The Arts of China (review)

The fifth edition of Michael Sullivan's The Arts of China is an engaging tour de force. Indeed, reviewing this updated, revised and expanded volume is an intimidating task, given its scope. The first edition was published more than 50 years ago, in 1951, as An Introduction to Chinese Art; in this latest version, Sullivan offers a readable summary that takes us from the Neolithic period to the contemporary scene. As he moves us through the dynasties, it is easy to see that his knowledge of the subject is vast. It is no wonder the book is now a classic, and I highly recommend it. That said, I must follow with the confession that this review cannot touch upon all the notations I made as I read, because the nuances of the book would require more space.

Suffice it to say that one of the strong points of Sullivan's approach is that he retains the dynastic framework that he used in earlier volumes. This means he does not separate the history into chapters about painting, sculpture and so on. Nor does he present a thematic survey that carves up the subject to illustrate political, social and economic forces. Rather, understanding that the Chinese people see their history in terms of a succession of dynasties, Sullivan presents their art in a way that provides a Westerner with a comparable sense of Chinese history. Another strong point of this clear, concise and comprehensive treatment is that it includes many line drawings, plans, full-color reproductions and details. As the blurb on the book jacket notes, there are more than 400 illustrations and more than two-thirds of them are in full color. In addition, the design adds to the reading experience by using two columns of equal width. Balancing the sizes of the image and text on the book's pages in this way allows the images and the text to complement one another in a way that strengthens the art-historical tone of the study.

Comparing the fifth edition with my copy of the third edition shows how much improved the book is by the expansion of color reproductions, more up-to-date information and longer captions. While both editions provide a general reader with a solid foundation in Chinese art history, my impression is that this type of survey works better as a textbook than as a tool for self-study. The correspondence between Roman letters and Chinese sounds is somewhat idiosyncratic, and having a professional guide in the classroom would no doubt provide the reader with some background for Sullivan's choices. As I read through the updated fifth edition, I missed some aspects of the third. In particular, I think that Sullivan should have included a note at the beginning of the text explaining why he chose to use the pinyin system of Chinese transliteration, as he explained in the third edition why he was using the Wade-Giles system.

Briefly, Wade-Giles was the main system of transliteration in the English-speaking world throughout most of the 20th century. It was used in several standard reference books and in all books about China published before 1979. The pinyin system was developed by the Chinese government and is now widely accepted. I think many of us know the pinyin forms of familiar terms and names (e.g. the Wade-Giles Tao is Dao in pinyin and Mao Tse-tung is now Mao Zedong, etc.) The larger point is that for less well-known terms and names I found myself quite confused; sometimes it felt is as if there was "different" information in the two books. For example, I was quite taken with the color reproduction in the fifth edition of Ni Zan's The Rongxi Studio, conceived in the Yuan dynasty. In the third edition, this work is credited to Ni Tsan, titled The Jung-hsi Studio and noted as conceived during...