Enfilade

Published by Reaktion and also distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Shane McCausland, The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll (London: Reaktion Books, 2023), 299 pages, ISBN: 978-1789147964, £35 / $50.

The Chinese picture-scroll, a long painting or calligraphic work held within a horizontal scrolling mount, has been China’s pre-eminent aesthetic format for the last two millennia. This first extended history of the picture-scroll explores its extraordinary longevity, and its adaptability to social, political, and technological change. The book describes what the picture-scroll demands of a viewer, how China’s artists grappled with its cultural power, and how collectors and connoisseurs have left their marks on scrolls for later generations to judge. The return to mass appeal of scrolling—a media technology that seemed long outdated yet persists in our digital age—provides urgent and fascinating context to this book.

Shane McCausland is Percival David Professor of the History of Art at SOAS University of London. His many books include The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368 (Reaktion Books, 2014), and he has curated numerous exhibitions in Europe, North America, and China.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  On Origins and Uses over the First Millennium
2  Inscribing the Artist and the Collector: The Picture-Scroll in the Song–Liao–Jin Period
3  Handscrolls in Mongol Palaces
4  Musing on Shadows: Reading the Ming Picture-Scroll
5  Qing: Reading the ‘Baroque’ Handscroll
6  Modernist Uses of the Chinese Picture-Scroll
7  The Medium of Silent Poetry in the Late Modern World

References
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Index