Juliane Noth shows how art and discussions about the future of ink painting were linked to the reshaping of the country, leading to the creation of a uniquely modern Chinese landscape imagery. Noth offers a new understanding of these experiments by studying them as transmedial practice, at once shaped by and integral to the modern global art world.

Modern Chinese painting embodies the constant renewal and reinvigorations of Chinese civilization amidst rebellions, reforms, and revolutions, even if the process may appear confusing and bewildering. It also demonstrates the persistence of tradition and limits of continuities and changes in modern Chinese cluture. Most significantly, it compels us to ask several important questions in the study of modern Chinese culture: How extensively can cultural tradition be re-interpreted before it is subverted? At what point is creative re-invention an act of betrayal of tradition? How has selective borrowing from Chinese tradition and foreign cultrue enabled modern Chinese artists to sustain themselves in the modern world? By focusing on the art of Huang Pin-hung (1865-1955), particularly his late work, this book attempts to provide some answers to these questions.

Tradition and Transformation commemorates Chu-Tsing Li's achievements as an educator and scholar with essays by friends and former students, marking his long teaching career at the University of Kansas and, in particular, his contribution to the field of Asian studies. The topics of the essays range from early Chinese art history to contemporary Chinese art. When Chu-tsing Li arrived at the University of Kansas in 1966, it was with a mission: to establish the University as the leader in the Midwest, and eventually one of the important centers in the United States, for the study of Asian art. By the end of his teaching career in 1990, the program in Asian art had produced specialists in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art and had trained and inspired numerous doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to become established scholars in their own right. In 1978 Dr. Li became the first Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas.

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.

This book examines three overarching themes: Chinese modernity's (sometimes ambivalent) relationship to tradition at the start of the twentieth century, the processes of economic reform started in the 1980s and their importance to both the eradication and rescue of traditional practices, and the ideological issue of cosmopolitanism and how it frames the older academic generation's attitudes to globalisation. It is important to grasp the importance of these points as they have been an important part of the discourse surrounding contemporary Chinese visual culture. As readers progress through this book, it will become clear that the debates surrounding visual culture are not purely based on aesthetics--an understanding of the ideological issues surrounding the appearance of things as well as an understanding of the social circumstances that result in the making of traditional artifacts are as important as the way a traditional object may look. Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture is an important book for all collections dealing with Asian studies, art, popular culture, and interdisciplinary studies.

"Modern Chinese Art explores the interactions of the two traditions, Chinese and Western, as Chinese painters and sculptors have attempted to address the social and cultural effects of modernism. Accompanied by high-quality reproductions of original art works, the text treats the works of Chinese artists - whether using traditional media or adopting media and techniques imported from the West - from the late nineteenth century through to the present day. At once a survey of the most influential Chinese visual artists of the century and a provocative exploration of modernity's influences. Modern Chinese Art will appeal equally to readers just discovering this rich artistic world and to those who have already developed an interest in Chinese and Western modern art."--BOOK JACKET.

The pursuit of antiquity was important for scholarly artists in constructing their knowledge of history and cultural identity in late imperial China. By examining versatile trends within paintings in modern China, this book questions the extent to which historical relics have been used to represent the ethnic identity of modern Chinese art. In doing so, this book asks: did the antiquarian movements ultimately serve as a deliberate tool for re-writing Chinese art history in modern China? In searching for the public meaning of inventive private collecting activity, Appropriating Antiquity in Modern Chinese Painting draws on various modes of artistic creation to address how the use of antiquities in early 20th-century Chinese art both produced and reinforced the imaginative links between ancient civilization and modern lives in the late Qing dynasty. Further exploring how these social and cultural transformations were related to the artistic exchanges happening at the time between China, Japan and the West, the book successfully analyses how modernity was translated and appropriated at the turn of the 20th century, throughout Asia and further afield.