Arts and Architecture

Oxford professor to give Dickson Memorial Lecture in Art History

Craig Clunas, professor and head of the History of Art Department, and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford, will give a public lecture, “Looking at Looking at Chinese Paintings,” at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 12, in 112 Borland Building, on Penn State's University Park campus. Clunas’ lecture is co-sponsored by the Evan Pugh Professorsip and Harold E. Dickson Memorial Lecture Series, which is made possible by an endowment created by the late Mary Neilly (Penn State class of 1947, bachelor of arts in journalism), in honor of Dickson (1900-1987), one of the founders of the Department of Art History and a highly respected scholar in the field of American art and architecture.

Clunas will examine what paintings within paintings do in Chinese terms, and look at how they make problematic simple equations of the "metapicture" with a modern and autonomous status of the work of art. A number of paintings produced in China in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) periods have other paintings "nested" within them, often in the context of scenes showing groups of elite males viewing works of art. They also often form part of aseries of images, specifically of the "four gentlemanly pursuits" of music, chess, calligraphy and painting.

Clunas received his bachelor of arts and master of arts in Chinese studies from the University of Cambridge and his doctoral degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has been professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford since 2007. Previous employment included 15 years on the staff of the Far Eastern department of the Victoria and Albert Museum; teaching art history at the University of Sussex, where he was appointed professor of history of art in 1997; and Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art at the University of London in 2003.

Clunas has written numerous books on the art history and culture of China. Much of his work concentrates on the Ming period (1368–1644), with additional teaching and research interests in the art of 20th-century and contemporary China. His most recent book, based on his 2004 Slade Lectures, is "Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644" (2007). He is completing a book on the cultural role of the Ming regional aristocracy and is co-curator of an exhibition on the early Ming period, "Ming China 1400–1450: Courts & Contacts," scheduled to open at the British Museum in 2014.

Clunas received a Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) from the University of Warwick in 2010. He was the Slade Professor of Fine Arts, University of Oxford, in 2003–2004, and Edward H. Benenson Lecturer, Duke University, in 2003. In 1999 he was awarded the R. C. Hills Gold Medal of the Oriental Ceramic Society for outstanding contribution to the study of Oriental art.

Oxford professor Craig Clunas will deliver a talk April 12 on the University Park campus. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated January 9, 2015

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