“Chinese Art: Modern Expressions” is a book comprised of eight essays. The book was produced to accompany the exhibition Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. Chinese works of the nineteenth and twentieth century illustrate the impact of the West on artistic traditions and Chinese culture, each of the eight essays explores the West’s impact on a specific artist or artistic tradition. David Wang, Eugene Wang and Wan Qingli focus on artists whose careers have been defined by their study of European art and attest to the influence of political reformer Kang Youwei, who advocated “an integration of Chinese and Western art to create a new era in Chinese painting.” Qianshen Bai examines the defeat of Chinese forces in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) as a turning point, following which a new political and technocratic elite abandoned calligraphy and other disciplines associated with the traditional scholar-official class. Jonathan Hay asks whether traditional Chinese architecture and painting in Shanghai share any features that reveal a ‘modern’ response to the growing presence of Western architecture and art. Lothar Ledderose’s paper looks at the revival of ancient calligraphic techniques during the nineteenth century and the revolutionary impact this renaissance had on aesthetics. Richard Vinograd discusses the difficulty in defining modernity during a period of such artistic transition. Julia Andrews highlights the shift between traditional artistic practices and modernity that was manifested in the changing status of calligraphy from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. A chronology and glossary are included.