Martin Powers

The essays in this collection examine a broad spectrum of artwork, sharing secrets for seeing the arts of Asia as practiced by professional historians of Asian art. Here the novice and the experienced enthusiast can find essays representing a range of regions and media, from Tibetan murals to Japanese prints and Chinese sculpture. Each essay is written for the non-professional as well as scholars in other areas of research who use images, showing the reader how to view these works, what to look for, and how to interpret what one finds. For this reason, even though the volume covers ...

In Classical China, crafted artifacts offered a material substrate for abstract thought as graphic paradigms for social relationships. Focusing on the fifth to second centuries B.C., Martin Powers explores how these paradigms continued to inform social thought long after the material substrate had been abandoned. In this detailed study, the author makes the claim that artifacts are never neutral: as a distinctive possession, each object—through the abstracting function of style—offers a material template for scales of value. Likewise, through style, pictorial forms can make claims about...

Winner of the 1991 Joseph Levenson Prize in the Pre-Twentieth Century category.

Political expression is not a term generally associated with ancient china. Nonetheless, in this pathbreaking book Martin J. Powers examines the art and politics of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) and shows that both were shaped by the rise of an educated, non-aristocratic public that questioned the authority of the rich and royals at all levels.

Eager to avoid political challenges from feudal vassals, the Han emperors established a bureaucratic system based upon a meritocratic standard...