Heping Liu

Associate Professor of Art

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 283-3371
Email:
hliu@wellesley.edu
Department
Art
Art History
East Asian Studies

Asian art historian and specialist in Chinese painting of the Song dynasty (960-1279).

Heping Liu
Can you hear it?
The sound of silence
in nature
in words
in images
What does it mean?
The ancient philosopher says—
the virtuous finds delight
in mountains
the wise finds delight
in the waters
Do you hear it?
The sound of silence
like a raindrop
falling
into the sea

My research focuses on the intersections of art, literature, environment, science and technology. It has been recognized with a number of awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.

In addition to a team-taught introduction to the history of art, I offer eight other courses: Asian Art and Architecture; Japanese Art and Architecture; Chinese Art and Architecture; Chinese Painting: Theories, Principles and Practices; 20th Century Chinese Art; Poetic Painting in China, Korea and Japan (seminar); the Landscape Painting of China, Korea and Japan (seminar); and the Song Imperial Painting Academy (seminar). One of my most gratifying experiences is to make students experience works of art first-hand through object-viewing sessions, hands-on workshops, class visits to the Davis Museum, and field trips to major museums in the Boston-New York area.
My selected scholarly publications are available at: https://wellesley.academia.edu/HepingLiu

Education

  • B.A., Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages
  • M.A., Southern Methodist University
  • M.A., Yale University
  • M.Phil, Yale University
  • Ph.D., Yale University

Current and upcoming courses

Japanese Art and Architecture

ARTH249

This course is a survey of the rich visual arts of Japan from the Neolithic period to the turn of the twentieth century with emphasis on architecture, sculpture, painting, ceramics, and ukiyoe. It examines Japan's close ties to India, China, and Korea and explores the development of a distinct Japanese artistic style and national identity. Special attention is given to the sociopolitical forces, cultural exchanges, religious thoughts, intellectual discourses, and commercial activities that shaped the representation and expression of these arts.

  • Seminar: Poetic Painting in China, Korea, and Japan

    ARTH346

    Poetic painting is a conspicuous visual phenomenon in East Asian art that at its best is technically superlative and deeply moving. This seminar investigates the development of this lyric mode of painting first in China and then in Korea and Japan from the eighth century to the twentieth through the practices of scholar-officials, emperors and empresses, masters in and outside of the Imperial Painting Academy, literati artists, and modern intellectuals. Literary ideals and artistic skills, tradition and creativity, patronage and identity, censorship and freedom of expression, and other tensions between paintings and poetry/poetry theories will be examined.