A Pure and Remote View:
Visualizing Early Chinese Landscape Painting
A Pure and Remote View:
Visualizing Early Chinese Landscape Painting
a lecture series by Professor James Cahill
produced by Chatterbox Films
This videotaped and moving image lecture series conceived by Professor James Cahill is a legacy of a life’s work in the history of the visual arts of China. With production started in 2009 and extending into the winter of 2010/2011, the goal is the creation of approximately 34 hours of multimedia lecture-style presentations. Seven draft lectures, each of one to two hours duration, are now available on this web site.
Professor Cahill wishes to thank the Tang Research Foundation and the University of California at Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies for their early support to undertake this large and arduous project.
Composed of short, videotaped lecture introductions and over 1,200 detailed high-resolution images of selected art treasures originating primarily from mainland China, this series was written and narrated entirely by Professor Cahill. Professional film production software was used to animate details from selected images for pedagogical clarity and to deliver the series electronically in the highest commercially-available high definition television format. The lectures contain chapter markers identifying the major works of art discussed, and artists’ names are transliterated using the pinyin system. Study guides for each lecture are being prepared and will be released to accompany this series, which is intended solely to further the personal and professional educational pursuits of its viewers and is in no way to be used for any commercial purpose.
Professor Cahill wishes also to thank many teachers and colleagues, and the many museums, universities--most of all University of California at Berkeley--and other institutions that have supported him over the decades of his career. The Institute of East Asian Studies at Berkeley has broken new ground in the field of education by taking on research support, the financial administration of this project, and the multimedia publication and distribution of these lectures as part of their program. Special thanks in particular are due to the Tang Research Foundation and its founder, for encouraging Professor Cahill to undertake this series.
Viewable on separate pages of this web site are the lectures currently in near final draft format. These are presented here to solicit feedback from friends and professionals within the art community. These versions are not yet intended for wide release.
Following is the current list of 7 full lectures uploaded to this site plus a full 1080P HD test segment. Each lecture appears on its own page and each page is linked from the titles or thumbnail images below as well as from the menu bar at the top of this page:
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Lecture 1: Preview and Introduction Lecture 2: Han Dynasty Pictorial Art Lecture 3: Six Dynasties Painting and Pictorial Design
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Lecture 4A: Tan Dynasty Figure Painting Lecture 4B: Tang Dynasty Landscape Painting
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Lecture 5: Five Dynasties I - New Openings of Space Lecture 6: Five Dynasties II - The Early Landscape Masters
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•Lectures 7 to 12 are expected in the spring and summer of 2011.
This series is being produced in full High Definition (1920 x 1080 pixels, and also called “1080P” or a “2K” digital cinema image) using the highest resolution slide scans of images of original and reproduction art which Professor Cahill and many other Chinese art history scholars have collected since the middle of the 20th century. Most of the source material was available or could be scanned to 15 megapixels, and thus could be enlarged using multimedia presentation technology to expose important details without losing any picture clarity. Digital enhancement of much of the imagery was also applied to render the material more visible and color-accurate for video display on computer monitors, television, or LCD projectors.
With the exceptions of the two short test samples in 1080P HD, this lecture resource is presented here on the web in 720P widescreen High Definition format (1280 x 720 pixels) and highly compressed to facilitate streaming or download over the web. These are being streamed from YouTube to maximize compatibility for all users. Please note that even with a fast broadband connection, watching this material will require a waiting period before the start of each lecture and possibly during play as the video pauses to allow the movie file to download ahead of the current viewing point. Please send us an email if you encounter problems viewing any of the lectures. We may be able to help.
Please contact Managing Editor of Publications Kate Chouta at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies, Professor James Cahill, or Chatterbox Productions to find out how to obtain High Definition (1920 by 1080 pixel) versions of these lectures on Blu-Ray Disks or in any other electronic video file format of use to you or your institution. Movie file sizes range from 6 gigabytes per lecture for a 1-1-1-sampled, H264-compressed MPEG-4 format to 30 gigabytes for a 4-2-2 ProRes MPEG-4 or Blu-Ray encoded file. All materials are being released at cost and under Creative Commons licenses. They are intended in no way for any commercial purpose, nor to represent or take the place of a university course in the subjects addressed. All intellectual property exhibited in these lectures belongs to Professor James Cahill, is specifically cleared for non-commercial use only, or is covered under the US legal principle of Fair Use for non-commercial educational purposes only. Please see this page for additional details regarding your legal rights and duties vis-a-vis materials on this site.
For more information on Professor James Cahill and his research, visit his professional website here.
