The 2010 China International Gallery Exposition closed this afternoon. Although the critics were not impressed, I’ve shared a few personal highlights shared below, my interpretation of “fear” being loose.
Classic “horror flick” fear. For only ten RMB, you too can buy the respect you deserve as a collector of “Chinese art” (represented in vast majority at CIGE). Mr. Sigg’s eyeball-less mug could masks will send shivers up any seasoned “Freddy” fan and is sure to fool even the most experienced gallerist. (more…)

The following is a complete list of Gao Minglu’s publications in English and Chinese, with synopsis (when available) and table of contents in both English and Chinese, to reveal Chinese language information, click 中文 to your right.

1991    主编《中国当代美术史》editor of “The History of Contemporary Chinese Art”  [Chinese only]

Not Available

1997《中国当代美术史（1985—1986）》“The History of Contemporary Chinese Art (1985-1986)” [Chinese only]

《中国当代美术史》是建国后第一部当代美术断代史。它从历史哲学的理论框架出发，对从“文革”结束到八十年代中期整个十年的中国 当代美术思潮、流派、风格、作品进行了概括、梳理和评析。

目录：
第一章短暂的回顾——新时期的美术概观
第二章运动的端绪
第三章理性之潮
第四章生命之流
第五章超越回归后85的新潮美术
第六章传统与现代的选择
第七章风格与多元
第八章现代美术。

“The History of Contemporary Chinese Art” is the first period history of contemporary art in China since the People’s Republic of China. It uses a historical and philosophical framework to summarize, sort out, and analyze Chinese art trends, movements, styles and works from the close of the “Cultural Revolution” through the entire decade in the 1980s. (translation mine)

TOC
1. A short retrospective––concepts of art in a new era
2. Clues on a movement
3. Tides of rationality
4. The current of life
5. The ’85 New Wave beyond return
6. The choice of traditional or modern
7. Style and plurality
8. Modern art
(translation mine)
高名潞作为1989年中国现代艺术大展的筹划人之一，对80年代现代艺术在中国的肇始及发展了熟于心。90年代，他一直在美国做 访问学者。回顾这本作者自85年至96年的文集，他的一些既定看法对于当今的前卫艺术仍然有着不可忽视的意义。他所提出的“理性绘画”在90年代已经终 结，而“论毛泽东的大众艺术模式”文中恰好点出了90年代风行的“政治波普”的内在渊源。

目录：
一、新、老传统：自我完善与集体乌托邦
中国画的历史与未来（上篇）
中国现代美术发展背景之展开
论毛泽东的大众艺术模式

二、后文革：形式唯美与伤感的人道主义
近年油画发展中的流派
乌托邦的幻灭
一个创作时代的终结
从唯美主义到新学院主义
风情与超风情

三、作为运动而非流派的中国前卫艺术：
反乌托邦的乌托邦
当代绘画中的群体和个体意识
三个层次的比较
’85美术运动
高名潞访谈录
新潮美术在中国当代美术格局中的地位及意义
关于理性绘画
前卫与人文――’85运动中的反乌托邦的乌托邦
从艺术的批判到批判的艺术
异域文化战场上的挑战与冲突
走向后现代主义的思考――致任戬信
中国艺术的战场在中国本土
媚俗・权力・共犯

四、前卫艺术与现代意识
新洋务与新国粹
现代意识与’85美术运动
’85美术运动的“文化前卫”意识
文化与美术・美术与文化艺术的边界
雕塑的空间功能及类型
当对话媚俗时，我们需要一种心境的大化
一切历史都是当代史：作为一般历史学的当代美术史

后记
《中国前卫艺术》篇目脱稿期及发表情况一览表

As one of the curators of the 1989 “China Avant-garde Exhibition,” Gao Minglu has a fervent interest in the onset and development of modern [sic] art in China during the 1980s. Gao was a visiting scholar in the United States throughout the 1990s. Looking back on his collected writings from ’85 to ’96, some of his established opinions on today’s avant-garde art still hold significance that cannot be ignored. The “Rational Painting” that he proposed already came to an end in the 1990s, and in his “Discussing Mao Zedong’s Model for Public Art” he accurately points out the intrinsic origins of the “political pop” style en vogue during the 1990s. (translation mine)

TOC
One: New, Old traditions: self-improvement and the collective Utopia
The history and future of Chinese painting (part one)
The background unfolds to Chinese modern art and its development
Discussing Mao Zedong’s Model for Public Art

Two: Post Cultural Revolution: The humanism of Aestheticism and Scars
Painting schools in recent oil painting development
The disillusionment of utopia
The end of a creative era
From Aestheticism to New Academicism
“Style” and “ultra-style”

