Art and Modernism in Socialist China

This edited volume will be the first book examining the art history of China's socialist period from the perspective of modernism, modernity, and global interactions. The majority of chapters are based on newly available archival materials and fresh critical frameworks/concepts. By shifting the frame of interpretation from socialist realism to socialist modernity, this study reveals the plurality of the historical process of developing modernity in China, the autonomy of artistic agency, and the complexity of an art world conditioned, yet not completely confined, by its surrounding political and ideological apparatus. The unexpected global exchanges examined by many of the authors in this study and the divergent approaches, topics, and genres they present add new sources and insights to this research field, revealing an art history that is heterogeneous, pluralistic, and multi-layered. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, art and politics, and Chinese studies.

Shuyu Kong is Professor of Chinese Studies and Co-director of the David Lam Centre for International Communication at Simon Fraser University. Julia F. Andrews is Distinguished University Professor Emerita at The Ohio State University. Shengtian Zheng is Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery and Research Associate at Simon Fraser University.

Introduction Part I: Art Exchanges 1. Chile, China, Cuba: A Mural and Beyond 2.Realism or Modernism? Exhibitions of Sesshu and Sino-Japanese Artistic Exchanges in the 1950s 3. An Unpublicized Graduation Exhibition in 1962: Misalignments Impacting the Romanian Painting Class in China 4. A Short-Lived Challenge to Socialist Realism: Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Other British Artists in a Little Known 1960 Exhibition in China 5. "So Are They Good Artists?": Context and Asymmetry in Postwar Sino-Italian Artistic Exchanges 6. The Politics of Landscape Painting: Three International Art Exhibitions in 1970s China Part II: Alternative Practices 7. "Creating A New Era in the Twentieth Century": Huang Binhong (1865-1955) and Modern Art during the Cold War 8.Tan Huamu's Pictorial Diaries in the Era of the New China 9. A Battle between Two Paths of Art? Huang Xinbo and Modernism during his Hong Kong Period 10. The Moving Image: Ye Qianyu, Dance and Socialist Modernity in Art 11. Decorative Pictures: Zhang Ding and Chinese Modernism in the 1960s 12. The Romanian Oil Painting Training Class and Modernist Undercurrents in Chinese Art Education of the Socialist Period Part III: Coda 13. Never forget Mao: The Monumental as Radical Universal OR: The Making of a "Maoist Modern"