Overview
An-yi Pan’s primary research focus is Chinese art, particularly Chinese Buddhist art and Taiwanese art. In the Buddhist art field, he explores the relationship between images and religious practices. His first book, Painting Faith: Li Gonglin and Northern Song Buddhist Culture, addresses how ancient Chinese literati engaged in Buddhist practices in a Confucian-dominated society. In recent years, An-yi Pan has been curating exhibitions and writing about Taiwanese art. Since 2004 he has curated three exhibitions on contemporary Taiwanese art at the Johnson Museum of Art. Each exhibition has been accompanied by a scholarly exhibition catalogue. He is also a Council member of the Taiwanese Art Association, and Advisory Board member of Art Taiwan magazine published by the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan. His forthcoming book, Embattled Modernity: Postwar Taiwanese Art, examines key issues concerning art historical debates in the two decades immediately after World War II.
An-yi Pan has been an External Fellow at the Humanities Center, National Central University, Taiwan, and Visiting Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He has served on Cornell, national, and international committees, including Executive Committee (East Asia Program, Cornell); Juror, New Curator Competition, National Taiwan University of Arts; Advisory Board, Manuscript Reviewer, Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, Netherlands; and Fulbright National Screening Committee, U.S. Department of State.
Research Focus
- Chinese Painting
- Chinese Sculpture
- Japanese Art in General
- Cross-Cultural Analysis of East Asian Art
- Sinological Interpretation of Chinese Art
- Buddhist Theology and Art
- Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art
Publications
Books and Exhibition Catalogues:
Embattled Modernity: Postwar Taiwanese Art (forthcoming)
Transcending Fragments: Fong Chung-Ray’s Artistic Journey, Asian Art Center, Taipei, 2022
Contemporary Dunhuang: Chang Chen-yu’s New Buddhist Painting, (Chinese-English bilingual publication), Taipei, Artist Publishing Co., 2020 (book)
Tong Yang-tze: Immortal at the River, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, 2020 (exhibition catalogue)
Power, Haunting, and Resilience: Contemporary Art from Taiwan, joint publication, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 2017 (exhibition catalogue)
Boundaries: Contemporary Art from Taiwan, joint publication of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 2014 (exhibition catalogue)
Destiny Intertwined, Tuvalu Pavilion, 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, Venice Biennale, 2013 (exhibition catalogue)
Nature Imagined and Observed - 500 Years of Chinese Painting, exhibition catalogue written in conjunction with the exhibition Nature Imagined and Observed- 500 years of Chinese Painting at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (chief author), Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 2010
Painting Faith: Li Gonglin (1049-1106) and Northern Song Buddhist Culture (Brill, 2007)
Contemporary Taiwanese Art in the Era of Contention (editor and main author, book-length exhibition catalogue; other contributors: Grace Yen, Ch’iung-jui Hsiao), Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2004 (bilingual text in English and Chinese)
Articles:
“Entry on Taiwanese Art,” Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies, Brill (forthcoming).
“Chinese Modern – Liu Kuo-sung and Postwar Taiwan Abstract Art Movements (中國現代—劉國松與台灣戰後抽象藝術),” exhibition catalogue article, Singapore National Gallery, 2022.
Grove Art online entry on the Fifth Moon Painting Group.
“Liu Kuo-sung and the Art and Literary Environment of 1950s and 1960s Taiwan,” in The Liu Kuo-sung Reader, Harvard University Chinese Art Media Lab (forthcoming).
“A Cultural Epicenter in the Geopolitical Periphery: The Rise of Taiwan Modern in the Early 1960s,” in Art and the Modernist Pursuit in Taiwan, University of California Press (forthcoming).
“Leftist and Rightist Art on Taiwan in the First Decade after World War II (戰後十年的左翼與右翼美術)” in The General History of Taiwanese Visual Art (台灣美術通史), Taipei: Juliu Publishing, 2021, pp. 44-50 (Chinese version), pp. 62-72 (English version).
“Kamakura, New York, Taipei: The Modernity of Abstract Expressionism in Postwar Taiwan,” Keynote speech and revised article, in Institutions, Transition, In and Out, A Symposium on Reconstructing Art History in Contemporary Taiwan, National Museum of Taiwan, 2019, pp. 32-62.
“An Advanced Interpretation on Kahayakawa Atsusirou’s ‘Historical Paintings of Taiwan,” Symposium Proceedings of Tainan City Art Museum held in conjunction with the Inaugural Exhibitions: Characteristics and Vicissitudes: Constructing Taiwanese Art, Tainan City Fine Arts Museum, Tainan, Taiwan, 2019, pp. 253-277.
“Aesthetic History of Tainan City, 17th – mid 20th Centuries,” published as part of the inaugural exhibition of Tainan City Art Museum, opened in 2019, pp. 78 -141.
“The Fifth Moon Group: Pioneers of New Chinese Modern Art in Taiwan,” in Orientations, Vol. 49, no. 1 (December, 2017), pp. 77-82.