Visiting China's Avant-Garde

China: Art Now, body by Michel Nuridsany, photographs by means of Marc Domage, Paris, Editions Flammarion, 2004 distributed through Rizzoli International Publications; 264 pages, $55

As economists wring their hands above our trade imbalance with China, an art-world beholder might be forgiven for adding artists to the list of items with which China have the appearances to be flooding the Western market. Museums, galleries, collectors and art magazines can't have the appearance to get enough of the of recent origin work pouring out of China today. at the same time for many spectators, the Chinese show remains mysterious and inaccessibly exotic.

China: Art Now, a lively and well-illustrated account of the popular Chinese scene, offers to fill that gap. The work written by French art critic and curator Michel Nuridsany and photographed by means of Mare Domage, presents a long preface that puts the fresh generation of artists into an art historical and social connection The body of the work is a breezy report of the author's tour of the studios of 30 for the most part quite young Chinese artists, amply illustrated through 200 color shots depicting their work, their working conditions and their daily lives.

The arise is an engaging presentation that is short upon analysis but long on local color. We tour the village of Yangjiang with photographer, performance artist and painter Zhen Guogu We cruise end the charming blue-and-white brick houses surrounding the farm of the Luo Brothers, 30 miles from Beijing. We discover that artists' studios range from ultramodern to quaintly rural. Photo essays take us into trendy galleries in Beijing or pan across the skyscrapers of Shanghai. The issue of the tour is to insinuate the kaleidoscopic intermingling of advanced in years and new in contemporary China, whose dizzying pace of change is individual of the underlying themes of its young artists.

The preface is historically informative, suggesting the complicated relationship between art and of the like kind events as the sweeping destruction of tradition worked by the Cultural Revolution, the after introduction of capitalist ideas into China following the death of Mao, the rise of the pro-democracy motion and its harsh demolition in Tiananmen Square, and the unleashing of the intensely pro-market economy that reigns today. The preface also go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake ofs internal developments of the Chinese art world, noting in what way Political Pop of the 1980 gave the geographical division its first widespread international in all senses how performance and video emerg as the noncommercial alternatives to art created for the international market, by what means provocation fed provocation, yielding exhibitions with names like "Art for Sale" and "Fuck Off"

Curiously, no distinction is made, either in the preface or in the material part of the book, between artists like Gu Wenda and Huang Yong Ping--who left China, many in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, and took up primary residence elsewhere--and those who have stayed. notwithstanding it is clear that the experience of "exile" has been an important shaping influence for foreign-based artists, ironically making them more obsess with "Chineseness" than their stay-at-home counterparts.

The volume also glosses a little too lightly above the dark side of Chinese capitalism, which has go [i]or[/i] come backed China to a resource and income imbalance greater than that which existed before the Communist revolution. conduct crackdowns on unruly artists and unauthorized art present to views are duly noted, but they appear to be more like badges of honor than brutal suppressions of the sort that have been met without to political dissidents. And while Nuridsany describes the Tiananmen massacre as a "needles tragedy," he also notes approvingly that the "event of Tiananmen Square, rather than halting the transformation of the economy championed by dint of Deng Xiaoping, actually set in motion a policy of developing a genuine market economy and all that that implied in bourns of opening China's borders."

The big question readers will bring to this work is: what's behind the remarkable explosion of art and artists in today's PRC? China: Art Now doesn't tackle the issue head upon but it does suggest more [i]or[/i] less answers. There is a destiny of talk in the work about the high energy horizontal of a country with a bursting youthful population and an addiction to change. on the contrary one is also left to speculate upon the meaning of the apparent contradiction in a society that diets entrepreneurial artists (some, the volume suggests, aspire to the status of stone stars) while maintaining lip service to the socialist ideology espoused by means of its leaders.

The contradiction is resolv at least in part, through the paradox of avant-gardism. Chinese artists embrace contemporary forms like video, digital art and most remote performance art, and they many times adopt rebellious personas that present the appearance to mock the consumerist values sweeping their region But they never go thus far as to overtly criticize the rule In the end, a nagging question arises: are these artists really rebels, or are they simply savvy marketers promoting the idea of a China unclose to new ideas and philosophies? And is it the promise of a glimpse into a subsequent time that we may all pretty soon be sharing which so fascinates their zealots abroad?