Theater of the deadcastle
In eleventh century China both the living and the dead were treated to theatrical spectacles Chambers designed for the deceased were ornamented with actors and theaters sculpted in stone molded in clay rendered in paint Notably the tombs were not commissioned for the scholars and officials who dominate the historical record of China but affluent farmers merchants clerics people whose lives and deaths largely went unrecorded Why did these elites furnish their burial chambers with vivid representations of actors and theatrical performances Why did they pursue such distinctive tomb making In Theater of the Dead Jeehee Hong maintains that the production and placement of these tomb images shed light on complex intersections of the visual mortuary and everyday worlds of China at the dawn of the second millennium Assembling recent archaeological evidence and previously overlooked historical sources Hong explores new elements in the cultural and religious lives of middle period Chinese Rather than treat theatrical tomb images as visual documents of early theater she calls attention to two largely ignored and interlinked their complex visual forms and their symbolic roles in the mortuary context in which they were created and used She introduces carefully selected examples that show visual and conceptual novelty in engendering and engaging dimensions of space within and beyond the tomb in specifically theatrical terms These reveal surprising insights into the intricate relationship between the living and the dead The overarching sense of theatricality conveys a densely socialized vision of death Unlike earlier modes of representation in funerary art which favored cosmological or ritual motifs and maintained a clear dichotomy between the two worlds these visual practices show a growing interest in conceptualizing the sphere of the dead within the existing social framework By materializing a social turn this remarkable phenomenon constitutes a tangible symptom of middle period Chinese attempting to socialize the sacred realm Theater of the Dead is an original work that will contribute to bridging core issues in visual culture history religion and drama and theater studies Theater of the Dead A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art 1000 1400In 2012 a museum exhibition titled Theater Life and the Afterlife Tomb D cor of the Jin Dynasty from Shanxi which you can view as a virtual exhibition at the China Institute spotlighted a funerary fashion for portraits sculpture or figurines of acting troupes arranged with the dead In connection with that exhibition Nancy S Steinhardt speculated that perhaps people in the Jin dynasty founded by Jurchen from the north didn t believe in an afterlife hence the vogue for seemingly worldly entertainment figures as centrepieces in their tombs Jeehee Hong s book does not come to this conclusion Rather Hong examines the theatre as a symbol for spatial thinking for doors to other worlds for stance towards the body and the world for changes in perspective on one s being Acting was a cultural lingua franca at the height of theatre s popularity in the Jurchen and Mongol led dynasties of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries This was an art form accessible across classes unlike the squirreled away arts of writing and painting The owners of tombs featuring actors Hong manages to group as an elite set wealthy enough for decorated tombs who were not however committed to Confucian orthodoxy which precluded decoration in graves let alone of something so frivolous as stage plays therefore not literati in office Not scholar officials but merchants rich artisans and professionals landowners. Theater of the deadhead Theater of the Dead is a wonderful book whether your entry point of interest is drama ideas of the afterlife social or material history I did regret that Hong left gender aside in a sentence elsewhere you can read that an actor s gender was irrelevant to role in the zaju performances of the day Hong acknowledges that gender is indeterminate for an image of an actor in scholar s costume and moves on But her book is not about gender Well illustrated with some gorgeous portraiture For a glance look at the head of a clown in the NYT review of the 2012 exhibition 082485537X
| Theater of the Dead: A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art, 1000-1400 By Jeehee Hong |
| 082485537X |
| 9780824855376 |
| English |
| 248 |
| Hardcover |
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