A groundbreaking look at art made in China during the Cultural Revolution Although numerous books on the Cultural Revolution have been published, they do not analyze the profound shift in aesthetic values that occurred in China after the Communists took power. This fascinating book is the first to focus on artwork produced from the 1950s to the 1970s, when Mao Zedong was in leadership, and argues that important contributions were made during this period that require fuller consideration in Chinese art history, especially with relevance to the contemporary world. 
 Previously, historians have tended to dismiss the art of the Cultural Revolution as pure propaganda. The authors of this volume (historians, art historians, and artists) argue that while much art produced during this time was infused with politics, and individual creativity and displays of free thought were sometimes stifled and even punished, it is short sighted to overlook the aesthetic sophistication, diversity, and accessibility of much of the imagery. 
 Bringing together more than 200 extraordinary artworks, including oil paintings, ink scroll paintings, artist sketchbooks, posters, and objects from daily life, as well as primary documentation that has not been published outside of China or seen since the mid-20th century, this invaluable volume sheds new light on one of the most controversial and critical periods in history.

Art and China's Revolution

Arts & Photography

Chiu, Melissa

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Created in partnership with Asia Society Museum in conjunction with a major retrospective, this is the first comprehensive monograph on the work of art superstar Yoshitomo Nara. It assembles 20 years worth of paintings, sculptures, and drawings that map the evolution of one of the most influential and internationally renowned artists working today. The book and exhibition will draw connections between Nara’s work and the sensibilities of youth subcultures worldwide, focusing on themes of alienation and rebellion, particularly in relation to rock and punk music, the inspiration and subject of many of Nara’s works. Featuring artworks that have never before been exhibited, this is the book Nara’s legion of devoted followers have been waiting for. Praise for Yoshimoto Nara: "Nara's work has an irresistible appeal well represented here." --Publishers Weekly

Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool

Tezuka, Miwako

Harry N. Abrams

Sarah Sze erects vertiginous sculptural universes from common consumer products such as aspirin, foam, ladders, Q-Tips, plastic spoons, notepads, trash baskets, thimbles and wrapped candies. Always responsive to surrounding space, Sze’s rhizomatic works are sometimes described as installation rather than sculpture, but an equally close or closer relationship occurs with drawing, the focus of the Asia Society Museum’s major Sze exhibition opening in December 2011, and this new hardcover volume published for the occasion. Infinite Line is the first publication to address the relationship of Sze’s sculpture to drawing, and to explore the influence of East Asian artistic traditions on her sensibility. “How do you make a sculpture that acts like a drawing?” Sze asks with these works. “How do you make a drawing that acts like a sculpture?” Born in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, Sarah Sze was initially trained in architecture. She received a BA from Yale University (1991) and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts (1997). Sze has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions including at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art, and in the 48th Venice Bienniale and the 2009 Biennale de Lyon. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2003. Currently based in New York, she teaches at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Sarah Sze: Infinite Line

Sassen, Saskia

Asia Society Museum

From a distance, Yun-Fei Ji's traditional brush paintings hark back to the atmospheric landscapes of the Sung Dynasty painters. Step closer though, and Ji's mists are revealed to be toxic clouds, and his craggy mountains are shown to be piles of overflowing garbage and abandoned vehicles. His misty imagery also includes stylized abstractions that may or may not refer to intestines, explosions or bubbling slime. Using traditional materials (inks, Chinese brushes and handmade mulberry paper) Ji employs age-old methods to illuminate historic and contemporary concerns. This full-color monograph/catalogue includes a new thematic group of six large-scale works made especially for the exhibition. Multi-page gatefolds of these paintings are included.

Yun-Fei Ji: The Empty City

Lin, Tan

Volk, Gregory

Ha, Paul

Individual Artists

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

The remarkable phenomenon of the twenty-first-century art world is contemporary Asian art. Fueled by a newfound openness in the East, and by an economic boom that has promoted a vibrant cultural confidence, art made in Asia or by Asian artists since the 1990s has become dynamic and exciting, acknowledged and appreciated by collectors, critics, and curators. This authoritative, wide-ranging volume surveys the contemporary art of Asia, examining key issues and themes: art’s relationship to history and tradition, its engagement with politics, society, and the state, its exploration of consumerism and popular culture, and its interplay with the urban environment. Artists range from the established—Nam June Paik, On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Cai Guo-Qiang, Takashi Murakami—to the emerging—Indonesian cartoon artist Wedhar Riyadi, Mongolian site-specific artist Chaolun Baatar, Pakistani graffiti artist Naiza Khan, Vietnamese-American photo artist Dinh Q. Le, and many more. Together, these artists represent the range of Asian countries, from Indonesia to Japan, Uzbekistan to South Korea, Iran to China. More than 230 sumptuous illustrations capture the full scope of the artists’ practice, from calligraphy, painting, sculpture, and photography to performance, installation, video, and Internet art. Complete with comprehensive biographies, Asian Art Now is both a superb critical overview and the consummate visual reference.

