The Future History Of Contemporary Chinese Art

A revelatory reclaiming of five iconic Chinese artists and their place in art history During the 1980s and 1990s, a group of Chinese artists (Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Sui Jianguo, Zhang Peili, and Lin Tianmiao) ascended to new heights of international renown. Even as their fame increased, they came to be circumscribed by simplistic Western interpretations of their artworks as social and political critiques, a perspective that privileged stories of dissidence over deep engagement with the art itself. Through in-depth case studies of these five artists, Peggy Wang offers a corrective to previous appraisals, demonstrating how their works address fundamental questions about the forms, meanings, and possibilities of art. By the end of the 1980s, Chinese artists were scrutinizing earlier waves of Western influence and turning instead to their own heritage and culture to forge their own future histories. As the national trauma of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre converged with the mounting expansion of the global art world, these artists turned to art as a profoundly generative site for grappling with their place in the world. Wang demonstrates how they consciously and energetically sought to make their own ideas about art and art history visible in contemporary art. Wang’s argument is informed by extensive primary research, including close examination of the artworks, analysis of Chinese language documents and archives, and deeply personal interviews with the artists. Their words uncover layers of meaning previously obscured by the popular and often recycled assessments that many of these works have received until now. Beyond Wang’s reinterpretation of these individual artists, she contributes to an urgent conversation on the future direction of art history: how do we map engagements between art from different parts of the world that are embedded within different art histories? What does it mean for histories of contemporary art—and art history more generally—to be inclusive? The new understandings offered in this book can and should be engaged when considering current hierarchies in histories of Chinese art, the global art world, and the intersections between them.

Chinese art has experienced its most profound metamorphosis since the early 1950s, transforming from humble realism to socialist realism, from revolutionary art to critical realism, then avant-garde movement, and globalized Chinese art. With a hybrid mix of Chinese philosophy, imported but revised Marxist ideology, and western humanities, Chinese artists have created an alternative approach – after a great ideological and aesthetic transition in the 1980s – toward its own contemporaneity though interacting and intertwining with the art of rest of the world. This book will investigate, from the perspective of an activist, critic, and historian who grew up prior to and participated in the great transition, and then researched and taught the subject, the evolution of Chinese art in modern and contemporary times. The volume will be a comprehensive and insightful history of the one of the most sophisticated and unparalleled artistic and cultural phenomena in the modern world.

Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Since the confirmation of Deng Xiaoping’s policy of Opening and Reform in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has undergone a liberalization of culture that has led to the production of numerous forms of avant-garde, experimental, and museum-based art. With a fast-growing international market and a thriving artistic community, contemporary Chinese art is riding a wave of prosperity, though issues of censorship still abound. Shedding light on the current art scene, Paul Gladston’s Contemporary Chinese Art puts China’s recent artistic output into the context of the wider cultural, economic, and political conditions that surround it. Providing a critical mapping of ideas and practices that have shaped the development of Chinese art, Gladston shows how these combine to bind it to the structure of power and state both within and outside of China. Focusing principally on art produced by artists from mainland China—including painting, film, video, photography, and performance—he also discusses art created in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and diasporic communities. Illustrated with 150 images, Contemporary Chinese Art unravels the complexities of politics, artistic practice, and culture in play in China’s art scene.

How contemporary Chinese art is creating “a philosophy of life, a philosophy of politics, and a natural philosophy,” as artist Qiu Zhijie says it must, is explored in this collection of essays by philosophers and art historians from America and China.

This volume is comprised primarily of the contents of Chinese-art.com, an online magazine started in 1997 and brings together images, essays, interviews, rountable discussions, eyewitness accounts and biographies published on the web in 2000. It's timely and diverse "insider" views are those of Chinese art critics living and working in China, but also include scholars outside the China context. To such a broad and diverse compilation of material, professor Wu Hung brings both an "insider" point of view and an international sensibility. His careful editing and organization of the material, along with the six introductory essays he wrote for this volume, make the book understandable and enjoyable to both the art scholar and the art enthusiast.

A unique and visionary generation of young Chinese artists are coming to prominence in the art world - just as China cements its place as the second largest art market on the planet. Building on the new frontiers opened up by the Chinese artists of the late 1980s and 1990s, artists such as Ai Wei Wei who came to the West and became household names, this new generation are provocative, exciting and bold. But what does it mean to be a Chinese artist today? And how can we better understand their work? Here, renowned critic Barbara Pollack presents the first book to tell the story of how these Chinese millennials, fast becoming global art superstars, negotiate their cultural heritage, and what this means for China's impact on the future of global culture. Many young Chinese artists have declared they are "not Chinese, but global" - this book investigates just what that means for China, the art market, and the world. Brand new Art from China is the first collection to showcase the dynamic new art coming from Chinese artists, and features full-colour photos and video stills throughout - with many works being published in book-form for the first time. Featuring an in-depth interview with Zhang Xiaogang, probably the most well-known artist in China itself, whose sombre portraits of Chinese families during the Cultural Revolution sell for as much as $12 million at auction, alongside unparalleled access to the tastemakers of today's art scene, Brand New Art from China is the essential guide to Chinese contemporary art today - its vision, values and aesthetics.

The book presents a range of articles and discussions that offer critical insights into the development of contemporary Chinese art, both within China and internationally. It brings together selected writings, both published and unpublished, by Paul Gladston, one of the foremost international scholars on contemporary Chinese art. The articles are based on extensive first-hand research, much of which was carried out during an extended residence in China between 2005 and 2010. In contrast to many other writers on contemporary Chinese art, Gladston analyses his subject with specific reference to the concerns of critical theory. In his writings he consistently argues for a “polylogic” (multi-voiced) approach to research and analysis grounded in painstaking attention to local, regional and international conditions of artistic production, reception and display.