This dissertation examines the transition from a largely pre-market, politically dissident avant-garde art world to a hyper-commercialized contemporary art world in China. This transformation has been a dual process: an infrastructural change that has greatly expanded, diversified and complexified the field; and the formation of a new normative, discursive framework that has fundamentally altered the role of art in Chinese society as well as the ways in which art works are produced, exhibited, collected and evaluated.;The previous Chinese avant-garde art world, defined by group affiliation rather than individual artists' artistic orientation, has become obsolete as the previous notion of authenticity of the avant-gardes has lost its currency. The rise of the new circuit players, the most important gatekeepers of the new art world, has helped to promote and legitimize a new framework that champions a de-ideologized notion of universal competency and professionalism. While this new normative framework implicitly assumes a universal sphere of excellence in which artists of any geopolitical background, gender, age and social group can compete equally on nothing else but the artistic merits of their work, a higher premium is put on the individuality manifested in an artist's work and public persona. The perceived forcefulness of individual persona as well as professionalism and entrepreneurial acumen have been identified as the three most important determinants of career success and value of work for an artist.;This dissertation shows that despite Bourdieu's proposition that the field of cultural production is the economic field standing on its head, the Chinese contemporary art world is marked by a distinctive alignment of and collaboration between cultural, social, political and economic capital. However, the collapse of boundaries between the art world and the marketplace, between symbolic and social/economic capital, does not imply that the contemporary art world is devoid of ideals. The former ideal of the avant garde has been replaced by the new ideals of universalism and professionalism, which, in light of the underregulated milieu of today's art world, provide extra legitimacy and urgency to the new order.;Key words: avant-garde, contemporary art, art world, symbolic capital, commercialization, globalization, art market, China, modernism, art and politics.
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