The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271-1368)

The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271-1368)
Yong Cho

Summary

The Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) was a period of major cultural transformation in the imperial court of China, when the Mongols, the tent-dwelling pastoral nomadic peoples of the North Asian steppe, became rulers of a world empire. In addition to bringing significant changes in the social, political, commercial, and religious orders in China, the Mongols also completely transformed the realm of visual and material culture. A new hierarchy of artistic forms emerged, in which woven images in silk reigned supreme. The Mongol rulers also proposed new theorizations of picture making to explain why woven images were more realistic than paintings or embroideries. Organized around a work of Vajrabhairava mandala silk tapestry (ca. 1329), each chapter of this dissertation addresses a specific aspect of the Mongol impact, from the issues of art taxonomy and hierarchy (chapter 2) to the tradition of ancestral image worship (chapter 3), the function of mandalas as tantric portraits (chapter 4), and the understanding of silk tapestry as a technology of embodiment (chapter 5).

The driving force behind the changes that happened in the Chinese court under Mongol rule was twofold. First, the unprecedented diversity of artists working for the court—for instance, Nepalese iconographers from the Himalayas, Uighur and Tangut weavers from Central Asia, gold-thread makers from West Asia, and painters from South China—fostered immense artistic creativity. Second, the Mongol imperial family had a deep preference for pictures and icons made of animal fibers due to their native material culture of pastoral nomadic lifeways, which gave them continuous access to a surplus of animal furs.

By demonstrating the major impact of Mongol rule in the arts, this study provides new perspectives on the study of premodern East and Central Asian visual culture, an approach that considers the contribution of the North Asian pastoral nomads in creating the multicultural world of art in premodern China and beyond. This approach thus challenges the common assumption that Mongols—and more broadly, pastoral nomads of North Asia—lacked a sophisticated native art tradition. To describe the visual and material culture of the medieval Mongols, the categories of art commonly used in the field today—such as “textiles” or “paintings”—may not be precise enough; a new set of art taxonomies is necessary to accurately describe their visual and material culture. It also elucidates important networks of artistic exchange across East and Central Asia, some of which had previously been little explored. For instance, the visual and material culture that flourished in the Tangut state of Western Xia (1038-1227) in Central Asia was of paramount importance for the development of the technologies of creating embodied images in the Mongol court.

Author

Yong Cho

PhD defended at

History of Art, Yale University

Specialisation

Humanities

Region

Inter-Asia
Central Asia
East Asia
Mongolia
China
South Asia
Tibet
Nepal

Theme

Archaeology
Art and Culture
Diasporas and Migration
Globalisation
History
Religion
Society