This page was created by Nathaniel Isaacson.  The last update was by Kandra Polatis.

Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

The Aesthetics of Devlopment - Hybrid Styles

What differences do you notice in the illustrations below? How do the artists deal with depth? How do they "construct" space in terms of depicting right angles, the sides of buildings, and other objects that might be only partially visible from a single perspective? Do certain objects appear more "Chinese"? What techniques do you imagine were used to produce these on a lithographic plate? 



As you can see, the artists contributing to Dianshizhai huabao employed a variety of techniques, from photo reproductions, to birds-eye-view angles, to use of shifting perspective to allow us to get a better view of crowds. In  the case of the street scene above (that is identified as New York), it is clear that the artists knew how to construct an image with a single vanishing point, while in the image of the interior of a room in Vietnam, they used parallel lines to flatten the image. Laikwan Pang has observed that this combination of artistic styles used results in a striking visual contrast: “natural elements like trees, mountains, and rivers are often depicted in the traditional Chinese style, whereas modern items like urban buildings and modern transportation devices are drawn with rigid lines and solid surfaces.” (Pang 44) 

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