Chinese Art

Speaker: Ding Ning
Discussant: Rashmi Poddar

November 22 and 23, 2004 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Drawing from his teaching, research, and writing, Ding Ning will examine the contours of Chinese Art in its political, sociological, art historical, and contemporary contexts.

Ding Ning (Ph.D.) Art Theory, Beijing Normal University, 1988) is Professor of Art History and Theory and Vice Dean at the School of Arts, Peking University. His research interests include Art Theory, Cultural Studies, Museology, and Chinese Art. His publications (among others) are Dimensions of Reception (1990); Psychology of Visual Art (1994); Dimension of Duration: Toward a Philosophy of Art History (1997); Depth of Art (1999); Spectrum of Images: Toward a Cultural Dimension of Visual Art (2005); and Heart-touching Western Art (2008); Translations (among others): Toward a Psychology of Art, by Rudolf Arnheim, and Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, by David Carrier. He has lectured widely and won several major fellowships internationally.

Rashmi Poddar is an art historian and her path-breaking methodology of viewing and understanding Indian classical art has opened up new theories in art history and research.  In 1997, she was awarded the prestigious Mellon Fellowship by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for her project on Hari-Hara. In 1998, the Department of Philosophy started a division on Aesthetics and appointed her as its Honorary Director. In 1999, she curated a one-year Post Graduate Diploma course in Indian Aesthetics, which she also directed for eight academic years. She is also on the board of several prestigious associations across the country and is actively involved in the promotion of arts in India.