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Home / Kristina Kleutghen

Kristina Kleutghen

Kristina Kleutghen

David. W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Chinese Art and Architecture
Degrees: 
Ph.D., Harvard University
E-mail: 
kleutghen@wustl.edu
Phone: 
314-935-4427
Office: 
Kemper 218

Kristina Kleutghen is a specialist in Chinese Art, particularly of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Focusing on early modern, modern, and contemporary Chinese art, her research investigates Sino-foreign interaction, the imperial court, optical devices, and connections to science and mathematics. Her research has been supported by the Blakemore Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Getty Research Institute.

Her first book, Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces, was recently published by University of Washington Press.

Her second book, Lens onto the World: Optical Devices, Art, Science, and Society in China (under advance contract with University of Washington Press), will be the first to study the forgotten relationship between Chinese optical devices and art from the fifteenth through early-twentieth centuries. When the first Chinese treatise on optics appeared in 1847, it was inspired by the wide range of optical devices that had circulated in China for nearly three hundred years. Since these devices were considered more within the realm of art than of science, their presence resulted in a wide range of paintings, prints, and visual culture. These works reveal that the effects of optical devices on vision and visuality arose less from foreignness, as might be expected, than from local culture and social class. 

Website: http://kristinakleutghen.com/

Academia.edu: https://wustl.academia.edu/KristinaKleutghen

Website accompanying Imperial Illusions: http://arthistorypi.org/books/imperial-illusions

Podcast interview on Imperial Illusions: http://files.newbooksnetwork.com/eastasia/130eastasiakleutghen.mp3

COURSES

Art 111: Introduction to Asian Art
Art 146: Beijing and the Forbidden City (Freshman Seminar)
Art 3412: Japanese Art
Art 3415: Early Chinese Art: From Human Sacrifice to the Silk Road
Art 3425: Classical to Contemporary Chinese Art
Art 3442: Tradition and Innovation: Chinese Painting from the 1st to 21st Centuries
Art 3482: The Floating World of Japanese Prints
Art 444: The Forbidden City
Art 4482: Courtesans, Actors, and Travelers: Selected Topics in Japanese Prints
Art 4489: The Three Emperors
Art 4494: East, Meet West: Cross-Cultural Aesthetics in Chinese and Japanese Art
Art 4900.3: Decorative Arts in Early Modern China and Abroad (Independent Study)
Art 4905: Arthur Greenberg Curatorial Fellowship
Art 510: Graduate Seminar: Methods in Art History

BOOKS:

Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in Eighteenth-Century China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015)

Lens onto the World: Optical Devices, Art, Science, and Society (under advance contract, University of Washington Press)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

With S.E. Kile, “Seeing Through Pictures and Poetry: A History of Lenses (1681),” Late Imperial China 38:1 (June 
2017), 47-112. 
 
“Huang Yong Ping and the Power of Zoomorphic Ambiguity,” in The Zoomorphic Imagination in Chinese
 Art, eds. Jerome Silbergeld and Eugene Wang (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016), 401-431. 
 
"'Ethnicity, Empire and ‘Europe:’ Jesuit Art in China During the Papacy of Benedict XIV,” in Benedict XIV
 and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality, eds. Rebecca Messbarger, Philip Gavitt, and
 Christopher M. S. Johns (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 419-438. 
 
“From Science to Art: The Evolution of Linear Perspective in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Art,” in Qing
 Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West, eds. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Ding

 Ning (Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2015), 173-189. “Bringing Art to Life: Giuseppe Castiglione and Scenic Illusion Painting,” in Portrayals from a Brush Divine: A Special Exhibition on the Tricentennial of Giuseppe Castiglione’s Arrival in China (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2015), 324-337.

“Peepboxes, Society, and Visuality in Early Modern China,” Art History 38:4 (September 2015), 762-777.

“Chinese Occidenterie: the Diversity of “Western” Objects in Eighteenth-Century China,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47:2 (January 2014), 117-35.

“Staging Europe: Theatricality and Painting at the Chinese Imperial Court,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 42 (2012), 81-102.

“One or Two, Repictured,” Archives of Asian Art 62 (2012), 25-46.

“通景画与郎世宁遗产 (Scenic Illusion Paintings and the Legacy of Giuseppe Castiglione),” Palace Museum Journal 故宫博物院院刊161 (2012, no. 3), 77-88.

“Heads of State: Looting, Nationalism and Repatriation of the Zodiac Bronzes,” in Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals ed. Susan Delson (New York: Prestel, 2011), 162-83.

“Contemplating Eternity: An Illusionistic Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor’s Heir,” Orientations 42:4 (May 2011), 73-79.

 

 

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