We are pleased to announce that Ars Orientalis 41 is now available. Starting with former Freer curator Jim Cahill’s Freer Medal presentation, this volume reads like a guided tour of the arts of the East. Authors Kim Besio and Lai-Pik Chan explore Chinese cultural norms and assumptions through artwork, looking to explain ideas of love and insect iconography, respectively. Renowned scholar Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt writes on sixth-century East Asian architecture, looking at religious and funerary art in Japan, China and Korea. Building on the research of Margaret Cool Root (featured in Ars Orientalis 28 and 32), author Jennifer Finn explores issues of kingship in the Achaemenid Empire through a close analysis of inscriptions. Additional articles by Tülün Değirmenci, Leslie Wallace, and Shih-shan Susan Huang round out this issue with thematic focuses on the Ottoman Empire, the Eastern Han, and Song dynasties.
Table of Contents
In Defense of the Visual
Reflections on an Illustrious Career
James Cahill
The Sixth Century in East Asian Architecture
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt
Betwixt and Between
Depictions of Immortals (Xian) in Eastern Han Tomb Reliefs
Leslie V. Wallace
Women, Authentic Sentiment, Print Culture and the Theme of “Inscribing a Poem on a Red Leaf” in Ming and Qing Literature and Art
Kimberly Besio
Media Transfer and Modular Construction
The Printing of Lotus Sutra Frontispieces in Song China
Shih-shan Susan Huang
Jade Spiders and Praying Mantises of the Western Zhou Period
Reconstructing an Ancient Cultural Mindset
Chan Lai Pik
An Illustrated Mecmua
The Commoner’s Voice and the Iconography of the Court in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Painting
Tülün Değirmenci
Gods, Kings, Men
Trilingual Inscriptions and Symbolic Visualizations in the Achaemenid Empire
Jennifer Finn
