Abstract
This paper examines the Orientalist revival of the Romantic tradition reflected in the German scholarship on East Asian art history in the Weimar Republic. I argue that the emphasis on the autonomy of East Asian art resonated with the anticlassical tendency of Romanticism. Furthermore, a search for Chinese cultural superiority inevitably led to the Orientalist idealization of Ancient China and the mystification of seemingly “irrational” elements in Buddhism. Subsequently, based on a nihilist reading of the Buddhist elements in East Asian art, German art historians offered an alternative way to search for metaphysical meanings of art.
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