faculty

peter sturman, associate professor (chair)

curriculum vitae

specialization

Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Early to Modern, intersections of texts, theories, and images

office

Arts 1234F

phone

805 893 8060

B.A. Stanford University

M.A., Ph.D. Yale University

Peter Sturman received his M.A. (1981) and Ph.D. (1989) from the Department of Art History, Yale University, specializing in Chinese painting and calligraphy. His dissertation on the transitional Song-dynasty scholar-official painter and calligrapher Mi Youren (1074-1151) established his work as integrally related to the foundation of Song literati art. This was followed by a book on Mi Youren’s father, Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China (Yale University Press, 1997), which explores the art of one of China’s most famous calligraphers in the context of his period and sets it into an emerging framework of a theory of style in Chinese art.

Sturman’s research extends back to Han dynasty mortuary objects and forward to 20th century Chinese modernist art. Among his more substantial articles are “Cranes above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong” (Ars Orientalis XX, 1990), “The Donkey Rider as Icon: Li Cheng and Early Chinese Landscape Painting” (Artibus Asiae LV, 1995), “Confronting Dynastic Change: Painting and Mongol Reunification of North and South China” (RES 35, 1999), and “Song Loyalist Calligraphy in the Early Years of the Yuan Dynasty” (The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, 19/4, 2002). He has also written articles on Northern Song calligraphy and issues of expression and self-presentation.

He co-edited an exhibition catalogue on Qing dynasty calligraphy couplets titled Double Beauty (2003), which was primarily authored by UCSB graduate students in Chinese art history. He is currently working on a book on Northern Song literati theory and practice of painting titled Painting and the Historical Mind in Song Dynasty China. Other current interests include Han dynasty clerical script and the evolution of calligraphy as a consciously practiced art leading to the 4th century and the milieu of Wang Xizhi, the falling flowers theme in early 15th century Suzhou, and the 20th century modernist landscape painter Wucius Wong (Wang Wuxie).