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Awards
About the Author
Jason C. Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His numerous books, authored or edited, include among others: Transforming Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting: Huang Pin-hung’s Late Work (2004), Chinese Ink Painting Now (2010), The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch’ing (2016), Huang Yao: Paintings of Poetic Ideas (Shiyitu) (2019), and Modern Ink: The Art of Huang Binhong (with Britta Erickson and Claire Roberts, 2023), Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted (2013), and Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America (2020). His writings have appeared in a broad spectrum of publications.
TRANSFIGURATIONS: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy and Ink Painting
Jason C. KuoNew Academia Publishing, 2026
474 pages, 243 illustrations
ISBN 979-8-9991798-2-1 hardcover
See an excerpt from the book.
For BULK ORDERS, order directly from New Academia Publishing.
Queries: orders@newacademia.com
About the Author
Jason C. Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. His numerous books, authored or edited, include among others: Transforming Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting: Huang Pin-hung’s Late Work (2004), Chinese Ink Painting Now (2010), The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch’ing (2016), Huang Yao: Paintings of Poetic Ideas (Shiyitu) (2019), and Modern Ink: The Art of Huang Binhong (with Britta Erickson and Claire Roberts, 2023), Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted (2013), and Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America (2020). His writings have appeared in a broad spectrum of publications.
TRANSFIGURATIONS: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy and Ink Painting
Transfigurations: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy and Ink Painting, illustrated with 240 artworks in a spectrum of styles, illuminates the multiple contexts in which Chinese calligraphy and ink painting were created and circulated. This book brings readers to reevaluate the complex intertwining of the political, the historical, and the individual in modern and contemporary Chinese art history.
Praise
“Professor Kuo is one of the most important interpreters of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. In this rigorously argued and lavishly illustrated volume, he makes a persuasive case for considering ink painting and calligraphy related to China’s classical cultural traditions as a vital contribution not just to the past but also to the present. A vital supplement to current debates on multipolar contemporaneity that should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the diversified global development of art and visual culture in the twenty-first century.” —Paul Gladston, Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney; author of Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History
“In this incisive study, Kuo dismantles facile comparisons between Chinese and Western expressive art, grounding calligraphy and ink painting instead in Daoist, Chan, and Neo-Confucian aesthetics. He shows how disciplined mastery of technique and formal principles (such as the dynamic interplay of solid and void) generates the art’s distinctive expressive power across historical and modern-contemporary contexts. Richly illustrated and clearly written, the book is an indispensable guide to the philosophical depth and enduring vitality of Chinese ink art.” —Aida Yuen Wong, Nathan Cummings and Robert B. and Beatrice C. Mayer Professor of Fine Arts and East Asian Studies and Head of the Division of the Creative Arts at Brandeis University; author of Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of National-Style Painting in Modern China and The Other Kang Youwei: Calligrapher, Art Activist, and Aesthetic Reformer in Modern China