic function of bronze vessels.
5.What Does It Take to Manufacture Forms of Life?
The conceptual and technical foundations of clay molds in artifact production and their evocation of vitalization.
6.Why Does the Quiet Tomb Need Thunderstorms?
Cosmological processes that engender vitality and dynamism in the afterlife.
7.How Can One Reach Heaven by Diving into a Well?
The symbolic layers behind filial piety narratives in funerary art and architecture.
8.Why Is the Cave the Best Place to Play Chess?
The medieval Chinese concept of 'grotto-heaven' as a distinct experiential realm beyond ordinary life.
9.Which Buddha Land Would You Choose for Your Afterlife Destination?
Competing Buddhist pure lands and their visual and ideological claims on medieval Chinese imagination.
10.Where Did the Europeans Go After They Died in Medieval China?
Zoroastrian-influenced afterlife visions and their artistic representations in medieval China.
11.What Is It Like to Go to the Buddhist Monasteries in the Deep Mountains?
The origin, evolution, and conceptual significance of monastery-bound mountain treks in Chinese landscape traditions.
What Is It Like to Go Inside Our Own Bodies?
The symbolic and conceptual agendas underpinning the pictorial scrolls of the Water Land ritual.
2.Who Roamed Around the North Star?
Early Chinese creation myths and celestial mapping through art.
3.Why Do Alligator-Shaped Vessels Grow Horns?
The zoomorphic language of hybrid ritual objects, encoding cycles of life, death, and regeneration.
4.Why Does the Drinking Vessel Have Anything to Do with a Bird-Snake Fight?
The yin-yang cosmology that informs the design and symbolic function of bronze vessels.
5.What Does It Take to Manufacture Forms of Life?
The conceptual and technical foundations of clay molds in artifact production and their evocation of vitalization.
6.Why Does the Quiet Tomb Need Thunderstorms?
Cosmological processes that engender vitality and dynamism in the afterlife.
7.How Can One Reach Heaven by Diving into a Well?
The symbolic layers behind filial piety narratives in funerary art and architecture.
8.Why Is the Cave the Best Place to Play Chess?
The medieval Chinese concept of 'grotto-heaven' as a distinct experiential realm beyond ordinary life.
9.Which Buddha Land Would You Choose for Your Afterlife Destination?
Competing Buddhist pure lands and their visual and ideological claims on medieval Chinese imagination.
10.Where Did the Europeans Go After They Died in Medieval China?
Zoroastrian-influenced afterlife visions and their artistic representations in medieval China.
11.What Is It Like to Go to the Buddhist Monasteries in the Deep Mountains?
The origin, evolution, and conceptual significance of monastery-bound mountain treks in Chinese landscape traditions.
What Is It Like to Go Inside Our Own Bodies?
The symbolic and conceptual agendas underpinning the pictorial scrolls of the Water Land ritual.