The Art Of Women In Contemporary China Both Sides Now

This book presents in eight chapters the work of over 75 Chinese female artists, both pictorial and poetic. Their art is viewed within a framework of eight themes. The broad topics explored include the body; life; the representation of the experience of being a woman; home and the world; a view of children and other women; clothes; social conscience; fantasy; and abstraction—nonfigurative work and its viability as a medium to express the spiritual. These themes provide several lenses through which to enjoy and compare these artists’ approaches and outputs. The volume is unique in its inclusion of poetry by contemporary women whose voices articulate so many of the same concerns as the visual artists. In China, poetry has always been the prime form of artistic expression, and it remains so today. Looking at this poetry affords us a different means of appreciating the art of women in contemporary society.

This book contains analysis of different domains of contemporary art in China seen through the lens of the epistemological changes described in China Pluperfect I: Epistemology of Past and Outside in Chinese Art. It first looks at the concept of “ink art,” describing how it meant different things to different people in the former colony and how these different meanings came to determine certain institutional choices made at the beginning of the 21st century. The following chapters are dedicated to issues related to the urban and rural contexts for art creation in Mainland China and Hong Kong. One chapter observes the ups and downs of the representations of cities in the history of the People’s Republic of China and how they have defined a certain idea of culture. Another looks at how Chinese cities have been exceptional centers of art creations over the last thirty to forty years through the example of Shenzhen where a vibrant art scene, albeit closely connected to Hong Kong which has become a major art hub in the last two decades, has developed. The following is dedicated to the changing fortunes of art making in the countryside, observing how institutions in the Mainland and in Hong Kong have supported these practices very differently. Frank Vigneron finally considers how the different speeds of globalization, slow in the past and fast today, have determined some of the issues of past and outside in the present, particularly in the context of socially engaged art in both the Mainland and Hong Kong.

Gendered Bodies introduces readers to women's visual art in contemporary China by examining how the visual process of gendering reshapes understandings of historiography, sexuality, pain, and space. When artists take the body as the subject of female experience and the medium of aesthetic experiment, they reveal a wealth of noncanonical approaches to art. The insertion of women's narratives into Chinese art history rewrites a historiography that has denied legitimacy to the woman artist. The gendering of sexuality reveals that the female body incites pleasure in women themselves, reversing the dynamic from woman as desired object to woman as desiring subject. The gendering of pain demonstrates that for those haunted by the sociopolitical past, the body can articulate traumatic memories and psychological torment. The gendering of space transforms the female body into an emblem of landscape devastation, remaps ruin aesthetics, and extends the politics of gender identity into cyberspace and virtual reality. The work presents a critical review of women's art in contemporary China in relation to art traditions, classical and contemporary. Inscribing the female body into art generates not only visual experimentation, but also interaction between local art/cultural production and global perception. While artists may seek inspiration and exhibition space abroad, they often reject the (Western) label "feminist artist." An extensive analysis of artworks and artists—both well- and little-known—provides readers with discursively persuasive and visually provocative evidence. Gendered Bodies follows an interdisciplinary approach that general readers as well as scholars will find inspired and inspiring.

This book presents in eight chapters the work of over 75 Chinese female artists, both pictorial and poetic. Their art is viewed within a framework of eight themes. The broad topics explored include the body; life; the representation of the experience of being a woman; home and the world; a view of children and other women; clothes; social conscience; fantasy; and abstractionâ "nonfigurative work and its viability as a medium to express the spiritual. These themes provide several lenses through which to enjoy and compare these artistsâ (TM) approaches and outputs. The volume is unique in its inclusion of poetry by contemporary women whose voices articulate so many of the same concerns as the visual artists. In China, poetry has always been the prime form of artistic expression, and it remains so today. Looking at this poetry affords us a different means of appreciating the art of women in contemporary society.

The first monograph devoted to women artists of the Republican period, The Golden Key recovers the history of a groundbreaking yet forgotten generation and demonstrates that women were integral to the development of modern Chinese art.

This book examines the rising global prominence of China’s art market throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To understand the far-reaching impact of Chinese art on global consumption, this book traces the shift from regional markets to global markets. It asks how the Chinese art market re-emerged from its politicized past, innovated within the private economy boom, remained resilient despite the global financial crisis, and flourished on the global stage despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, it argues that cultural entrepreneurship enabled Chinese art professionals to reinvent their space and to participate in the global artworld.

While contemporary Chinese art has arrived as a critical subject in art history and found market success, current art criticism has yet to fully engage with art made by Chinese women, especially from the perspective of gender politics. In "(En)gendering: Chinese Women's Art in the Making," contributors--including artists, art historians, critics, and curators--consider how the work of contemporary women artists has generated new approaches to and perspectives on the Chinese art canon. The issue begins by laying a historical framework for the potentials and problems regarding the interpretation of Chinese women's art, tracing its evolution throughout a century of Chinese history. Next, the issue considers the spatial notion of boundary crossing, addressing how travel across national and theoretical boundaries affects the perception of artworks, and explores the misgivings of Chinese women artists about participating in a global exhibition system in which their artwork stands for "China" and "Women." The issue concludes by looking at the idea of (en)gendering as a revision of women's art prompting artists and the viewers of women's artworks to challenge the conventional gaze that has dominated our ways of seeing. The issue considers the work of Chinese artists such as Lin Tianmiao, Lei Yan, Yin Xiuzhen, Cui Xiuwen, Yu Hong, and Liu Manwen. Contributors. Julia F. Andrews, Lara C. W. Blanchard, Meiling Cheng, Shuqin Cui, Elise David, Linda Chui-han Lai, Tao Yongbai, Peggy Wang, Sasha Su-Ling Welland