Facing China

Vinograd is particularly interested in how concepts such as truth and relationality were reflected in the production and reproduction of Chinese portraits; in the ritual, social, and cultural functions and responses of portraits; and in how the portraits can "shape historical memory [and] circulate across cultural arenas or function as alternate social selves." Among the first substantial gatherings of visuals of ancient, modern, and contemporary Chinese portraits in various formats and from around the world, this volume provides valuable firsthand visual materials for further study and exploration. Recommended. * Choice *
Richard Vinograd’s brilliant Facing China fearlessly renegotiates the challenging territory of the Chinese portrait. Through attentive analysis and compelling readings, he offers a rich new vision of the portrait as agent and interface, one capable of generating human bonds and identities across lineage, community, cultures, and time. * Roberta Wue, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, and author of 'Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai' *
The book stands as one of a kind in the field of Chinese art history as it engages the present and the global. In addition to its first-class scholarship in historical research and modern discourse, Facing China casts a broader vision across time and space that fully reflects the author’s erudition traversing boundaries between the historical and the modern/contemporary China, and engaging cross-cultural issues beyond China to the global. * Hui-shu Lee, Professor of Chinese Art, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of 'Empresses, Art, and Agency in Song Dynasty China' *
Facing China, drawing on Vinograd’s unsurpassed knowledge of the historical materials as well as his profoundly theoretical and creative approaches, is a brilliant and unprecedented study of portraits in Chinese visual culture. * J. P. Park, June and Simon Li Professor in the History of Art and Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford *