Professor J P Park
June and Simon Li Professor in the History of Art and Fellow of Lincoln College
Department of History of Art
Although my primary research focuses on early modern Chinese and Korean art, I have extensively researched and published on a much wider spectrum of art historical topics, including print culture, cartography, literary criticism, and post-globalism in contemporary East Asian art. I have authored the following three books: A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700-1850) (University of Washington Press, 2018); Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China (University of Washington Press, 2012); and Keeping It Real!: Korean Artists in the Age of Multi-Media Representation (Workroom, 2012) as well as numerous articles on East Asian art and literature featured in major field journals such as Art Bulletin, Artibus Asiae, Archives of Asian Art, Orientations, and Third Text. I am currently completing a new book project, Reinventing Art History: Forgery and Counterforgery in Early Modern Chinese Art.
Research Interests
- Early Modern Chinese Visual Culture
- Korean Art history
- Post-Globalization in Contemporary Art
Publications
The Forger's Creed Reinventing Art History in Early Modern China
In 1634, scholar-official Zhang Taijie (b. ca. 1588) published a book titled A Record of Treasured Paintings (C. Baohui lu), presenting an extensive catalogue of a purportedly vast painting collection he claimed to have built. However, the entire book is Zhang's meticulously crafted forgery; he even forged paintings to match the documentation, and profited from trading them. Furthermore, the book intriguingly mirrors unfounded art-historical claims of its time. Prominent figures like Dong Qichang (1555–1636) made entirely fabricated arguments to assert legitimate lineages in Chinese art, designed to create a fictionalized history shaped by preferred beliefs rather than reality.