Contemporary Chinese Art
Chinese Contemporary art is one of the fastest growing areas in today’s art market and a relative newcomer to the international contemporary art scene. The first China pavilion at the Venice Biennale was in 1995; one hundred years after the Biennale began. The political environment under Chairman Mao kept a tight reign on artistic expression; making it difficult if not impossible for artists not painting in the academy-approved realist, pro-communist style to gain exposure. The
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Contemporary Chinese Art
Chinese Contemporary art is one of the fastest growing areas in today’s art market and a relative newcomer to the international contemporary art scene. The first China pavilion at the Venice Biennale was in 1995; one hundred years after the Biennale began. The political environment under Chairman Mao kept a tight reign on artistic expression; making it difficult if not impossible for artists not painting in the academy-approved realist, pro-communist style to gain exposure. The detailed, western style oil paintings of Xu Beihong (b.1895), founding president of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, would be the standard upon which all art was judged; while revolutionary artists like Zhang Daqian (b.1899), whose paintings masterfully combined modern abstraction with traditional Chinese brushwork and would latter be considered one of the greatest Chinese ink-painters of all time, would be driven from the country.
Regulations were loosened after Mao’s death in 1974, and Chinese artists have begun to create contemporary works that give insight into China both past and present. Cynical Realism, championed by artists like Fang Lijun (b.1963) and Yue Minjun (b.1962), became one of the most important movements in Chinese contemporary art; using the realist style of communist political art to convey the stifling extremism of the Cultural Revolution. Both artists are residents of the important artistic center, Tong Zhou, a suburb of Beijing where artists moved after the famous artist village Yuan Ming Yuan was shut down in 1995 by the government; which was concerned at the time about such a large population of artists residing so close to the largest university campus in Beijing.
Another important contemporary movement was the Political Pop movement, derived from western Pop Art. Artists in the movement, such as Wang Ziwei (b.1963) and Wang Guangyi (b.1956), used the iconography of Chinese political art, particularly the image of Chairman Mao, to highlight to duality of this past art form as well as the obsession for Mao in Chinese culture. Guangyi’s images contrast typical scenes extolling communist virtues of hard work and selflessness against the corporate icons of companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi; highlighting the fact that, like these American corporate symbols, this style of political art, rampant during the cultural revolution, was designed to glorify and sell communism to the public.
While much of Chinese Contemporary art is tied to realism, many artists have used abstraction to great affect: such as Cai Guo-qiang (b.1957), who uses gunpowder and large-scale explosions to express a spontaneity and lack of control so opposite to the policies of his government; and Yang Shaobin (b.1963), another resident of Tong Zhou, whose famous series of miners uses expressionistic brushwork to depict the brutality of the conditions under which these laborers worked. (hide)
Examples of Contemporary Chinese Art at Auction
Artists Associated with Contemporary Chinese Art — 35 artists:
