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Art aesthetics in China: some observations

ABSTRACT This paper begins with Nick Pearce’s exploration of how the senses are engaged as tools in the production and connoisseurship of the high arts in China, starting with calligraphy and moving on to a consideration of painting, bronze vessels and funerary objects. The sensuous dimensions of these diverse media are evoked and also, at a more abstract level, the peculiarly Chinese “sense of temporality” that imbues them with meaning and value. The imperial (or “premodern”) Chinese sense of temporality is interrogated by Beverley Best in her response. The latter brings a historical materialist perspective to bear on Pearce’s account of timelessness in the appreciation of Chinese art (until it got museumized). This is referred to as “the past in the present [as tradition – Best adds].” Best juxtaposes this imperial, “premodern” ideological formation with the modern sense of “past-present-future as progress” and the aesthetics of singularity or novelty (after Jameson). This approach is in turn challenged by Mingyuan Hu in the rejoinder, where questions about the sense of temporality and about time itself, and about theory and historical enquiry, are posed.