Jiehua, a unique and significant genre in traditional Chinese painting, relies on tools like rulers to represent architectural details and structures accurately. Xia Yong, a professional artist from late Yuan Jiangnan, achieved notable success in ruled-line painting. Although he adhered to literati conventions by inscribing prose and poems on his works, his contributions have been largely overlooked by both traditional literati and modern scholars. This lecture focuses on a case study of Xia’s jiehua, analyzing why two of his paintings incorporate both Su Zhe’s rhapsody on the Yellow Pavilion and the man-on-crane image, two contradictory clues reflecting distinct themes. By examining these text-image tensions, this lecture explores the following topics: the transformation of architecture into painting, technical innovations in Yuan jiehua, the interplay of text and image in jiehua, and the socio-political influences on the Yuan jiehua tradition.

Leqi Yu is an assistant professor at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her research focuses on traditional Chinese art and archaeology, as well as cross-cultural art history. She received her BA in philosophy from Peking University, her MA in the history of art from Williams College and her PhD in East Asian languages and civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. She also held a Smithsonian Institution history of art postdoctoral fellowship at the Freer Gallery of Art. Yu’s monograph Painting Architecture: Jiehua in Yuan China, 1271-1368 (HKU Press, 2022) is the first comprehensive study of Yuan architectural paintings. Currently, she is primarily engaged in archaeological excavations and research at the Yecheng site.

This lecture is co-organized by Global China Studies, and the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai.

The lecture will be delivered in Chinese with English slides.