Asian Art Now

Benjamin, Genocchio

The Monacelli Press

Published by Hawai'i Contemporary on the occasion of the Hawai'i Triennial 2022 (HT22), Pacific Century--E Ho&#699;omau no Moananui&#257;kea examines key art historical backgrounds and contemporary discussions on art, expanding the frame of reference for the Asia-Pacific region. Essays by HT22 co-curators lay out the critical approaches that shaped the framework of the Triennial around the fluid concept of a Pacific Century, while a selection of previously published seminal texts by artists and scholars reflect upon the field of art history in the region. Also included is a newly commissioned conversation with Homi K. Bhabha, illuminating his theoretical criticism that continues to carve out a new discursive space where the marginalized find their agency. Participating Triennial artists--from Hawai'i, Asia-Pacific, and beyond--are highlighted in a dedicated section with an original introductory text, work information, and images. Pacific Century--E Ho&#699;omau no Moananui&#257;kea will be an essential resource for critical exploration of contemporary art in Asia-Pacific at large.

Pacific Century―E Ho‘omau no Moananuiākea: Hawai'i Triennial 2022

Broderick, Drew Kahu'āina

Hawai'i Contemporary

This first book to substantially focus on China's artistic diaspora--and to differentiate it from the artistic community inside China--assembles the work of 14 artists who emigrated in the lead-up to the 1989 protest at Tiananmen Square. Now settled in New York, Paris and Sydney, over the past decade these artists--including Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu Bing, Wenda Gu, Zhang Huan, Huang Yong Ping and Chen Zhen--have become leading international figures. They have shown at major American institutions and have had important solo exhibits. For example, Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder work has recently appeared in solo shows at Tate Modern in London and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Huang Yong Ping's Walker Art Center retrospective recently went on international tour. Breakout features in-depth analyses of this important group's work, much of it based on interviews with the artists. The book's editor and author, Melissa Chiu, is a leading authority on Asian contemporary art. She was until recently the Asia Society's Curator for Contemporary Asian and Asian-American art; she is now its Museum Director. A Getty Curatorial Research Fellow, Chiu has organized more than 30 exhibitions, published widely in journals, magazines and catalogues, and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China

Charta

Zhang Huan (born in China in 1965 and currently living in Shanghai) may be best known for his first performance, which sparked the cancellation of the group show at which it was staged. Of that encounter with China's censorship machinery, he says, "They had me write a self-criticism and pay a fine for my 'misdeed,' promising that the exhibition would be reopened. I did what they said only for the sake of the show. But it was never opened." He continued exploring performance in private events--once testing the relationship between physical endurance and spiritual tranquility by covering himself with honey and lying in a squalid public toilet covered in flies--but he has never held another public performance in China. Zhang has been exploring cross-cultural life, and lately making introspective and even spiritual work, invoking the temporality of material existence by lying on a bed of ice surrounded by dogs at New York's P.S.1, for example. His critically acclaimed work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Saatchi Collection, the MacArthur Foundation and Yale University. Copublished with the Asia Society.

Zhang Huan: Altered States

Heartney, Eleanor

Bu, Kong

Charta/Asia Society

One of only a few internationally recognized female artists from China, Lin Tianmiao (born 1961) is known for her innovative use of thread and embroidery as both medium and subject matter in her sculptures, photographs, videos and installations. When visiting China, after having lived in New York for most of her life, Tianmiao was reminded of the time spent in her childhood helping her mother sew clothes for the family. Prompted by this memory, the artist created a practice she calls "thread winding," where she winds silk or cotton thread around an object until it is completely covered and eventually transformed. Bound Unbound, which accompanies the artist's exhibition at the Asia Society in New York, surveys for the first time the past 20 years of Tianmiao's work, including an interview with the artist and essays by leading scholars in Chinese contemporary art, Melissa Chiu and Guo Xiaoyan.

Lin Tianmiao: Bound Unbound

Xiaoyan, Guo

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