The endgame, and the Qing eclipse1

Presented as an archival text for the Journal of Contemporary Painting, James Elkins’ ‘The endgame, and the Qing eclipse’ is an abridged version of the the final chapter of a book-length study, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong University Press, 2010). Elkins demonstrates the unusual structure of the history of Chinese painting, whereby the Ming decline and Qing eclipse have no real parallels in the West. Yet, as a counter-hypothesis, he argues that Late Ming and Qing artists appear to art history as a form of postmodernism. In itself, this represents a nuanced reading of the temporalities of modern and postmodern periods (which challenges comparative approaches and indeed the fundamental structures of western art history). Crucially, the account provides ways of thinking about how Chinese landscape painting is viewed through the lens of art history, a discipline that Elkins claims is partly, but finally and decisively, western.