SESSION: Facing the Mongol Empire: The Role of Art History (FULL DAY – PART 2)
In the vibrant field of Middle Period art history, the study of cultures across Northeast Asia, the region from the Korean peninsula to the edges of the Taklamakan desert, is beginning to stand out. In this area, Kitan/Liao, Tangut/Xia, Jurchen/Jin, Uighur, Chinese/Song, Korean/Goryeo and in the vibrant field of Middle Period art history, the study of cultures across Northeast Asia, the region from the Korean peninsula to the edges of the Taklamakan desert, is beginning to stand out. In this area Kitan/Liao, Tangut/Xia, Jurchen/Jin, Uighur, Chinese/Song, Korean/Goryeo and latterly Mongol/Yuan cultures, among others, co-existed and/or succeeded one another over the Middle Period (10th-14th centuries). This session seeks to centre and correlate the role (or roles) of art historical practices in approaches to this age in two parts, the first ranging from the Kitan period through to the unification of the Mongols by Chinggis Khaan (r. 1206-27) under the Great Mongol State and the second on the varied state and cultural manifestations under the successors of Chinggis. Proposals that bridge the two halves are also welcome.
Suggested areas of enquiry include: 1) Regional and transcultural/transhistorical character — how did the diverse ecologies of NE Asia shape the arts and patterns of artistic production across dynastic and political boundaries? 2) The priority of sources —scholarship on the groups that inhabited this region have historically relied on texts for information: how are these contradicted, or complicated, by objects and visual histories? 3) Buddhism, especially Himalayan and other esoteric strands of doctrine, and its relation to other religions. 4) Hierarchy of media within art history. 5) How nomad polities shaped the roles of women, and women as role models in cultural production and the generation of value systems. 6) The problematic notion of universal culture under a world empire.
Session Convenors:
Eiren Shea, Grinnell College
Shane McCausland, SOAS, University of London
Part 2: Session Speakers:
Bernard O’Kane, American University of Cairo
Architectural Innovation under the Mongols: Contributions of the Ilkhanids, Golden Horde, and Chaghadayids to the Development of Tilework
Before the arrival of the Mongols in Central Asia and Iran the use of tiles for architectural decoration was in its infancy. Only two colours, light-blue and dark-blue, were used sparingly for architectural transitions or highlights. By the middle of the fourteenth century dramatic changes can be seen with the introduction and development of techniques such as sgraffito, tile mosaic, lajvardina, mina’i, banna’i, and carved and glazed terracotta tilework. Their use increased correspondingly, now covering a much greater proportion of buildings, including on occasion whole facades. The combinations of these techniques also resulted in a much greater range of colour effects. Place marks, not previously seen, were also introduced to help with the more complex patterns that craftsmen could design. The development of tilework under these dynasties has mostly been studied in isolation until now. This paper will attempt to synthesize our knowledge of the development in the tilework of these three dynasties to calculate the relative extent of cross-fertilization in their technical and artistic achievements and to evaluate the impact their innovations had subsequently.
Yong Cho, University of California Riverside
Kyŏngch’ŏnsa Pagoda and Architectural Forms of Negotiation between Koryŏ and Yuan
In 1348, a group of Koryŏ (918-1392) political elites with ties to the Yuan Mongol ruling house (1271-1368) commissioned a tall stone pagoda at a major Buddhist monastery near the Koryŏ capital. Known today as the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa Pagoda, this structure boasts unusual visual forms that were unprecedented in the history of architecture in the Korean peninsula. Its lower and upper stories look so different from one another that it looks as if the structure was created by stacking one pagoda on top of another. The lower stories are based on a cruciform plan with projections extending out from the central square; the upper stories are based on a classic square plan. By thinking through this pagoda’s stylistic eclecticism, this presentation argues that the stark juxtaposition of two seemingly incommensurate forms of pagoda, one on top of the other, was, in fact, an architectural strategy of cultural and political negotiation. The appeal of such architectural form seems to have been predicated on its ability to calibrate the visibility of the pagoda to different viewers and to shape the skyline of a Koryŏ-Yuan monastery.
Chen-yuan David Chuang, University of Chicago
Glazes Across Ethnic Boundaries: Jun Ware Altar Vessels, Consumption, and Material Culture in Northern China under Mongol Rule
This paper re-examines a pair of Jun ware altar vases (yilu erben gongqi, “one burner, two vessels”) through the lens of their excavated contexts, repositioning them within the social and funerary landscapes of northern China during the late Jin and early Mongol-Yuan periods. This paper seeks to contribute a new perspective through a regionally grounded analysis. Rather than isolating these pieces as products of technical virtuosity at the Jun kilns, the study situates them within broader transformations in aesthetic taste, ritual practice, and consumption across an increasingly multiethnic society. Archaeological evidence from the Jun kiln sites attests to a flourishing industry; yet when the social identities of Jun ware users are considered, a more intricate geography emerges. The distribution of such altar vessels across Hebei, Shanxi, Beijing, and Inner Mongolia—regions where many Mongol-Yuan tombs have since been looted—reveals networks of northern elites, particularly cross-ethnic upper classes that included imperial Daoists patronised by the Jin court, regional religious leaders under Mongol rule, Mongol aristocrats, and northern Han hereditary families. Central to my argument is that Jun ware vessels with kiln-transmutation glazes, prized for their iridescent and mutable surfaces, resonated with contemporary conceptions of sacred transformation. As ritual commodities that circulated between temple altars and tomb chambers, these objects embodied shifting ideals of devotion, legitimacy, and cosmopolitan taste.
Yuxin Chen, University of Cambridge
Stelae, Grottoes, and the Rise of Translocal in Mongol-ruled Hangzhou, 1276-1366
Between Khubilai Khan’s invasion in 1276 and Zhu Yuanzhang’s in 1366, Hangzhou, once the Southern Song capital, was ruled by the Mongol regime and subsumed under a global empire. This paper investigates the entanglement between “the local” and “the global” in Hangzhou during the Yuan dynasty, and traces the flow of global influences within the local cityscape. By studying extant stone relics from the period–the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist grottoes at Feilaifeng and the Muslim tomb stelae from Jujingyuan–, this paper brings attention to the cultural and religious cosmopolitanism of Mongol-ruled Hangzhou and, at the same time, argues that the very cosmopolitanism is brittle, contested, and difficult in its maintenance Though only a lake apart, the stones at Feilaifeng and Jujingyuan have never been considered in conjunction in a scholarly context. This paper brings them together as tangible visual archives. Though immobile in themselves, the stone remains have different forms of mobilities inscribed within. Specifically, the Feilaifeng grottoes represent the Mongol court’s “translocalist strategy”: the mobilization of people, cultures, and religions from what lies outside “China proper” to mediate the Sino-hegemony. The Jujingyuan tombstones, on the other hand, are an example not of state-coordinated translocal ties butof spontaneous, communal translocal connections, as they attest to how the city’s Muslim population carved out their own space, both physical and spiritual. Ultimately, this paper aims to illustrate the “rise of the translocal’ in Mongol-ruled Hangzhou, advocating “translocality” as a lens to reinterrogate Yuan historiography beyond the common “native v. alien” rhetoric.