Art, Vision, and Science in China

3 units

After China and Europe began sustained contact, the introduction of Western science, math, and technology often affected Chinese art more than anything else. New optical devices and ways of visually understanding the world produced a range of positive and negative responses. Often expressed in art, these works demonstrate how new ideas affected Chinese conceptions of vision, looking, cognition, and visuality. Covering the seventeenth through mid-twentieth centuries, this course discovers how Chinese art became entwined with vision and modern science, covering prints, paintings, objects, and photographs across medicine, astronomy, cartography, optics, and mathematics. Prerequisite: L01-111, one course in Art History or Asian Studies, or permission of instructor.