Jason Kuo

Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, Chinese Art, Art History and Archaeology
School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

(301) 405-1499
jck@umd.edu

4221 Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building
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Ph.D., , University of Michigan

Asia
Critical Theory
Film
Gender
Global Modernism
Modern and Contemporary
Race/Ethnicity
Visual Culture

Jason C. Kuo is Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Core Faculty in Cinema and Media Studies, and Affiliate Professor in Asian American Studies, at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has taught at the National Taiwan University, Williams College, and Yale University. He was a Fellow at the Freer Gallery, a Research Associate at the University Art Museum (UC Berkeley), a Stoddard Fellow at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center (Harvard University), and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has received grants from the J. D. Rockefeller III Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Taipei in 2001–2.

He is the author of Wang Yuanqi de shanshuihua yishu [Wang Yuanqi’s Art of Landscape Painting] (1981), Long tiandi yu xingnei [Trapping Heaven and Earth in the Cage of Form] (1986), The Austere Landscape: The Paintings of Hung-jen (1992), Yishushi yu yishu piping de tanshuo [Rethinking Art History and Art Criticism] (1996), Art and Cultural Politics in Postwar Taiwan (2000), Yishushi yu yishu piping de shijian [Practicing Art History and Art Criticism] (2002), Transforming Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting: Huang Pin-hung’s Late Work (2004), Chinese Ink Painting Now (2010), The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), The Poet’s Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo
Ch’ing (2016), and Huang Yao: Paintings of Poetic Ideas (Shiyitu) (2019). His co-authored book The Art of Huang Binhong (with Claire Roberts and Britta Erickson), volume 4 in the Modern Ink Series, is forthcoming from the University of Hawaii Press.

He has curated national and international exhibitions with accompanying catalogs such as Innovation within Tradition: The Painting of Huang Pin-hung (1989), Word as Image: The Art of Chinese Seal Engraving (1992), Born of Earth and Fire: Chinese Ceramics from the Scheinman Collection (1992), Heirs to a Great Tradition: Modern Chinese Paintings from the Tsien-hsiang-chai Collection (1993), The Helen D. Ling Collection of Chinese Ceramics (1995), Double Beauty: Qing Dynasty Couplets from the Lechangzai Xuan Collection (with Peter Sturman) (2003), The Inner Landscape: The Films and Paintings of Gao Xingjian (2013), and Lo Ch’ing: A Contemporary Chinese Poet-Painter (2018).

His edited books include Dangdai Taiwan huihua wenxuan, 1945-1990 [Essays on Painting in Taiwan, 1945-1990] (1991), Taiwan shijue wenhua [Visual Culture in Taiwan] (1995), Discovering Chinese Painting (2006), Visual Culture in Shanghai: 1850s-1930s (2007), Perspectives on Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting (2008), Stones from Other Mountains: Chinese Painting Studies in Postwar America (2009), Zhongguo yishu zhi tezhi (2012), Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted (2013), Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies: New Perspectives (2020).

His writings have appeared in a broad spectrum of publications, including Art Journal, Asian Culture Quarterly, Chinese Culture Quarterly, Chinese Studies, National Palace Museum Bulletin, National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, Orientations, China Quarterly, China Review International, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Asian and African
Studies, and Ars Orientalis. He has been the evaluator of manuscripts for academic publishers such as University of Washington Press, Duke University Press, Mayfield Publishing, Prentice-Hall, University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, University of California Press, University of Hawaii Press, Stanford University Press, Leuven
University Press (Belgium), Bloomsbury (UK), Brill (Leiden), International institute for Asian Studies (Leiden), and Routledge (UK), and for such journals as Religions, The Senses and Society, Imago Musicae (US), Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (US), Acta Universitatis Carolinae-Orientalia Pragensia (Prague), Far Eastern History (Australia), Art
Journal (US), Art History (UK), Art Bulletin (US), Journal of Art Historiography (UK), Journal of Royal Asiatic Society of Britain and Ireland (UK), Frontiers of History in China (China), National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Twentieth-Century China, Modern China: An International Journal of History and Social Science (US), Journal of Curatorial Studies (UK), Ming Qing Yanjiu (Italy), Philosophy East and West (US), Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

He has received an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, two Stoddard Fellowships in Asian Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, two fellowships from the J. D. Rockefeller III Fund, and many other scholastic honors. In 1991–92, he received the Lilly Fellowship for teaching excellence at the University of Maryland. In 1992–93 he organized and directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College Teachers on “The Art of Imperial China.” From 1993 to 1998, he undertook the study of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century art of Shanghai, a research project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation that combined the work of six scholars from China and six from the United States. He directed the Summer Institute of Connoisseurship in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting from
2001 to 2003, and organized the conference on Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America in 2018, all funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. In 2011, he delivered “Beauty and Happiness: Chinese Perspective” in the Darwin College Lectures series, Cambridge University; the lecture was revised and published by Cambridge University Press. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and the Editorial Board of the book series Philosophy of Film, published by Brill (Leiden and Boston).

