9 documents
# 80
The Missing Front Line
Carol Yinghua Lu
Young artists, novel and appealing, are quickly drawn into the art system. Frequently they enjoy an extended honeymoon period of being viewed, supported, consumed, discussed, and described. Meanwhile, artists who have been working since the 1970s and ‘80s are highlighted as part of a particular art movement, even being lauded as the movements’ leading or representative figures, gaining the affirmation of the art system. These older artists have been brought into international exhibitions that focus on presenting Chinese art, and have been the center of attention for collectors and the art market. However, after so many years, their work remains undescribed in terms of its art-historical relevance.
e-flux Journal
Posted: March 3, 2017
Category
Contemporary Art, Economy
Subjects
China, Socialist Realism, Art Market, Art Activism
# 70
From the Anxiety of Participation to the Process of De-Internationalization
Carol Yinghua Lu
It was not long ago that the Western art system was an object of intense focus and emulation throughout China. Beginning with the enthusiastic introduction of Western philosophical writings and Modernist artworks in the 1980s, this one-way exchange crystallized into a dichotomy, with China and tradition on one side, and modernity and the West on the other. Post-Mao, Chinese intellectuals embraced a progressive narrative of history wherein Western Europe and North America represented the…
e-flux Journal
Posted: February 1, 2016
Category
Contemporary Art, Education, Globalization
Subjects
China
# 65
Crimes Without a Scene: Qian Weikang and the New Measurement Group
Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu
In the mid 1990s, the Shanghai artist Qian Weikang and the Beijing artist collective New Measurement Group (Chen Shaoping, Gu Denxin, and Wang Luyan) stopped making art. They did not foresee the difficulty we would encounter today in revisiting their work only two decades later. These were artists whose artistic vision and practice were deeply invested in modernizing contemporary art in China soon after 1989 by introducing self-imposed rules into the making of work, as well as with the…
e-flux Journal
Posted: May 1, 2015
Category
Contemporary Art
Subjects
China, Withdrawal, Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Art
# 56
From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: The Echoes of Socialist Realism, Part II
Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu
Continued “From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: The Echoes of Socialist Realism, Part I”
In the 1940s, as Socialist Realism took form and began to emerge following the establishment of the Communist Party’s leading position in China, its language drew from the realism that had spread throughout the Chinese mainland in the 1920s and ’30s. After 1949, Mao started to develop a cultural policy and released several statements on the matter; realism gradually transformed into…
e-flux Journal
Posted: June 1, 2014
Category
Communism, Contemporary Art, Globalization
Subjects
Socialist Realism, China, Realism, Censorship, Neoliberalism
# 55
From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: The Echoes of Socialist Realism, Part I
Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu
Socialist Realism was introduced into China in the first half of the twentieth century, and gradually became the main, overarching creative method of the revolutionary era, leading art, literature, theater, and other creative fields for decades. It is often seen as a highly politicized creative model that is the product of socialist, and particularly communist, political views. Over the past three decades, contemporary artists and art discussions often attempted to cast it off as an…
e-flux Journal
Posted: May 1, 2014
Category
Communism, Marxism
Subjects
China, Socialist Realism, Censorship
e-flux Criticism
Posted: October 8, 2012
Category
Colonialism & Imperialism
Subjects
Historicity & Historiography, Fiction, Biennials, Libraries & Archives, China
# 11
Back to Contemporary: One Contemporary Ambition, Many Worlds
Carol Yinghua Lu
I was recently invited by the editors of Afterall to contribute to a book they are preparing on the monumental 1989 exhibition “Magiciens de la terre” with a text reflecting on the impact of this exhibition on the practice of Chinese artists. On that occasion I had a discussion with Chinese critic Fei Dawei, who had introduced the curator of the show, Jean-Hubert Martin, to many of the key artists of the ‘85 movement in China prior to the exhibition and worked as one of its regional…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2009
Category
Contemporary Art, Globalization
Subjects
China, Contemporaneity, Exhibition Histories
# 05
e-flux Journal
Posted: April 1, 2009
Category
Contemporary Art
Subjects
China