Inside the Chinese Contemporary Art Scene

The hottest artists and multimedia art.See Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Yang Fudong and more, presented by Asia Society's Melissa Chiu, interviewed by BigThink.com - where you can find a variety of expert interviews.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• china
• chinese
• asia
• society
• art
• artist
• contemporary
• zhang
• huan
• multimedia
• yang
• fudong
• asian
• museum
• painting
• photography

[insomniacgrace]

Nice,the art that they present is educating and presented well as the culture of there country haves. Art do create awareness to all people I appreciate this kind of video.

[drewlsy]

What is empowering and optimistic about contemporary Chinese art is the fact that China itself has had the opportunity to simmer in it's deluge of fallacy regarding Maoist ideology. The bitterness and refractive impact on the psyches of these 50 yr olds is magnificently rich in catharsis. No other modern nation has had the taste of dueling ideologies on the scale that China has, and with the internet, accelerated 'catch-up' to Euro centricism is a stone's throw away.

[toyfan168]

Many of the younger generation of Chinese artists now enjoy greater freedom of expression, and while many older artists left for art centers around the world in 1989, we should recognize that there are several pioneer artists who left even early (between 1980-1988), "Yunnan School" artists, like Ting Shao Kuang, Jiang Tiefeng, Zhou Ling, He Neng, and He Deguang, whose works made a big splash in the US.

[criulinha]

@bricology I agree about Yue Minjun and the rest of that million dollars worth of crap, but I don't agree on Cai Guoqiang who has fashioned a very good combo of theatricality /Orientalism/ exoticism in order to please the lazy minds (and bodies) of American curators who prefer to have all cultures (or representatives of them) ready made and easily shaped and adapted to the American model of multiculturalism.

He is "China' edited and revisioned for American taste. New CHinoiserie...

[criulinha]

@bricology Yes to all, but what does this say about what YOU consider GOOD in art? You want to cut the cake and eat it, after all: the first group is bad because it imitates the West; Cai Guoqiang is good because he lived in the West. I am afraid you have to choose one view.

And I totally agree 'those' are a joke but the Western art world (= money) is even too hypocritical to say that, because THOSE are worth millions of $. Isn'it?

[bricology]

@criulinha: Cai Guo-Qiuang is "Chinese" in that he was a product of its culture before he was able to form an independent one. He chose to synthesize an individual aesthetic philosophy both as a result of that culture and in opposition to it. In doing so, at least he didn't fall into the trap that Yue Minjun and so many other recent Chinese artist have; adopting Western tropes and stylistic devices, rather than synthesizing something new. No avant-garde can arise out of wholesale appropriation.

[bricology]

@criulinha -- Your criticism of Contemporary art as "eurocentric" is ironic, given (1) that Chinese culture is on a headlong rush to become as Euro-American as it possibly can, and (2) that Chinese contemporary art is likewise fixated upon the Euro-American paradigm.

Despite some fashionable Continental Postmodern nonsense, not all cultures are equal. China has realized that its model of the past 60 years was an epic mistake and is now doing everything it can to catch up to the Euro-Americans.

[criulinha]

What does CONTEMPORARY mean? Does this temporal defintion change according to the geographic and cultural position of the object under consideration? It appears so in Mrs. Chiu's statement that the 'birthday' of Chinese contemporary art is 1979. Because CONTEMPORARY can only be defined according a shallow, cold-war inspired , eurocentric view of the art world. Very 'informative' , indeed....

[criulinha]

@bricology What IS a "CHINESE" artist? And in this respect , is Cai Guoqiang really to be considered 'CHINESE" ? In what sense? Because of the way is called??

[igenevieve]

@bricology I agree.