Table of contents : 1. Introduction: A Disciplinary Field Prologue Approach Problematics Histories Modalities Processes
2. Prehistories Prehistory and Modernism The Chinese and the Jesuits Dutch Images and Eighteenth-Century Japan Etching in Nineteenth-Century Japan Glass Painting in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Knowledge of European Drawing Technique and Oil Painting in Asian Contexts before the 1850s
3. The Transfer Models of Transfer Modalities of Transfer Types of Culture Mediating Transfer
4. Formation of the Neotraditional The Notion of Tradition and its Modern Inapplicability Towards a Definition of the Neotraditional Criteria of Modernity and the Neotraditional Neotraditionalist Painting in India Some Recent Thai Neotraditional Painting
5. The Aristocrats Types of Artists Hyakutake Kaneyuki Ravi Varma Comparison of Aristocratic Artists Two other Artists in Japan
6. The Plebeians The Plebeian Artist The Reprographic Context Image Genealogies The Workshop Imported Equipment and Technicians New Popular Visual Discourse Photography as Technique Photography as Style Popular Illustration and 'Fine Art' Prints
7. The Professional Artist The Professional Historical Perspectives on some Major Art Schools in Asia The Functions of Art Schools The Artisan Atelier and its Modern Successors The Regime of the Professional The Integrated System The Social Domain of Certification Beyond the Art World
8. Exhibition: The Salon and the Establishment Exhibited Spectacles Types of Artist Group Structure and Exhibition Fine Art Societies and Other Exhibition Venues in India The Salon Structure Salons and Society Towards a Tripartite Notion of Art Society The Scale of Social Time
9. The Avant-Garde Definition of Avant-Garde The Concept of the Avant-Garde Towards an Asian Avant-Garde The Avant-Garde as an Institutional Position Defining Associated Types of Avant-Garde Defining Functions of Avant-Garde for the Artist Avant-Garde Art as Criticism
10. Nationalism and Allegories of the State Thematic Approaches Asian Nationalism and Modern Asian Art Some Subjects in Pictorial Representation of the National Allegory and National Expression in Art
11. Cycles of Integration and Autonomy The Orientalismic Miasma Types of Relationships between the Local and the International Features of Relationships between the Local and the International Features across Specifically Asian Discourses Critical Functional Values in Modernity Style as Discourse or as a Marker of Discourse
12. The Contemporary The Contemporary as a Site in the Absence of History Definitions of the Contemporary in the Late 1980s Discourse Abandoned or Circumvented Postmodernity or the Modern Extended Formulations of Taste Gatekeeping International Sites and Spectacles Historical Forgetting and Remembering The Heritage of the Past in the Present Discourse of Modern Asian Art
Postscript, List for Colour Plates + Black and White Images, Reproduction acknowledgements, List of interviews, Bibliography, Index