Talk with Professor Kathleen Ryor

In support of New York City’s effort to contain the spread of COVID-19 and for the health and well-being of our visitors and staff, The Drawing Center is postponing all planned public programs through April 12, 2020.

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Presented in conjunction with Guo Fengyi: To See from a Distance, Professor Kathleen Ryor will join us for an exploratory talk about the complex and fascinating relationships between traditional Chinese notions of the cosmos and the human body, medicine, and divination found in Guo's mesmerizing drawings. Guo Fengyi (b. 1942, Xi'an) was a self-taught artist who practiced the ancient Chinese wellness technique of qigong to heal her chronic arthritis pain. During her qigong meditations, Guo drew what she envisioned, creating intricate ink drawings on subjects ranging from cosmology and Chinese mythology to traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy.

Kathleen M. Ryor is the Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Art History at Carleton College, where she teaches East Asian art history. She holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and has published articles in a number of scholarly journals and edited volumes and served for five years as the editor of the journal, Ming Studies. Prof. Ryor’s research has focused on the artist Xu Wei (1521-93), military patronage of the arts, late Zhe school painting, Buddhist ink painting by secular artists and lay practitioners, as well as the relationship of painting to garden culture, food, and medicine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the topic of her current project.