The Painter of Shanghai

The Painter of Shanghai PDF Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141917490
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
In 1913 an orphan girl boards a steamship bound for Wuhu in South East China. Left in the hands of her soft-hearted but opium-addicted uncle she is delivered to The Hall of Eternal Splendour which, with its painted faces and troubling cries in the night, seems destined to break her spirit. And yet the girl survives and one day hope appears in the unlikely form of a customs inspector, a modest man resistant to the charms of the corrupt world that surrounds him but not to the innocent girl who stands before him. From the crowded rooms of a small-town brothel, heavy with the smoke of opium pipes and the breath of drunken merchants, to the Bohemian hedonism of Paris and the 1930s studios of Shanghai, Jennifer Epstein’s first novel, based on a true story, is an exquisite evocation of a fascinating time and place, with a breathtaking heroine at its heart.

The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel

The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel PDF Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393335313
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Reminiscent of "Memoirs of a Geisha," this novel is a re-imagining of the life of Pan Yuliang and her transformation from prostitute to post-Impressionist.

Wunderland

Wunderland PDF Author: Jennifer Cody Epstein
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
ISBN: 0525576908
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
"East Village, 1989 Things had never been easy between Ava Fisher and her estranged mother Ilse. Too many questions hovered between them: Who was Ava's father? Where had Ilse been during the war? Why had she left her only child in a German orphanage during the war's final months? But now Ilse's ashes have arrived from Germany, and with them, a trove of unsent letters addressed to someone else unknown to Ava: Renate Bauer, a childhood friend. As her mother's letters unfurl a dark past, Ava spirals deep into the shocking history of a woman she never truly knew. Berlin, 1933 As the Nazi party tightens its grip on the city, Ilse and Renate find their friendship under siege--and Ilse's increasing involvement in the Hitler Youth movement leaves them on opposing sides of the gathering storm. Then the Nuremburg Laws force Renate to confront a long-buried past, and a catastrophic betrayal is set in motion... An unflinching exploration of Nazi Germany and its legacy, Wunderland is a at once a powerful portrait of an unspeakable crime history and a page-turning contemplation of womanhood, wartime, and just how far we might go in order to belong."--

Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting

Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting PDF Author: Yi Gu
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684176131
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"How did modern Chinese painters see landscape? Did they depict nature in the same way as premodern Chinese painters? What does the artistic perception of modern Chinese painters reveal about the relationship between artists and the nation-state? Could an understanding of modern Chinese landscape painting tell us something previously unknown about art, political change, and the epistemological and sensory regime of twentieth-century China? Yi Gu tackles these questions by focusing on the rise of open-air painting in modern China. Chinese artists almost never painted outdoors until the late 1910s, when the New Culture Movement prompted them to embrace direct observation, linear perspective, and a conception of vision based on Cartesian optics. The new landscape practice brought with it unprecedented emphasis on perception and redefined artistic expertise. Central to the pursuit of open-air painting from the late 1910s right through to the early 1960s was a reinvigorated and ever-growing urgency to see suitably as a Chinese and to see the Chinese homeland correctly. Examining this long-overlooked ocular turn, Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of visual modernity there."

A Modern Miscellany

A Modern Miscellany PDF Author: Paul Bevan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900430794X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
In A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 Paul Bevan explores how the cartoon (manhua) emerged from its place in the Chinese modern art world to become a propaganda tool in the hands of left-wing artists. The artists involved in what was largely a transcultural phenomenon were an eclectic group working in the areas of fashion and commercial art and design. The book demonstrates that during the build up to all-out war the cartoon was not only important in the sphere of Shanghai popular culture in the eyes of the publishers and readers of pictorial magazines but that it occupied a central place in the primary discourse of Chinese modern art history.

Van Gogh on Demand

Van Gogh on Demand PDF Author: Winnie Wong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602492X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
“Unsettles contemporary art’s unspoken hierarchies and topples modernist and postmodernist assumptions about originality, authenticity, and authorship.” —caa Reviews In a metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world—one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius. Wong describes an art world in which migrant workers, propaganda makers, dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen’s painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen “assembly-line” painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, styling himself into a Dafen boss. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art. “[A] fantastically detailed exploration of a topic which touches the heart of many of the issues surrounding China's economic rise.” —South China Morning Post

Li Huayi

Li Huayi PDF Author: Li Huayi
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 889181637X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An important long overdue monograph on the preeminent Chinese contemporary ink painter Li Huayi, with a comprehensive critical contribution by the art critic and curator Kuiyi Shen. This exquisite volume is a definitive retrospective of his most celebrated works. The book documents Li Huayi's artistic evolution, surveying his career through a selection of the most representative works from every period of his life. His paintings reveal how the great tradition of Chinese art, through the talented hands of the artist and his innovative mind, is able to interact with Western contemporary trends and provide a fascinating visual insight into the universe of a man suspended between two cultures.

Liu Ye: The Book Paintings

Liu Ye: The Book Paintings PDF Author: Liu Ye
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
ISBN: 9781644230367
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Chinese artist Liu Ye’s subtle, colorful canvases convey his love of literature in the artist’s first publication solely dedicated to his paintings of books. Beijing-based artist Liu Ye is known for his precise, deftly rendered representational paintings. Reminiscent of cartoons and illustrations in children’s books, they include references to abstract artists such as Piet Mondrian. In this new publication devoted exclusively to his Book Paintings, the artist examines the book as both a physical object and cultural totem. He simultaneously stresses the geometry in the composition while always imbuing his paintings with his uniquely recognizable style. The result is a body of work that feels both alien and familiar. Liu's Book Painting series, begun in 2013, depicts closeup views of books that are turned open to reveal empty pages, a strategy that emphasizes the object’s formal qualities over its content. Intimately scaled, these paintings indicate an appreciation of the book as an object, as well as a love of literature—Liu’s father was a children’s book author who introduced him to Western writers at a young age, fueling his curiosity and imagination. Published on the occasion of a solo exhibition presented at David Zwirner, New York, in 2020, this catalogue includes new writing by the acclaimed poet Zhu Zhu and an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Art and Artists of Twentieth-century China

Art and Artists of Twentieth-century China PDF Author: Michael Sullivan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520075560
Category : Art, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
"Sullivan presents a wealth of material that has never before appeared in a Western language. I expect it will be the standard book on twentieth-century Chinese art for the foreseeable future."--Julia F. Andrews, author of Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China "A most sympathetic and useful guide to twentieth-century Chinese art. Long the leading scholar on the subject, Professor Sullivan has presented a lucid account of a most dramatic chapter in Chinese art in a complex interplay of aesthetics, politics, cultural, and social history."--Wen C. Fong, Princeton University "So much of China's art in the twentieth century has to do with artistic (and political) ideas from the West that is is appropriate that one of its first comprehensive histories should be written by a Western scholar--especially one who has known personally many of China's leading artistic figures of the last fifty years. Not only does Professor Sullivan tell the complex story of twentieth century China art with lucidity and style, his learned text is also illuminated with witty anecdotes and incisive observations that can only come from an indsider."--Johnson Chang (Chang Tson-zung), Director, Hanart Tz Gallery, Hong Kong

Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key PDF Author: Tatiana de Rosnay
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312370830
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
An American journalist researches the notorious roundup of Parisian Jews and uncovers her French family's war-era secrets.