Global’ Discourse and the Transcultural Field of Contemporary Art in China

The recent influx of publications on the subject of China’s contemporary art attests to the remarkable growth of Chinese artistic expression in the last thirty or so years. This development now compels a rearview assessment in the aftermath of Deng Xiaoping’s gaige kaifang (opening up and reform after 1978). The two exemplary monographs under review were written by authors who share close parallels in their research topics but vast differences in their methodological approaches. Both books explore the artistic developments of iconic metropolitan Chinese cities – Sasha Su-Ling Welland’s Experimental Beijing focuses on artists in the ‘northern capital’, whereas Jenny Lin’s Fashioning of Global Shanghai engages in the city ‘above sea’. The authors examine art in China after 1989, a year that signifies the launch of the ‘global turn’ following the post-Cold War victory of neoliberal Capitalism (the Hegelian ‘end of history’). The two contributions are extremely valuable as they...

Amateur · Art · Art history · Beijing · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · China · Contemporary art · Hegelianism · Parallels · Performance art · Political science · Politics · Subject (documents) · Victory · Visual arts · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · History · Law