Dates: Thursday, February 1, 2018 - 12:00

The exhibition, The Poet's Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch'ing, curated by UMD professor Jason Kuo, brings 30 artworks to the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, UMBC for the artist's first show in the US in ten years. Representing 4 decades of the artist's work, the selection ranges from his smaller, poetic compositions of the late 1960s all the way to his monumental, post-modern landscapes of 2015. Working in the millennia-old tradition of Chinese ink art, Lo's paintings include familiar landscape forms of the genre, such as mountains, clouds and river scenes, but he updates this hallowed pictorial language with his own idiosyncratic vocabulary - one that includes an array of modern symbols like airplanes, icons, asphalt and skyscrapers - and aerial views impossible in ancient times.

Dates: Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - 12:00 - Friday, December 20, 2013 - 12:00

Born in 1940, in Jiangxi province in eastern China, Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Gao's interest in theater, writing, and all-things-creative was instilled at an early age by his mother, an amateur actress. He began painting at age ten after his uncle gave him a notebook for his birthday. Mr. Gao describes it as: “just white pages, no grid and no lines,” and that it was in this book where he first began writing and drawing simultaneously. Throughout the course of Gao Xingjian's prolific career, he has had nearly thirty international exhibitions of his ink paintings and, also, illustrates all of the covers of his books.

Dates: Saturday, October 15, 2022 - 12:00
Funding Agency:

Mozhai Foundation

Huang Binhong (1865-1955), a key twentieth-century artist and art historian, produced distinctive floral works and the rare figure painting but focused intently on landscapes. Influenced by early masters, he also studied nature directly. Near the end of his life, despite seriously compromised eyesight, he used rich and dark “burnt” ink to create sublime masterpieces that bridge representation and abstraction. Modern Ink: The Art of Huang Binhong will demonstrate how nature, art historical erudition, a finely tuned compositional sense, and an appreciation for rich and even tonality—derived from epigraphic rubbings—come together in this consummate painter’s late, great landscapes. It will also examine his work in other genres as well as the role of his extraordinary vision as a major force behind the persistence of traditional values in contemporary Chinese ink art.

The book is the fourth volume in the book series Modern Ink.

Dates: Friday, January 1, 2021 - 12:00

In recent years, we have mourned the deaths of many of the most prominent scholars in Chinese calligraphy and painting working in the United States. Many other scholars have retired. It is time for us to celebrate their scholarship and the American contribution to the study of Chinese calligraphy and painting. The present volume examines critically the historiography of the field of Chinese calligraphy and painting in Postwar America, to assess its achievements, and to explore how various practices in the field have been affected by the personal backgrounds of its scholars and by the constraints of its institutions (such as universities, museums, private and public funding bodies).

Praise
"Historiographical studies, personal reminiscences, and autobiographical accounts by eight leading scholars of Chinese art history present a vivid picture of how formative figures in the field shaped American understanding of Chinese art. These accounts of what was accomplished in the decades after WWII, accompanied by suggestions for the future, are invaluable readings for students and scholars alike." Julia F. Andrews, Professor of Art History at The Ohio State University; author of Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China and co-author (with Kuiyi Shen) of The Art of Modern China.

"This remarkable collection of essays by outstanding authorities celebrates some of the influential personalities who have shaped the field of Chinese art. They give a kaleidoscopic view of the diverse ways in which knowledge of Chinese art is acquired and transmitted." Alfreda Murck, author of Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle art of Dissent, and co-editor (with Wen C Fong) of Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting.

"Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America: New Perspectives presents a collection of eight unique essays by experts in the field. It examines the trajectory of academic research on Chinese art history in the United States, which in recent years has become the center of the field. The book offers an opportunity to engage with the latest scholarship on Chinese art and discover how it arrived at its current state. The wide-ranging and insightful essays include historiographies of art historical research, veteran art historians' vivid memories of firsthand research experiences, biographical and scholarly investigations of major players in the field, and the systematic analysis of path-breaking explorations conducted by U.S. scholars. In reading, we are reminded how closely Chinese art history is connected to our own time and place. The book liberates the history of Chinese art from hackneyed narratives anchored solely in historical past and geographical confines, while providing a compelling account of how the history of art history has itself become a new avenue of academic pursuit." J. P. Park is the June and Simon Li Associate Professor in the History of Art and Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford; author of Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China and A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Choson Korea (1700-1850).

