Embedded Files
Xin Conan-Wu. Lure of the Supreme Joy: Pedagogy and Environment in the Neo-Confucian Academies of Zhu Xi. Sinica Leidensia 164. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2024.
French edition, Le Désir de la Pure Félicité: Pédagogie et Paysage dans les Académies Néo Confucéennes de Zhu Xi. Paris: Édition Youfeng, forthcoming 2026.
This book presents a radically revisionist argument on Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) Neo-Confucian philosophy of education. Via analysis of unfamiliar landscapes and the poems of the White-Deer Grotto Academy, Yuelu Academy, and Wuyi Retreat, Conan-Wu argues that when praxis speaks for orthodoxy, the eclipsed pedagogue casts a liberal light on the enshrined philosopher.Neo-Confucian senses of the gaze and place engendered Zhu Xi’s natural pedagogy and mapped the environment of his academies. This book cross-examines the textual traces and their innate vision, the physical sites and their transhistorical milieux, the Eight Views and Nine Bends and their afterlives in China and Korea. It unfurls an academy education, mutually reinforced by classical learning and self-cultivation, and sustained by a lure of the Supreme Joy of Confucian sagehood.
Xin Wu. Patricia Johanson and the Re-Invention of Public Environmental Art, 1958-2010. Hardback by Ashgate, 2013; Paperback by Routledge, 2017.
This book addresses the issue of translation between visual arts and landscape design in the 50 more years career of Patricia Johanson, an important artist in the second half of the twentieth century. Examining the artist’s search for an 'art of the real' as a member of the post-World War II New York art world, and how such pursuit has led her from painting and sculpture to public garden and environmental art, it argues for the significance of the process of art creation, challenging the centrality of art objects. An insightful study to confront a crucial question in the history of art through the work of a contemporary artist, it converses with historians, critics and artists alike. Following Johanson's artistic development, from its formation in the 1960s American art scene to the very present day, across the fields of art, architecture, garden, civil engineering and environmental aesthetics, it investigates the process of creation in a transdisciplinary perspective, and reveals a view of art as a domain of exploration of key issues for the contemporary world. The artist's concept of nature is highlighted, and particular impacts of Chinese aesthetics and thought unveiled. Based on an extensive analysis of unpublished private archives, it offers us the first comprehensive scholarly interpretation of Patricia Johanson's oeuvre, including drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, garden proposals, and built and unbuilt projects.
Review:The Chinese landscape historian Professor Xin Wu has researched Johanson’s work for a decade, making a careful, fully documented appraisal of it... [Her] book is a welcome and timely addition to the literature of landscape design. Xin Wu’s premise was to set out the whole portfolio of Johanson’s work and career without applying any critique... But it is left to others to make their judgment. This also was always Jellicoe’s way. ---- Michael Spens, Studio International
Xin Wu. Reconstruction of Modernity: Patricia Johanson's House & Garden Commission. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press / Dumbarton Oaks, 2008.
Patricia Johanson was one of the earliest minimalist painters and a friend of Tony Smith, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankerthaler, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, generation of post-WWII American artists trying to supersede the modernist agenda for the arts set by Clement Greenberg. In 1969, the course of her career was dramatically deflected by an unexpected garden commission from the House & Garden magazine. It resulted in 150 garden proposals (146 of which survived and are presented here) and seven companion essays. Neither these proposals nor the essays have ever been published or exhibited as an entity before this book. The commission reveals an unknown development of the late 1960s New York art world, putting forth a renewal of garden art in defiance of well-known cultural trends of the time: formalism and modernism, earthworks and environmentalism. The House & Garden Commission proposes, beyond a renewal of garden design, a new role for the visual arts in pursuit of the unfinished project of modernity.In 2 volumes, prefaced by Stephen Bann and with a catalogue of 146 original garden proposals interpreted.
Review:It takes courage in a review to describe an intensely scholarly, elegantly written and fastidiously presented publication as 'mind-blowing', but here Xin Wu offers an inspired resurrection of an almost forgotten garden project launched in the mind-blowing 1960s when boundaries to the imagination were unfashionable. ---- Timothy Mowl, Garden History [Journal of the Garden History Society, UK]
Xin Wu, ed. The Realm of Mountain-and-Water: Gardens and Landscapes in Chinese Culture 山水之境: 中國文化中的風景園林. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing 三聯書店, 2015.
Table of Contents00. Introduction (Xin WU) 导言 (吳欣)01. Nature and Ideology in Western Descriptions of the Chinese Garden (Craig CLUNAS) 西方對中國園林描述中的自然與意識形態 (柯律格)02. The Spirit of a Landscape (François JULLIEN) / 山水之神 (朱利安)03. Insights into Chinese Traditional Botanical Knowledge (Georges MÉTAILIÉ) 探析中國傳統植物學知識 (梅泰理)04. Mapping and Transformation (Eugene WANG) 靈異山水 - 從”東漢之圖“到”西域之變“ (汪悅進)05. Archeological Discovery and Study of the Shangyang Palace in the East Capital of Tang (JIANG Bo) 唐東都上阳宫的考古发掘與研究 (姜波)06. The Politics of Gesture in Chinese Gardens (Martin POWERS) 中國園林中的政治幾何學 (包華石)07. Petrophilia and Its Anxiety: Tai-hu Rock in Tang-Song Peotry (Xiaoshan YANG) 石癖及其行成的憂慮: 唐宋詩歌中的太湖石 (楊暁山)08. Landscapes and Gardens of Neo-Confucian Pedagogy at Yuelu Academy (Xin WU) 儒家山水 - 從風景園林到格物致知 (吳欣)09. The Dialogue between the Arts of Chinese Woodblock Prints and Gardens (WANG Yi) 中國古典版畫與中國古典園林藝術的關係 (王毅)10. The Transition in Garden Style in Late-Ming China (Alison HARDIE) 明代晚期中國園林設計的轉型 (夏麗森)11. Grand-view Garden as a Haven for Belles and Blossoms (XIAO Chi) 大觀園 - 美人繁花的庇護所 (蕭馳)12. Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden: Kangxi’s 36 Views of Bishu shanzhuang and Their Journey to the West (Richard STRASSBERG) 一座清代御苑之傳播: 康熙避暑山莊三十六景及其在西方的傳播歷程 (石聽泉)
Xin Wu. The New Art of Landscape: Conversations between Xin Wu and Contemporary Designers 景觀啓示錄: 吳欣當代設計師訪談. Bilingual in Chinese and English. Beijing: China Architecture Publishing 中國建築工業出版社, 2012.
Table of ContentsXin Wu - Restoring Landscape Design as an Art 吳欣 - 復原景觀設計的藝術性 (i-xxi)Conversations between Xin Wu and seven contemporary landscape designers from China, EU and US:1. Kongjian YU - Between Vernacular Landscape and Modernity 俞孔堅 - 鄉土景觀與現代化2. Diana BALMORI - Between Urban Landscape and Natural Beauty 戴安娜 · 巴摩里- 城市景觀與自然美3. Bernard L ASSUS - Between Visual Art and Landscape Poetics 贝尔纳 · 拉素斯 - 視覺藝術與景觀的詩意4. Patricia JOHANSON - Between Public Art and Environment Infrastructure 帕特里夏 · 约翰逊 - 公共藝術與基礎設施5. Erik DHONT - Between Contemporary Aesthetics and European Garden Tradition 埃里克 · 董特 - 当代美学与造园传统6. Maya LIN - Between Art Creation and Form 林璎 - 藝術創作與形式7. Paolo BÜRGI - Between Design and Creative Interpretation 保罗 · 伯吉 - 設計與創造性的詮釋
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse