Chinese modern art and the academy, 1980--1990.

摘要

Chinese modern art has become one of the most intensive and challenging parts of a great socio-political change in the past two decades. This thesis aims to examine Chinese modern art development in the 1980s and 1990s, and in particular the relationship between the state, academy and individual artists. It pays attention to Chinese modern art practices and theoretical debates within China which were significant and influential but have been generally ignored by, or invisible to, the outside world. The research was conducted via a survey of institutional structures of the Chinese art world, and analyzes possible models of modernity with examples drawn from the dichotomies of the official/non-official, avant-garde, academic art exhibitions, as well as from overseas Chinese art, in particular concentrating on academic Chinese modern art.; The results of this research indicate that Chinese modern art in this period defies simple definition, but was rather characterized by plurality, diversity and at times contradiction. While the emergence of globalization has called local modernity into question worldwide, the Chinese case presents challenges of its own, not only because of modern Chinese art---the proliferation of Chinese modernity as part of the historical legacy of modern China---but also because of an increasingly visible Chinese modern all that has exploded under contemporary economic and political forces.