Dates: Tuesday, January 1, 2019 - 12:00

Huang Yao (1917-1987) was a member of the Chinese Diaspora who lived in Malaysia and who worked with the traditional Chinese art forms of poetry, calligraphy, and painting. This verbal-visual representation was characteristic of artists who painted for "themselves and like-minded friends," not dependent on commissions or signing contracts as is more often the case in western art. Huang Yao's attachment to this traditional Chinese art form is fascinating, especially as the artist was a member of the minority elite Chinese population in Malaysia, partaking of this traditional culture over and against the cultural pressures exerted by the majority native population. Students in the Seminars in Honors program at UMD have taken advantage of the research and insights in the bilingual book in which over 100 paintings are discussed. Not only are the students exposed to the work of Huang Yao, but they are receiving an immersion in the various artistic forms on which Huang Yao drew and practiced (poetry, ink painting, calligraphy). The capstone project of their immersive semester is to curate an ideal exhibition of the artist's work, populating one of two existing virtual Sketchup models of art spaces on campus (University of Maryland Art Gallery and Stamp Gallery) with a selection of the artist's works from the book.

Dates: Tuesday, January 1, 2019 - 12:00

A catalog to accompany an exhibition at the Michael Goedhuis Gallery, London.

Dates: Friday, January 1, 2016 - 12:00

Lo Ch'ing is one of China's foremost contemporary poet-painters. Despite the differences in their circumstances, many contemporary Chinese painters share one common trait: they have been stimulated by contact with contemporary Western art, but they did not merely imitate it; instead, they have rediscovered the abstract and expressionistic possibilities in their own tradition. It is in this sense that they are heirs to the great tradition of Chinese painting. Through their synthesis of the theories, techniques and styles of traditional literati painting in their own work, they were able to achieve innovation that enriched the tradition. These artists exemplify one of the best ways to be contemporary Chinese artist. Lo Ch'ing has internalized such conflicting state of tradition and modernity (or even post-modernity, if you will) in his work. The 'Chinese tradition' takes a not so subtle turn in the Taiwanese environment. Indeed, Taiwan was, incidentally, the most curious and embracing place for matters of experimental nature, particularly during late 1970's to 1980's when Lo Ch'ing rose to fame. The rise of industrialization, post-industrialization, and curious issue of Taiwan's cultural identity created a nurturing and controversial ground for creative talents. Industrialization and post-industrialization are subjects of Lo Ch'ing's work. Certainly, there is an oddity in Lo Ch'ing's depiction of alien saucers and floating rocks and mountains, yet Lo Ch'ing's work presents a fresh curiosity that had not been explored in the practice of in painting precisely for that reason. Scholars often used the phrase 'reinvention of the Chinese landscape' to describe and define Lo Ch'ing's work and his motivation behind it, and it's not entirely correct. To put it in correct historical term, however, it was not the artist who industrialized the landscape, not to mention one can easily argue that the urban landscape of Taiwan is one that is drastically different than landscapes in China. Lo Ch'ing's work has a heightened sense of awareness in its presentation of any subject in this matter, and that Lo Ch'ing's work is very conscious of the environment that its content was derived from. Urbanity, interestingly enough, would be an idea that is in opposition to the tradition of Chinese literati landscape painting, for it means the destruction of nature.

Dates: Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 12:00

The monograph is a study of the paintings by Gao Xingjian who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000 and was the first Chinese writer to receive the prize. He is a naturalized French citizen and lives in Paris. His style of ink painting belongs to the great Chinese literati tradition of xieyi (literally “writing the idea”); this style allows him to create subtle, intuitive settings and characters that move in the limits between figurative and abstract art, in a way that has been done by many of the great masters in Chinese art history. His paintings explore the expressive possibilities of ink and washes; the nuanced light and dark shadings, subtle washes, textures, and volumes in his paintings are both dramatic and refreshing.

Dates: Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 12:00

In the past two decades, contemporary Chinese art and film have attracted a great deal of media and academic attention in the West, and scholars have adopted a variety of approaches in Chinese film and visual studies. The present volume focuses on the uses and status of theory originating in non-Chinese places in the creation, curating, narration, and criticism of contemporary Chinese visual culture (broadly defined to include traditional media in the visual arts as well as cinema, installation, video, etc.). Contributors reflect on the written and, even more interestingly, the unwritten assumptions on the part of artists, critics, historians, and curators in applying or resisting Western theories.The essays in the present volume demonstrate clearly that Western theory can be useful in explicating Chinese text, as long as it is applied judiciously; the essays, taken as a whole, also suggest that cultural exchange is never a matter of one-way street. Historically, ideas from traditional Chinese aesthetics have also traveled to the West, and it is a challenge to examine what travels and what does not, as well as what makes such travel possible or impossible. The present volume thus provides us an opportunity to rethink travels of theories and texts across cultures, languages, disciplines, and media.

