Boasting a history of 7,000 years and counting from Neolithic jade carving to contemporary video installation China may be the world's most "abundantly productive, staggeringly artistic continuous culture," according to the authors of Chinese Art & Culture. In presenting 230 b&w and 128 color illustrations, Robert L. Thorp, Washington University professor of art history and archeology, and Richard Ellis Vinograd (Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits 1600-1900) devote admirable attention to social, political and economic contexts for Chinese work, examining, for example, the imperial ethos detected in an earthenware figure. The book's release coincides with an exhibit of 19th- and 20th-century Chinese painting at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which should help call attention to it. --Amazon.com