EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 7 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 83 Much has been made of the social and economic exchanges across the ‘Silk Road’. Visible evidence of the value of that interaction was captured in elite tombs at the edges of these polities, where material evi- dence exotic to the local region accompanied the dead. This paper will consider what message the assorted choice of non-local or non-locally inspired grave deposits avowed in the first centuries CE by looking closely at two assemblages, one in Afghanistan and the other in Northwest China. Across Eurasia at this time foreign imagery, technologies, mortuary practices, and uses of artifacts derived from all sectors of that far-flung exchange network; we shall argue that this denotes a cosmopolitan attitude about displaying one’s identity at death. No more telling of the eclectic and intercultural character of those expressions were the grave goods deposited in the six excavated tombs at Tillya Tepe, Afghanistan, found in a location that could be characterized as bordering on several powerful groups. Tillya Tepe materials connect imagery from the Near East, Hellenistic Central Asia, southwest Asia and China. Granulation, inlay and lostwax/ lost textile technologies were imported into the region from elsewhere. At the far eastern edge of this indi- rect traffic of goods and technologies, another set of burials, known from the excavations at Guoxi, and particularly in the tomb of Cheshi, at Baileqir, Xinjiang, display a similar mixture of goods and practices. There artifacts included gold appliqués and ornaments with granulation and loops that made clear western Asian connections within more easterly burial practices and items from dynastic China. The comparison of these two settings will document the preference for exotics typical of borderlands, especially in times of expansion, political ambition and unrest; thus the politics of frontiers is an important framework within which to understand these assemblages. Liu Yan (University of Oxford) Journey to theWest, Chinese Artists from the Ashmolean Collection Key words: wartime art, Pang Xunqin, Zhang Daqian, Ashmolean Museum This article examines how Chinese artists respond to the political and social changes in wartime China, with a focus on two leading figures of the 20th century Chinese artists, Pang Xunqin and Zhang Daqian, whose works are currently displayed in the exhibition “Pure Land Images of Immortals in Chinese art” in the Ashmolean Museum. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), with relocation of art schools and institutions to the wartime capital Chongqing, many artists journeyed to the west of the country and gained artistic inspiration from the historical heritage at Dunhuang and the living resources of the groups. This research takes approach of case study and explores fundamental shift of focus in the practice of Chinese art. This paper first provides historical context for the art creation in the wartime China. Then it discusses how the discovery of Dunhuang and the ethnographic investigation in the southwest regions have influenced the development of Chinese painting. The case study on Pang Xunqin and Chang Dai-chien demonstrates a range of ways in which individual artists looked to the past for inspiration and developed their individual styles. An introduction to the history of collecting Chinese paintings, with a focus on the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Bequest in the Ashmolean Museum will also be given. Lukicheva Polina (University of Zürich) Envisioning theWorld that Originates from One Line: Understanding Shitao’s Theory of Painting Key words: 一畫 , pictorial image, phenomenal world, Buddhist epistemology The proposed paper concerns the theory of 'the one line’ (‘ 一畫 ’ 論 ), the central tenet in Shitao’s 石濤 (1642–1707) treatise on painting Hua yulu 畫語錄 . Although pertaining to the theory of painting in the strickt sense, the image of one line in Shitao’s text takes on a greater function as the basic law that governs all things in the world. As generally known, Shitao’s artistic theory shows a strong influence of the Buddhist thought. By the conceptual analysis of terms and notions in the Hua yulu that are essential in order to explore the episte- mological foundation of the text, I further develop the understanding of Shitao’s theory in the light of the