Colloquia
Visualizing Playfulness in East Asian Art
2013–2014 Graduate Student Symposium in East Asian Art
Wit and humor have played an important role in art from ancient times to the present, sometimes transcending cultures. Humor, which is often based on breaking boundaries and flouting conventions, can provide amusement to a wide audience but can also convey hidden innuendoes intelligible only to the savvy few. What makes who laugh? What is humorous often depends on the point of view and context. What is humorous to some might be considered as insulting or deadly serious to others. Humor has also been used to disguise the dark and grotesque, inciting laughter at the expense of others. Similarly, the kitsch, the camp, and the cute frequently straddle the boundaries of play and humor. How do artists convey or visualize humor? Artists sometimes exploit political events, religion, elite culture, and social customs to provoke laughter. By visualizing the unconventional, deviating from established norms, or juxtaposing unexpected subjects and styles, they can find innovative ways to display wit, humor, and play in their works. How can scholars decode, identify, and differentiate humor, satire, farce, parody, and irony in playful works of art? Are there underlying messages encrypted in witty and unconventional works? What are the recurrent themes that might signal humorous intent? Do we laugh more or less, or at different times, over the years and centuries? This symposium invites keen minds to explore visual articulations of wit and humor in East Asia. Does the serious study of humor necessarily take the laughter out of it?
Contact
Contact Wai-yee Chiong and Sol Jung (Tangctr@princeton.edu) with questions and concerns.
Symposium Program
Saturday, 1 March 2014
101 McCormick Hall
Registration and Coffee
8:30–9:30 a.m.
Morning Session
9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Welcome
Wai Yee Chiong
Princeton University
Keynote Lecture
Material Translations: Wit in Japanese Lacquer
Dr. Christine Guth
Senior Tutor, Asian Design and Material Culture Specialism, Royal College of Art
Career Play: Rewards, Promotions, and Officialdom in an Early Western Han Board Game
Luke Habberstad
Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Sick Pleasure: On the Humorous Valence in Yamai no sōshi (Scroll of Diseases and Deformities) in Medieval Japan
Chun Wa Chan
Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan
The Thirty-Year Echo: Early Film Comedy of Taiwan and South Korea
Evelyn Shih
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley
Discussion
Discussant: Dr. Christine Guth
Moderator: Wai Yee Chiong
Afternoon Session
2:15–5:30 p.m.
What’s So funny about Writing about Literati Painting in Northern Song China? How Poetry Misunderstood Painting
Yao Hua
Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University
Clever Couplings: Re-reading the “Fashionable” Eight Parlor Views
Jeannie E. Kenmotsu
Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
From Sacred to Satirical: A Collaboration between Katsukawa Shunshō and Kō Sūkoku
Wai Yee Chiong
Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Time and Identity: The Past, Present, and Future in Chinese Caricatures at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
I-Wei Wu
Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg
Discussion
Discussant: Dr. Christine Guth
Moderator: Sol Jung, Princeton University
Concluding Remarks