Former Warden delivers Slade Lectures on 2,500 years of interaction between China & The West
Former Warden Professor Dame Jessica Rawson was this year's Slade Lecturer at Cambridge University's Department of History of Art. Set up in 1869, the Slade Lectures form a central plank in the intellectual life of the Department, enriching and extending the teaching and research of its staff and students. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art has been held by many of the most distinguished historians of art and architecture from around the world, including Anita Brookner, Roger Fry, Nikolaus Pevsner and Ernst Gombrich.
Professor Rawson's lectures, entitled 'Warfare, Beauty and belief: Innovations from the West that Changed China’s Art and Culture, 1500 BC-1000 AD' considered the ways in which China’s art and culture were transformed through contact across the steppe and along the Silk Road:
"Interaction with the border peoples was inevitable and created huge political and military upheavals. Warfare, trade and religious proselytization changed China, bringing with them metallurgy, the chariot, sculpture and stone. But the ancient Chinese adopted these outside contributions in new ways. They made magnificent bronze vessels for offerings to their ancestors, but few fine bronze weapons; they worked on a huge scale in creating chariots as ritual gifts from the king. And the same massive scale was employed for the production of the Terracotta Warriors. Full-sized sculpture in stone and bronze only took off with the introduction of Buddhism across Central Asia from the fourth century AD. And the success of Buddhism was dependent on the foreign rulers of north China. Indeed, even with the reunification of China under the Tang in the seventh century, the imperial house maintained close relations with their neighbours, the Turkish peoples of the steppe, and created a hybrid culture drawn from native Chinese and foreign traditions. As the northern peoples became all the more powerful and overwhelmed China in later centuries, Chinese’s inventions travelled west, above all guns and gunpowder, porcelain and paper, expanding Warfare, Beauty and Belief in Central and Western Asia and in Europe."
Professor Rawson is Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology in the Oxford Centre for Asian Archaeology Art and Culture at the University of Oxford. She was Warden of Merton College from 1994 until 2010. Before moving to Oxford, Professor Rawson worked in the British Museum, where she became Deputy Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in 1976 and Keeper of the Department in 1987.
