Lost calligraphy or reinvented motif: Chinese pictograms in Western fashion

• Main Author: Zhang, Runfang
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: anthropology, cultural; design and decorative arts; mass communications
• ISBN: 9780612790544; 0612790541

This thesis investigates the complexity of cultural translation of visual language, considering writing systems both a profound shaping force and microcosmic reflection of the central elements of its culture. It focuses on the case of Chinese pictogram in Western everyday fashion; fashion is treated here as a site where the conceptual, aesthetic and cultural dynamics vividly interact with one another. This work probes what tensions are lost and added to the pictograms' cultural meaning in the process of translation, bearing in mind the two different aesthetic philosophies underlining Western and Chinese calligraphies. Seeing the complexity in the change of tensions, the thesis argues that nothing remains "authentic" in cultural translation, but the value of the encounter lies in the possibilities for each culture to reconsider itself in the corrective mirror of the Other.