Art and its Histories: Scholars in Lecture by the Department of Art History, The University of Hong Kong

This lecture introduces one of the most unusual iconic works in Chinese art history. It is a painting that by all counts should not be a “masterpiece.” It is a painting of ghosts (rather than a landscape), it is a handscroll of smaller paintings in uneven sizes mounted together (therefore somewhat ad hoc), and it was made by an artist seeking patrons after years of being under his charismatic teacher’s shadow. It also collected over 160 admiring colophons. So why did this painting garner such attention? Why is Luo Ping’s Ghost Amusement Scroll important? This lecture given by HKU’s Dr. Yeewan Koon in conversation with Orientations Magazine publisher Yifawn Lee looks at how Chinese paintings are mediators of intimate relationships, whether between painters and their audiences or between masters and disciples, and why the strange world of ghosts captured the imagination of an eighteenth-century Chinese art world. 

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