Dates: Friday, January 1, 2010 - 12:00

China's brush-and-ink traditions remain vital in contemporary Chinese art; the genre is continually under renewal by successive generations of artists. The first book-length survey in English on recent trends in this discipline, Chinese Ink Painting Now reflects the recent dissemination of Chinese art and the explosion of interest in this work in the West. Nearly 60 artists are discussed here, including leading figures of postwar modernism such as Liu Kuo-sung; “New Literati” artists like Li Jin and other figurative painters; calligraphers such as Gu Gan; New Wave figures and conceptual artists including Xu Bing, Wenda Gu and Qiu Zhijie; and landscape artists whose work ranges from the traditional—Li Huayi, Fang Jun and Yuan Jai—to the abstract, such as Jia Youfu and Qiu Deshu. There are colorful women-warriors by New York feminist Fay Ku, monochromes by Nobel literature laureate Gao Xingjian and social commentary by the likes of Yang Jiechang, Li Jin and Wei Qingji. Chinese Ink Painting Now fills a significant gap in English-language books on contemporary Chinese art, and is an essential addition to the library of anyone following Asian art trends of the past 30 years. In addition to highly informative textual materials, the book features more than 170 images drawn from the world's leading institutional and private collections.

Dates: Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:00

The book has grown out of material presented at the Summer Institute of Connoisseurship of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting at the University of Maryland, funded by a generous three-year grant ($150,000) from the Henry Luce Foundation. The Institute was held from 2001 to 2003. It was attended by scholars from Harvard University, Princeton University, The Ohio State University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, as well as the Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The institute was established to provide intensive training in connoisseurship through firsthand experience with works of art in the Washington, DC area. The goal of the institute was to promote the study both of original works of art and of the fundamental problems in the connoisseurship of Chinese calligraphy and painting, and to enhance the quality of art-historical research and teaching. All essays in the book were either presented or discussed extensively at the institute.

Dates: Monday, January 1, 2007 - 12:00

The book provides us a point of entry into the nexus of relationships that structured the encounter between China and the West as experienced by the treaty-port Chinese in their everyday life. Exploring such relationships gives us a better sense of the ultimate significance of Shanghai’s rise as China’s dominant metropolitan center. This book will appeal not only to art historians, but also to students of history, gender studies, women’s studies, and culture studies who are interested in modern China as well as questions of art patronage, nationalism, colonialism, visual culture, and representation of women. The book was based on material produced through a project supported by two generous grants ($125,000) from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Wed, 04/20/2022 - 20:00

Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting: Histories, Borders, and Values: An International Virtual Symposium

Nan Zhong joins a host of emerging and established scholars of Chinese contemporary ink painting in an international symposium

Jason Kuo

Education

Research Expertise

Creative

Lo Ch'ing: A Contemporary Chinese Ink Painter

Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch'ing.

The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian

An exhibition of works by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Gao Xingjian Art Gallery at the University of Maryland.

Publications

Modern Ink: The Art of Huang Binhong

A master of contemporary Chinese ink painting and his impact considered

Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America

The book has grown out of papers presented at a conference held in 2018 at UMD (supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation).

Huang Yao: Paintings of Poetic Ideas (Shiyitu).

Selections from the Huang Yao Foundation Collection

Lo Ch'ing

A catalog to accompany an exhibition at the Michael Goedhuis Gallery, London.

The Poet's Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch'ing

A monograph on Lo Ch'ing, one of China's foremost contemporary poet-painters.

The Inner Landscape: The Paintings of Gao Xingjian

A study of the paintings by Gao Xingjian who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000 and was the first Chinese writer to receive the prize

Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: Theory Applied and Resisted

This volume focuses on the uses and status of theory originating in non-Chinese places in the creation, curating, narration, and criticism of contemporary Chinese visual culture, broadly defined.

Chinese Ink Painting Now

The first book-length survey in English on recent trends in the discipline, this text reflects the recent dissemination of Chinese art and the explosion of interest in this work in the West.

Perspectives on Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting

A collection of essays presented at the Summer Institute of Connoisseurship of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting at the University of Maryland.

Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s–1930s

A study of formal and informal meanings of Haipai (“Shanghai School” or “Shanghai Style”), as seen through the paintings of the Shanghai school as well as other media of visual representation.

Related Events

Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting: Histories, Borders, and Values: An International Virtual Symposium