STEPHEN WHITEMAN
& RICHARD STRASSBERG
Thirty-Six Views: The Kangxi Emperor’s Mountain Estate in Poetry and Prints
The Power Institute is pleased to invite you to the launch of departmental colleague Stephen Whiteman’s new book Thirty-Six Views: The Kangxi Emperor’s Mountain Estate in Poetry and Prints, co-authored with Richard Strassberg, to be formally launched by Professor Eugene Y. Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University
In 1712, the Kangxi emperor published Imperial Poems on the Mountain Estate for Escaping the Heat (Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi). His views from his summer palace, captured in poems and descriptions, reflect his pleasures and ideals as the ruler of the Qing Empire. Kangxi’s court artists—including Shen Yu, Zhu Gui and Mei Yufeng—produced woodblock prints of his thirty-six views. Among them was Italian missionary Matteo Ripa, who introduced copperplate engraving techniques to China.
Thirty-Six Views explores the artistic collaboration between a Chinese emperor and a Western missionary artist. The hybrid of Chinese and European techniques impacted aesthetic debates and marked ‘a pivotal moment in intercultural imagination, production and transmission during an earlier phase of globalisation’.
Stephen H. Whiteman is Lecturer in Asian Art at the University of Sydney.
Richard E. Strassberg is Professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Thirty-Six Views is published by Harvard University Press and is available for purchase online here.
Monday May 9 2016, 6-8pm
Free Event – Link
The Schaeffer Fine Arts Library
RC Mills Building (A26), Fisher Road
The University of Sydney
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