SBMA Online

Thursday, October 19, 2023
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Mary Craig Auditorium

Hui-shu Lee
Professor of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles

Professor Lee provides a deep and contextualized reading of the centerpiece of the exhibition—Bada Shanren’s Flowers on a River of 1697—a symphonic landscape of lotus and attached poetic ballad that unfurls in a scroll over 42 feet in length. Flowers on a River counts as one of the most important works by the secretive Bada, thoughtfully worked out over a period of months in his late years. Not only is the scroll’s primary subject of lotus and landscape among the most personal and enduring for Bada, the melodic verses written in his distinctive calligraphy prove equally significant. Cryptic and densely layered with allusions to past and present, Bada’s ballad reminiscences on a personal history defined by sorrow and alienation that simmers just under the painting’s visual appeal.

Hui-shu Lee received her doctorate degree from Yale University in 1994 after first studying at National Taiwan University and working in the National Palace Museum. Her field of specialization is Chinese painting and visual culture in the pre-modern era, with a particular focus on gender issues. She also works extensively on representations of place, cultural mapping, and gardens.

Sponsored by Friends of Asian Art