What is the next step for the development of Chinese art? BBC video
Posted by artradar on October 14, 2009
CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART AND PROPAGANDA POSTERS
In a BBC clip made for the 60th anniversary of Communism in China, one of our readers Dr Katie Hill of the University of Westminster in London, traces the development of the visual image in China from political propaganda posters of the fifties and sixties to the reactionary works of contemporary artists such as Xu Bing.
Today she says there are ‘thousands’ of people visiting the Ullens Center and 798 District in Beijing every day, encountering and studying art for the first time. She has no doubt that China will become a significant centre for art production in Asia and suggests that perhaps the next step will be the development of a deeper political consciousness of the need to support art.
This would make an interesting reversal of the early relationship between Communism and art. At the birth of Communism sixty years ago art was harnessed to support Communism.
See BBC video: Art and politics in China
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- ”Young Chinese Artists: The Next Generation” – book review – Jun 09
- Will political unrest fan the debate about Iranian contemporary art? – Jun 09
- Sixties and Seventies born Cambodian artists in documentary show Forever Until Now – Mar 09 – Hobbled by the political repression brought about by Pol Pot regime of the seventies, contemporary art is only now beginning to flourish again
- Sexual desire was prohibited under Communism says Wang Keping, a founder of Chinese contemporary art – Nov 08
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Wang Yuanshan said
Is it quite clear that China has set the pace for the growth of Asian Contemporary art and is critically important to the SouthEast Asian region as well, as it is still an undervalued market itself. More awareness is needed for China, India and Southeast asian contemporary in the support of artists and their art. Art has also become more political motivated in a region shaped by lack of freedom of speech and basic human rights.