Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art

'[...] Contemporary Chinese artists tend to navigate between extremes, either embracing or rejecting a rich classical tradition. Indeed, for Chinese artists, the term "modernity" refers not to a new epoch or aesthetic but to a new nation—modernity inextricably connects politics to art. It is this notion of "total modernity" that forms the foundation of the Chinese avant-garde aesthetic, and of this book.

Gao examines the many ways Chinese artists engaged with this intrinsic total modernity, including the '85 Movement, political pop, cynical realism, apartment art, maximalism, and the museum age, encompassing the emergence of local art museums and organizations as well as such major events as the Shanghai Biennial. He describes the inner logic of the Chinese context while locating the art within the framework of a worldwide avant-garde. He vividly describes the Chinese avant-garde’s embrace of a modernity that unifies politics, aesthetics, and social life, blurring the boundaries between abstraction, conception, and representation. [...]' (excerpt from front flap)

Glossary of key Chinese terms provided.

Access level

Onsite

author

GAO Minglu, 高名潞

publisher

The MIT Press (Cambridge, United States)

Location code

REF.GML

Language

English

Keyword

art history, 85 New Wave, China

Publication/Creation date

2011

No of pages

409

ISBN / ISSN

9780262014946

No of copies

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction

Part One: The Avant-Garde in the Past

Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art

Academicism and the Amateur Avant-Garde in the Post-Cultural Revolution Period (1979-1984)

Part Two: The '85 Movement

The Map of the '85 Avant-Garde Movement

The 'China/Avant-Garde' Exhibition of 1989

Metaphysical Modernity: Rationalist Painting and Current of Life Painting

Chan Meets Dada: Merging Destruction and Tradition in the Avant-Garde Mentality

Metaphor over Meaning: Language Art and Gray Humor

Part Three: The Post-'85 Avant-Garde

Kitsch and Complicity: The Case of Political Pop and Cynical Realism

Apartment Art

Maximalism

Conclusion

Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art

Citation

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