The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China

The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China PDF Author: Liang Luo
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472120344
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China explores how an important group of Chinese performing artists invested in politics and the pursuit of the avant-garde came to terms with different ways of being “popular” in modern times. In particular, playwright and activist Tian Han (1898-1968) exemplified the instability of conventional delineations between the avant-garde, popular culture, and political propaganda. Liang Luo traces Tian’s trajectory through key moments in the evolution of twentieth-century Chinese national culture, from the Christian socialist cosmopolitanism of post–WWI Tokyo to the urban modernism of Shanghai in 1920s and 30s, then into the Chinese hinterland during the late 1930s and 40s, and finally to the Communist Beijing of the 1950s, revealing the dynamic interplay of art and politics throughout this period. Understanding Tian in his time sheds light upon a new generation of contemporary Chinese avant-gardists (Ai Wei Wei being the best known), who, half a century later, are similarly engaging national politics and popular culture.

The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China

The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China PDF Author: Liang Luo
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472052179
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Provides a new perspective on the Chinese avant-garde through the figure of artist and activist Tian Han

Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde

Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde PDF Author: Xiaobing Tang
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520249097
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Xiaobing Tang's "Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde "is much more than its title implies, for it is both a vivid account of the conflict between Chinese artistic conservatism, freedom of expression, and political commitment in the 1920s and 1930s and a deeply researched study of the origins and development of the woodcut movement. The author ranges widely over the controversial writings of this hectic period, showing how intimately art, literature, criticism, and politics were intertwined, but gives due prominence to such key figures as Cai Yuanpei and Lu Xun. This book will attract many readers for the vigor and lucidity of Tang's style and will become an essential source for anyone concerned with the cultural history of this turbulent era.--Michael Sullivan, author of "Modern Chinese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary" "Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde" is a genuine masterpiece of scholarship, an impressively documented cultural history of the Republican period. In five substantial chapters written in highly lucid and eloquent prose, Xiaobing Tang reconstructs, in detail, the art world of the Republican era, with all its different styles, organisations, institutions, and individuals, and provides cross-references to contemporaneous events in other fields, especially literature. Presenting the emergence of the woodblock printing movement in the context of other art movements, traditionalist and modernist, this book offers an art history of the period more comprehensive than any other, in Chinese or in English.--Michel Hockx, Professor of Chinese, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London "This is one of the first books in English to connect the literature and the fine arts of the early twentieth century. The author follows Lu Xun, one of the leading proponents of the revival of woodblock printmaking in early republican China, as the central thread in a narrative examining the intersections of art education, visual art, literature, and the cinema. Drawing on a wide variety of published materials, Tang successfully puts avant-garde work of the 1930s into a much broader cultural perspective."--Kuiyi Shen, author of "A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China"

Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art

Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art PDF Author: Minglu Gao
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262294710
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
A groundbreaking book that describes a distinctively Chinese avant-gardism and a modernity that unifies art, politics, and social life. To the extent that Chinese contemporary art has become a global phenomenon, it is largely through the groundbreaking exhibitions curated by Gao Minglu: "China/Avant-Garde" (Beijing, 1989), "Inside Out: New Chinese Art" (Asia Society, New York, 1998), and "The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art" (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2005) among them. As the first Chinese writer to articulate a distinctively Chinese avant-gardism and modernity—one not defined by Western chronology or formalism—Gao Minglu is largely responsible for the visibility of Chinese art in the global art scene today. Contemporary Chinese artists tend to navigate between extremes, either embracing or rejecting a rich classical tradition. Indeed, for Chinese artists, the term "modernity" refers not to a new epoch or aesthetic but to a new nation—modernityinextricably connects politics to art. It is this notion of "total modernity" that forms the foundation of the Chinese avant-garde aesthetic, and of this book. Gao examines the many ways Chinese artists engaged with this intrinsic total modernity, including the '85 Movement, political pop, cynical realism, apartment art, maximalism, and the museum age, encompassing the emergenceof local art museums and organizations as well as such major events as the Shanghai Biennial. He describes the inner logic of the Chinese context while locating the art within the framework of a worldwide avant-garde. He vividly describes the Chinese avant-garde's embrace of a modernity that unifies politics, aesthetics, and social life, blurring the boundaries between abstraction, conception, and representation. Lavishly illustrated with color images throughout, this book will be a touchstone for all considerations of Chinese contemporary art.

