Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History

摘要

This well-illustrated volume has an appealingly clear organization, but it is not exactly an easy read. In a narrative that follows a seamless chronological order, Gladston intends to provide a mapping of ideas and practices that have defined and propelled what is known as contemporary art in China. Yet, in addition to a historical account, he wishes to examine "ways in which discursive combinations of ideas and practices bind contemporary Chinese art … to the structures of power and state both within and outside" the PRC (p. 7). He is committed to a "theorized analysis," the lack of which, in his view, marks a good number of existing studies (p. 38).