Today’s book is On the Edge of the Millennium: New Art from China, by Michael Goedhuis. Softcover published 2002 by Goedhuis Contemporary. 47 pages; full-page color photos. Cover shows detail of ‘Interior with Mosquitoes and Moths’ by Guo Wei.
This is an exhibition catalogue for 2002 show at the gallery’s New York and London locations. Full-page color photos and a short essay are provided for each of the artists: Zhou Tiehai, Zhou Chunya, Shen Xiaotong, Geng Jianyi, Mao Yan, Zhao Nengzhi, Gu Gan, Guo Jin, Guo Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Ding Yi, Hong Hao, Hai Bo, Zhao Bandi, Yu Hong, Wang Jinsong, Wang Dongling, and Qiu Deshu.
The well-written Introduction by Michael Goedhuis briefly discusses the history of art in China in the past hundred years:
Chinese art of the twentieth century developed falteringly between the dominant influences of European aesthetics at the beginning of the century and Western, mostly American, modernism at the end. At the same time it incorporated an ambivalent relationship with the powerful, albeit fading, legacy of its historic culture. – p. 2.
Goedhuis describes how the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the political control of the Cultural Revolution relentlessly impeded the development of free artistic expression. By the 1980s the cultural situation began to change for the better, and artists began a period of intense experimentation with, and exploration of, modern Western art. Now the artists have become more self-assured and less deferential to Western art and the Western art market:
So, although the artistic environment is extremely complex in China today, with striking regional differences and many different styles, some more traditional, others more Western, jostling for prominence, a new completely Chinese sensibility has taken hold in the last few years. It has enabled Chinese artists, for the first time in a century, to face up to international criteria with a quiet self-confidence — no longer the idiosyncratic chroniclers of a desperate and mysterious passage in history but men and women willing and able to compete on their own terms as artists of the world. – p. 5.
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Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:
The Paintings of Wang Jinsong – Goedhuis Contemporary, New York, 20th November – 3rd December, 2002
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Tags: art, exhibitions, Chinese, contemporary art, China, artists, catalogues