China Avant-garde

China Avant-garde PDF Author: Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description


Nine Lives

Nine Lives PDF Author: Karen Smith
Publisher: Timezone 8 Limited
ISBN: 9789881714336
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Lenni wants to find someone to understand her and the new girl could just be that person Lenni can't please anyone lately. At school, her friends want her to kiss someone for a stupid competition. At home, her grandmother wants her to be more ladylike. And on the playing field, her friend Adam has started acting like a big weirdo around her. Then Lenni meets Jo, the new girl at school, and everything feels so normal. Jo is cool, fun, and unlike anyone Lenni's ever known—finally, someone's on Lenni's wavelength!

China's New Cultural Scene

China's New Cultural Scene PDF Author: Marie Claire Huot
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822324454
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Portrays the ongoing revolution in cultural production that has transformed contemporary life in the People's Republic of China.

A New Literary History of Modern China

A New Literary History of Modern China PDF Author: David Der-wei Wang
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674967917
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
Literature, from the Chinese perspective, makes manifest the cosmic patterns that shape and complete the world—a process of “worlding” that is much more than mere representation. In that spirit, A New Literary History of Modern China looks beyond state-sanctioned works and official narratives to reveal China as it has seldom been seen before, through a rich spectrum of writings covering Chinese literature from the late-seventeenth century to the present. Featuring over 140 Chinese and non-Chinese contributors from throughout the world, this landmark volume explores unconventional forms as well as traditional genres—pop song lyrics and presidential speeches, political treatises and prison-house jottings, to name just a few. Major figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Eileen Chang, and Mo Yan appear in a new light, while lesser-known works illuminate turning points in recent history with unexpected clarity and force. Many essays emphasize Chinese authors’ influence on foreign writers as well as China’s receptivity to outside literary influences. Contemporary works that engage with ethnic minorities and environmental issues take their place in the critical discussion, alongside writers who embraced Chinese traditions and others who resisted. Writers’ assessments of the popularity of translated foreign-language classics and avant-garde subjects refute the notion of China as an insular and inward-looking culture. A vibrant collection of contrasting voices and points of view, A New Literary History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China’s literary and cultural legacy.

Mainstream Culture Refocused

Mainstream Culture Refocused PDF Author: Xueping Zhong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824882504
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Serialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s timely new work draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect "refocusing" mainstream Chinese culture. Mainstream Culture Refocused opens with an examination of television as a narrative motif in three contemporary Chinese art-house films. Zhong then turns her attention to dianshiju’s most important subgenres. "Emperor dramas" highlight the link between popular culture’s obsession with emperors and modern Chinese intellectuals’ preoccupation with issues of history and tradition and how they relate to modernity. In her exploration of the "anti-corruption" subgenre, Zhong considers three representative dramas, exploring their diverse plots and emphases. "Youth dramas’" rich array of representations reveal the numerous social, economic, cultural, and ideological issues surrounding the notion of youth and its changing meanings. The chapter on the "family-marriage" subgenre analyzes the ways in which women’s emotions are represented in relation to their desire for "happiness." Song lyrics from music composed for television dramas are considered as "popular poetics." Their sentiments range between nostalgia and uncertainty, mirroring the social contradictions of the reform era. The Epilogue returns to the relationship between intellectuals and the production of mainstream cultural meaning in the context of China’s post-revolutionary social, economic, and cultural transformation. Provocative and insightful, Mainstream Culture Refocused will appeal to scholars and students in studies of modern China generally and of contemporary Chinese media and popular culture specifically.

Parallel Modernism

Parallel Modernism PDF Author: Chinghsin Wu
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520299825
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This significant historical study recasts modern art in Japan as a “parallel modernism” that was visually similar to Euroamerican modernism, but developed according to its own internal logic. Using the art and thought of prominent Japanese modern artist Koga Harue (1895–1933) as a lens to understand this process, Chinghsin Wu explores how watercolor, cubism, expressionism, and surrealism emerged and developed in Japan in ways that paralleled similar trends in the west, but also rejected and diverged from them. In this first English-language book on Koga Harue, Wu provides close readings of virtually all of the artist’s major works and provides unprecedented access to the critical writing about modernism in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s through primary source documentation, including translations of period art criticism, artist statements, letters, and journals.