Chinese Contemporary Art, 7 thing you should know

Interest in Chinese contemporary art mounts with each successive season: auction prices rise, a new art fair or biennale opens in Asia, and another influential Chinese artist receives a major museum retrospective.\nNow one of the leading scholars of the thriving new art movement offers a guide to its history and significance entitled Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Things You Should Know. Melissa Chiu, Director of the museum at the Asia Society in New York, as well as Vice President of its Global Arts Program, is uniquely positioned to guide the lay reader from the dramatic beginnings of the Chinese art vanguard movement in 1979 to the burgeoning scene of today.\nAlong the way, Dr. Chiu dispels commonly held preconceptions about Chinese contemporary art (no, it did not spring up from nowhere; and, yes, there are many more fascinating artists than the handful known in the West.) She also examines the reality of government censorship in China, explains how the art market functions differently there than in the United States and Europe, and identifies recurring themes in works across a range of media – from painting and sculpture to photography, video and installation.\nAll the major figures in the field—Cai Guo Qiang, Ai Wei Wei, Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Cao Fei, Zhan Wang, and Rong Rong, among others—are represented by reproductions of key works and biographies. A bibliography leads to further reading.