Page 105 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Realities of Life after

Death: Constructing a

Posthumous World in

Funerary Art

"Realities of life after death," from the Wu Hung

Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished
Service Professor in Chinese Art History,
University of Chicago

perspective of art history, means represen-

tations of life inside a tomb. In China the

emergence of such representations coin-

cided with a powerful artistic movement

that reinvented Chinese art: during the

Eastern Zhou period (770-256 bce),

—sacrificial bronzes the privileged form

of traditional ritual art of the Xia, Shang,

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