Art of China

Given its vastness, there’s much that even China doesn’t know about its own art. Historian Andrew Graham-Dixon rewinds to the start: visiting the tomb of the first emperor with its eerie Terracotta Army and marvelling at a collection of alien-like bronze masks created millennia ago. A rare glimpse at the spectacular recent discoveries that are redefining our understanding of China and its origins.

The period from the 10th to the 15th centuries – from the Song to the Ming dynasties – was the golden age of art in China, producing spectacular landscapes. Art expert Andrew Graham-Dixon discovers an emperor so in love with art and beauty that he neglected to rule, and some scholarly artists who fled the Mongol invasion to immerse themselves in nature, painting and calligraphy.

Andrew Graham-Dixon charts the glorious rise and calamitous fall of China’s last dynasty. Its rulers were so entranced by Western art that they failed to grasp the rise of Western dominance until it was too late. This age of crisis led to bloody revolution and rebirth. After Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square, does its new art reveal another side to the modern China we think we know?