ABSTRACT
Sculpture is a tricky subject. It is both a self-evident category of the beaux arts definition of the fine arts and a historical category encompassing a long span of art production stretching back to Classical Greece and beyond. Sculpture is both a modern subject and a historical, premodern object. The slippage or tension between the two is negotiated by familiar forms of modern display in exhibitions and museums and by the homogenizing action of the art market. This chapter narrates a history of Chinese sculpture from the point of view of China, where there are carved and modeled figural objects. Creating a history of something (sculpture) that exists only in the imagination of Europeans (and those who think as Europeans) is a challenge. Antiquarian studies were practiced by refined scholars, and few trekked into the remote countryside to seek out the original objects from which rubbings were taken. The rubbings were valued more than the original stone engravings.
