Modern Chinese Ink Paintings: A Century of New Directions - Softcover

Von Spee, Clarissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714124702 ISBN 13: 9780714124704

Publisher: British Museum Press, 2012

Synopsis

Displaying the beauty and skill of Chinese ink paintings through a selection of highlights from the British Museum's collection, Modern Chinese Ink Paintings features hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, large-scale paintings and album leaves to explore the innovative contributions of individual masters from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Clarissa von Spee explores how their artistic work has helped shape the image of modern China, revealing how their works reflect the political climates and important events of the times in which they were created. With reference to artistic exchanges between Picasso and Zhang Daqian, the relationship between modern Chinese painting and the modern Western art scene is also highlighted in this informative and accessible introduction to the subject.

About this title

Review:

"Forgery, perhaps, is the sincerest form of artistic flattery: Zhang Daqian s now-classic fakes are wonderfully fulsome in that regard. Yet this giant of 20th-century Chinese art created works of immense originality too and these are every bit as faithful to tradition in their way. Contact with the West; revolutionary tumult; war ... modern history has had its influence, yet so too do older cycles the seasons; passing generations; life and death. So, Fu Baoshi s figures give a 20th-century spin to those of the 1st millennium; Liu Dan depicts a regenerative self-reduplicating natural world in which rocks represent the stem cells of a living landscape. Eternal questions are forever asked; familiar answers given fresh interpretations with audacity and flair." --Michael Kerrigan, Saturday Scotsman

"Modern Chinese ink paintings examines the world of China's twentieth-century artists... showcased throughout are the amazing works of artists whose styles adapted hugely in a century of great change... whether reacting to the West or to the country's shifting politics, or to nostalgia for the imperial dynasties, it's an intriguing and often beautiful period of Chinese art." --Traveller Magazine --Traveller Magazine

About the Author:

Clarissa von Spee is a curator at the British Museum specialising in Chinese paintings and Central Asian antiquities. She is the author of a number of publications including The Printed Image in China: From the 8th to the 21st Centuries and Wu Hufan - A Twentieth Century Art Connoisseur in Shanghai.

About this edition

• Publisher: British Museum Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0714124702
• ISBN 13: 9780714124704
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128