China can boast a history of art lasting 5,000 years and embracing a huge diversity of images and objects - jade tablets, painted silk handscrolls and fans, ink and lacquer painting, porcelain-ware, sculptures, and calligraphy. They range in scale from the vast 'terracotta army' with its 7,000or so life-size figures, to the exquisitely delicate writing of fourth-century masters such as Wang Xizhin and his teacher, 'Lady Wei'. But this rich tradition has not, until now, been fully appreciated in the West where scholars have focused their attention on sculpture, downplaying art more highlyprized by the Chinese themselves such as calligraphy. Art in China marks a breakthrough in the study of the subject. Drawing on recent innovative scholarship and on newly-accessible studies in China itself Craig Clunas surveys the full spectrum of the visual arts in China. He ranges from the Neolithic period to the art scene of the 1980s and 1990s,examining art in a variety of contexts as it has been designed for tombs, commissioned by rulers, displayed in temples, created for the men and women of the educated ilite, and bought and sold in the marketplace. Many of the objects illustrated in this book have previously been known only to a fewspecialists, and will be totally new to a general audience.

Takes an in-depth look at the period between the 1950s and 1970s, focusing on the formation of a new visual culture and how it was given priority over artistic traditions such as ink painting. This was part of a broader national program to modernize China, and it had a great impact on artists and their work.

The Chinese Art Book is a beautifully packaged, authoritative, and unprecedented overview of Chinese art from its earliest dynasties to the contemporary generation of artists enlivening today's art world. 300 works represent every form of Chinese visual art, including painting, calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics, figurines, jade, bronze, gold and silver, photography, video, installation, and performance art. Full of surprises for readers of all levels, The Chinese Art Book breaks new ground by pairing works that speak to one another in unexpected ways, enlightening historical, stylistic and cultural connections. Concise descriptive essays place each work in context, while cross-references lead the reader on a fascinating journey through Chinese art history. The Chinese Art Book features an introductory essay by Colin Mackenzie, Senior Curator of Chinese Art at the Nelson-Akins Museum of Art, along with an accessible summary of Chinese political and cultural history, a comprehensive glossary defining technical terms, and an illustrated timeline.

A redefinition of contemporary Chinese art from the last forty years in the context of unprecedented cultural, political, and urban transformation, written by an authority on the subject. Contemporary Chinese art is a subject of sustained and growing significance in present-day culture across the globe. This new volume in the World of Art series reframes Chinese art since the end of China’s Cultural Revolution more than four decades ago, placing it in the context of the nation’s unprecedented cultural, political, and urban transformation. Based on original research by writer, curator, and leading scholar in the field of contemporary Chinese art, Jiang Jiehong, this volume explores the area through firsthand materials and in-depth interviews with more than thirty artists. Providing the most up-to-date understanding of contemporary Chinese art, Jiang includes a variety of media, ranging from painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography to installation, video, performance, and participatory art. Featuring over 150 color images of artworks by more than fifty internationally renowned Chinese artists, including Ai Weiwei and Zhang Peili, as well as emerging artists, such as Zhao Zhao, The Art of Contemporary China presents a wide variety of practices through curatorial discussions and images of original installation views and historical art events. What emerges are revelations on art, and new insights into contemporary China. Fulfilling a need for an accessible, affordable introduction to contemporary Chinese art, this volume offers a concise but far-reaching survey of the movement.

"The first publication to explore Philadelphia Museum of Art's wide-ranging collection of Chinese art, offering an introduction to general readers and serving as a valuable resource for future research and scholarship. This catalogue of one hundred highlights, drawn from a collection of more than seven thousand objects spanning more than four thousand years, will be both a sumptuous visual record of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's most notable Chinese works and an informative and valuable reference for those interested in Chinese art. The objects have been selected to show not only the strengths of the collection, but also important and distinctive examples of Chinese art in different mediums. They are also intended to bring together the museum's Chinese collection, which is presently housed in such disparate departments as Chinese export art, costume and textiles, Sino-Tibetan art, and contemporary art--representing sculpture, ceramics, furniture, architectural interiors, textiles, and paintings"--

China—Art—Modernity provides a critical introduction to modern and contemporary Chinese art as a whole. It illuminates what is distinctive and significant about the rich range of art created during the tumultuous period of Chinese history from the end of Imperial rule to the present day. The story of Chinese art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is shown to be deeply intertwined with that of the country’s broader socio-political development, with art serving both as a tool for the creation of a new national culture and as a means for critiquing the forms that culture has taken. The book’s approach is inclusive. In addition to treating art within the Chinese Mainland itself during the Republican and Communist eras, for instance, it also looks at the art of colonial Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Similarly, it gives equal prominence to artists employing tools and idioms of indigenous Chinese origin and those who engage with international styles and contemporary media. In this way it writes China into the global story of modern art as a whole at a moment in intellectual history when Western-centred stories of modern and contemporary culture are finally being recognized as parochial and inadequate. Assuming no previous background knowledge of Chinese history and culture, this concise yet comprehensive and richly-illustrated book will appeal to those who already have an established interest in modern Chinese art and those for whom this is a novel topic. It will be of particular value to students of Chinese art or modern art in general, but it is also for those in the wider reading public with a curiosity about modern China. At a time when that country has become a major actor on the world stage in all sorts of ways, accessible sources of information concerning its modern visual culture are nevertheless surprisingly scarce. As a consequence, a fully nuanced picture of China’s place in the modern world remains elusive. China—Art—Modernity is a timely remedy for that situation. ‘Here is a book that offers a comprehensive account of the dizzying transformations of Chinese art and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Breaking free of conventional dichotomies between traditional and modern, Chinese and Western that have hobbled earlier studies, Clarke’s highly original book is exactly what I would assign my own students. Anyone eager to understand developments in China within the global history of modern art should read this book.’ —Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University ‘Clarke’s book presents a critically astute mapping of the arts of modern and contemporary China. It highlights the significance of urban and industrial contexts, migration, diasporas and the margins of the mainland, while imaginatively seeking to inscribe its subject into the broader story of modern art. A timely and reliable intervention—and indispensable for the student and non-specialist reader.’ —Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London

An introduction to a millennium's worth of Chinese paintings features 400 classical works by more than 240 artists that represent their different historical periods, in a volume that offers insight into how Chinese art uniquely reflects cultural perspectives and the natural world.