“Journey to the West, Artists from the Ashmolean Collection” for EACS conference, August 25th 2016, St Petersburg (original) (raw)

This article examines how Chinese artists respond to the political and social changes in wartime China, with a focus on two leading figures of the 20th century Chinese artists, Pang Xunqin and Chang Dai-Chien, whose works are currently displayed in the exhibition “Pure Land Images of Immortals in Chinese art” in the Ashmolean Museum. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), with relocation of art schools and institutions to the wartime capital Chongqing, many artists journeyed to the west of the country and gained artistic inspiration from the historical heritage at Dunhuang and the living resources of the ethnic groups. This research takes approach of case study and explores a fundamental shift of focus in the practice of Chinese art. This paper first provides historical context for the art creation in wartime China. Then it discusses how the discovery of Dunhuang and the ethnographic investigation in the southwest regions have influenced the development of Chinese paintings. The case study on Pang Xunqin and Chang Dai-chien demonstrates a range of ways in which individual artists looked to the past for inspiration and developed their individual styles. An introduction to the history of collecting Chinese paintings, with a focus on the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Bequest in the Ashmolean Museum will also be given.

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Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, edited by Wu Hung, with the assistance of Peggy Wang. NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. 455pp. [Book Review]

The China Journal, 2011

Western understandings of the trajectory of Chinese art following Mao’s death in 1976 have been hampered by several factors. A persistent element is the propensity of Western art historians and critics to impose Western historical patterns, esthetic standards, and critical methods to the analysis of Chinese art, its production and expression. This tendency was exacerbated by China’s closing to the West after 1949, which discouraged scholarship and Chinese language study and resulted in a 30-year hiatus in scholarly communications and firsthand knowledge, and at the same time invited imagination and speculation favoring an obsessive preference in the West for art that could be interpreted as politically subversive. When China opened in the 1980s, scholars of contemporary Chinese art faced the further problem of trying to make sense of an anarchic disarray of theories and practices rushing in to fill the vacuum afforded by the collapse of Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong ideology. The prolific but scattered writings and publications by Chinese artists, critics and theorists were accessible only to those few who already possessed a high level of Chinese language facility including the specially nuanced vocabulary of the art world, as well as a wide-ranging and balanced network of personal contacts. This collection addresses the need for wider access to these Chinese sources by readers of English.

Review: Peggy Wang. The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art.

China Review International, 2022

The dissident in post-Tiananmen Chinese art history has been fetishized by the West. Peggy Wang highlights in The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art that this misplaced attention shoehorns artwork, neglects artistic agency, and ignores how artists in the s responded to a wide swathe of cultural and intellectual dialogues. Addressing this dissident trope, chapter , titled "Spaces of Self-Recognition," probes art criticism and major debates in the s and uncovers new lines of inquiry that indigenize the understanding of post-Tiananmen Chinese art history. One debate was the how and why of bridging the distance and differences between contemporary Chinese art and established centers of the art world. Art critics contended that Chinese artists must develop their own standard and objectives. Rather than emulating Western styles and modes of making art, Chinese artists, critics held, should embrace the history and culture of minzu or Chinese ethnicity. "New Realism," exemplified by the oil paintings of Liu Xiaodong (b. ) and Yu Hong (b. ), gained appeal among critics who found that realist ideology embraces minzu and orients the future of contemporary Chinese art. By focusing on China's social reality and local environments, Chinese artists, as critics hypothesized, could bring lived experience to the center of their art, embrace contemporaneity without succumbing to Western art, and profess "Chineseness" (p. ) without being fettered to the past. Such direction could make China a new contemporary art center. Pivoting on this sentiment in the art circle in the s, Wang, in subsequent chapters, spotlights five artists whose works have largely suffered from well worn, limited interpretations derived from the dissident lens and explores how they used their works to claim agency in their own world. These five artists are Zhang Xiaogang (b. ), Wang Guangyi (b. ), Sui Jianguo (b. ), Zhang Peili (b. ), and Lin Tianmiao (b. ). Titled "Zhang Xiaogang: Bloodline and Belonging," chapter  focuses on how the early works in Zhang's Bloodline series (begun in ) speaks to the artist's shifting engagement with the world and artistic explorations, as well as an art historical lineage in representing "relationship." During his study at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in , Zhang's works were greatly inspired by Review

Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. Wu Hung with the assistance of Peggy Wang. NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. 455pp. [Book Review]

The China Journal, 2011

Western understandings of the trajectory of Chinese art following Mao’s death in 1976 have been hampered by several factors. A persistent element is the propensity of Western art historians and critics to impose Western historical patterns, esthetic standards and critical methods to the analysis of Chinese art, its production and expression. This tendency was exacerbated by China’s closing to the West after 1949, which discouraged scholarship and Chinese language study and resulted in a 30-year hiatus in scholarly communications and firsthand knowledge—a situation that invited imagination and speculation that favored an obsessive preference in the West for art that could be interpreted as politically subversive. When China re-opened in the 1980s, scholars of contemporary Chinese art faced the further problem of trying to make sense of an anarchic disarray of theories and practices rushing in to fill the vacuum afforded by the collapse of Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong ideology. The prolific but scattered writings and publications by Chinese artists, critics and theorists were accessible only to those few who already possessed a high level of Chinese language facility including the specially nuanced vocabulary of the art world, as well as a wide-ranging and balanced network of interpersonal contacts. This volume addresses the need for wider access to primary Chinese sources by readers of English.

Reimagining China : History Painting of Xu Beihong in Early Twentieth Century

2008

Reviewing Xu Beihong's four history paintings-Tian Heng and His Five Hundred Followers (1928-30), The Astute Judge o/Horse (1931), Awaiting/or Deliverer (1930-33), and The Foolish Old Man Removing the Mountain (1940)-through an interdisciplinary approach, this study examines the relationships among the artist, his works, and the circumstances in which these paintings were rendered. Better understanding this intrigue relationships leads to three trajectories of "re-imagining" that are set apart from conventional paradigms in Chinese art history: the hybrid style that embodies both tradition and modernity, the complex subject-matter that embraces both past and present, and the link with the "imagined community" that enkindles a national consciousness both within and outside ofChina.

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