Fairbank Center

New Perspectives on Chinese Art
An Auspicious Thing: The Bronze Tripod in the Eye of a Diviner
Tao Wang, University College London

Students of early Chinese bronzes often focus on the function of different types of vessels and the iconographic meaning of their decoration and get embroiled in the debates surrounding these issues.  Less attention is paid to the visuality of the bronzes–the way they were viewed and perceived by the people of the time.  Professor Wang will examine a divinatory text in the Zhou Yi (Book of Changes), in which the bronze tripod ding was described and used as a metaphor, and he will highlight the close link between the text and the real objects. He will show that the meaning and symbolisation of ritual bronzes was embedded in the divination system of the Shang and early Zhou period.

Tao Wang  was born in China. He studied at the Yunnan Normal University in Kunming and the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Arts in Beijing before coming to the United Kingdom in 1986.  He obtained his PhD in 1993 from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and in the same year was appointed as lecturer and later senior lecturer in Chinese archaeology at the Department of Art and Archaeology at SOAS. He now holds the position reader in Chinese archaeology and heritage at the University College London. His publications include Chinese Bronzes in the Meiyintang Collections, Exploration into China’s Past, and over 50 academic papers.

Jointly sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Fairbank Center

Location: CGIS South, Belfer Case Study Room (S020), 1730 Cambridge St., Harvard University