The Art of Contemporary China

Fulfilling a need for an accessible, affordable introduction to a subject of sustained and growing significance in contemporary culture, this volume in the World of Art series redefines contemporary Chinese art in the last forty years since the end of China’s Cultural Revolution, placing it in the context of unprecedented cultural, political and urban transformation. This book offers neither an art historian’s chronological review of Chinese art in post-Mao China, nor does it join the debate of previous terminologies coined by art critics; instead, it provides the most up-to-date understanding of contemporary Chinese art through original research and informed curatorial perspectives on the selected representative work, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, installation, video, performance and participatory art.

It is about art, but it is also about China; and thus is not about the past, but also about the present - the truly ‘contemporary’. With 154 illustrations in colour