An Album of Paintings for Mr Yankui Tong

An Album of Paintings for Mr Yankui Tong (2000) ? Yankui Tong Chinese Society for Peasant Painting and Calligraphy Research | ISBN: 9787536808287 | Condition: Good Sold by Crappy Old Books ? Where Chinese Artistic Tradition Meets the British Second-Hand Book Trade, and Nobody Is Entirely Sure How This Rather Unusual Volume Ended Up Here. There are art books devoted to Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, whose reputations have been polished by centuries of scholarship, auction-house enthusiasm and the persistent determination of wealthy people to spend extraordinary sums of money on things they cannot hang above the fireplace without consulting their insurance companies. And then there is An Album of Paintings for Mr Yankui Tong , a rather more unusual proposition, published in 2000 by the Chinese Society for Peasant Painting and Calligraphy Research. It is the sort of book that reminds us that the world of art extends considerably beyond the familiar procession of European masters, fashionable galleries and gentlemen in black polo-neck sweaters explaining why a pile of bricks represents the collapse of Western civilisation. Chinese painting possesses an immense cultural history, with traditions of brushwork, ink, colour, symbolism and calligraphy stretching back many centuries. Within these traditions, the relationship between painting and writing is particularly important, with the artist?s brush serving as an instrument of both visual expression and personal cultivation. The very idea that painting and calligraphy belong together seems perfectly sensible, although it does rather undermine the modern Western assumption that handwriting is merely something to be endured until somebody invents a better keyboard. The association with the Chinese Society for Peasant Painting and Calligraphy Research makes this publication especially intriguing. Chinese peasant painting has its own distinctive cultural associations, reflecting traditions of popular artistic expression, regional identity and the relationship between ordinary communities and the visual arts. Unlike the more familiar Western art-book industry, where almost every artistic movement eventually acquires a coffee-table volume weighing approximately as much as a small refrigerator, publications devoted to less widely known Chinese artists can be surprisingly difficult to encounter in ordinary British bookshops. This particular volume, associated with Yankui Tong, offers an opportunity to explore an artistic world that may be unfamiliar to readers whose knowledge of Chinese painting begins and ends with misty mountains, bamboo and the occasional exceptionally well-behaved panda. Its appeal lies partly in that unfamiliarity. Art books are not merely collections of attractive pictures; they are records of cultural perspectives, artistic ambitions and the ways different societies choose to represent and preserve creative achievement. And sometimes the most interesting additions to a collection are precisely those volumes that nobody else in the room has heard of. Condition: Good. This is a previously owned copy of the 2000 edition, showing the ordinary signs of age and handling consistent with its stated condition. It is offered as a second-hand art publication rather than an immaculate museum specimen. For collectors of Chinese art, enthusiasts of painting and calligraphy, researchers into Chinese cultural publications or anyone seeking something rather more unusual than another enormous book about Impressionism, this is an intriguing addition to the shelves. Available from Crappy Old Books , where our stock occasionally takes us into artistic territory considerably more exotic than the usual assortment of battered crime novels and forgotten celebrity autobiographies. An unusual Chinese art publication, a glimpse into a different visual tradition, and proof that interesting books have a habit of travelling extraordinary distances. Although how this particul.…