Three: the Chinese avant-garde as a movement, not a school
Anti-utopian Utopia
Collective and Individual consciousness in contemporary painting
Comparison on three levels
The ’85 Movement
A discussion with Gao Minglu
The status and significance of New Wave art within the structure of Contemporary art in China
On Rational Painting
Avant-garde and humanities––Anti-Utopian Utopia in the ’85 Movement
From art criticism to critical art
The conflicts and challenges of an foreign culture battlefield
Moving towards postmodernism––a letter to Ren Jian
The Chinese cultural battlefield on native soil
Kitsch, Power, Complicity

Four: Avant-garde art and modern consciousness
New Yangwu and New “National Essence” (guocui)
Modern Consciousness and the ’85 Movement
Consciousness of the “cultural vanguard” and the ’85 Movement
Culture and Fine Art, on the margins of fine art and the cultural arts
The spatial function and forms of sculpture
When we are in dialogue, we need to broaden our hearts
All history is contemporary history: contemporary art history as general history

Postscript
“Chinese Avant-Garde Art” published list of articles and titles
(translation mine)

1998 “Inside Out: New Chinese Art”  [English only]

Inside Out is the catalog for a groundbreaking exhibition organized by the Asia Society in New York, with venues also in San Francisco, Seattle, and Monterrey, Mexico. It discusses the first major presentation in the West of contemporary Chinese art and is the most important critique of the field to date. As they pursue their personal visions, Chinese artists tread between two extremes: embracing or rejecting their classical tradition. It is not easy for a Chinese artist to break away from such a rich treasury. For example, many works in the show deal with the written word–that most valued of China’s art forms, with its dual connotations of calligraphic beauty and obsessive ritualistic copying. Song Dong writes on a flat stone with water that quickly evaporates; Xu Bing invents witty, new, but meaningless characters. Understanding a work may require acquaintance with the classics: a suspended boat impaled with arrows harks back to a third-century general who sent straw-filled boats down-river to attract hostile fire, retrieved the boats, and collected his enemies’ arrows to use against them. There is an implicit anti-West message here. Other works, including installation, video, and performance art, have universal connotations that owe nothing to Chinese conventions. Contemporary Chinese art has been around for less than 20 years, but the freshness and variety of the work described in this book indicate that an original new force has joined the global art community. (John Stevenson via amazon.com)

TOC
Towards a Transnational Modernity: An overview of Inside Out (Gao Minglu)
Across Trans-Chinese Landscapes: Reflections on Contemporary Chinese Cultures (Leo Ou-Fan Lee)
The Post-Ideological Avant-Garde (Norman Bryson)
Ruins, Fragmentation and the Chinese Modern/Postmodern (Wu Hung)
Beyond The Middle Kingdom: An Insider’s View (Chang Tsong-Zung)
From Elite to Small Man: The Many Faces of a Transitional Avant-Garde in Mainland China (Gao Minglu)
Striving for a Cultural Identity in the Maze of Power Struggles: A Brief Introduction to the development of contemporary art in Taiwan (Victoria Y. Lu)
Found in Transit: Hong Kong Art in a Time of Change (David Clarke)
Strategies of Survival in the Third Space: A Conversation on the Situation of Chinese Artists overseas in the 1990s (Hou Hanru and Gao Minglu)

2001《世纪乌托邦：大陸前衛藝術》（台湾） “Century Utopia: Avant-garde Art on the Mainland” (Taiwan) [Chinese only]

Not Available

2003《中国及多主义》”Chinese Maximalism” [Chinese only]中国的“抽象艺术”究竟发展如何？中国的艺术家们又是如何理解“抽象艺术”的呢？《中国极多主义》将“极多主义”作为中 国当代“抽象艺术”的一种基本方法论，并以此展开了对中国式的“抽象艺术”的审视分析。想要了解中国的“抽象艺术”，不妨翻开这本——《中国极多主义》。
《中国极多主义》从当代艺术的背景、中国传统的思维方式和与西方抽象艺术的差异等不同角度分析了这些中国“抽象艺术”的“极多主义”特点。作者从艺术家的 具体观念和作品出发，从作品本身与创作背景之间的语境关系的角度去剖析这一独特的艺术现象及其发生的“意义”。作者指出，中国“极多主义”艺术既不是一种 自我表现，也不是一种对外部世界的“抽象”再现，而是这些艺术家的艺术哲学和生活哲学的不可分的一部分。它是传统和当代经验的融合，是建树具有“中国性” 的艺术方法论的探索结晶。“极多主义”以其极端的“重复”、“过程”、“数量”等语言形式对当代文化艺术中至今仍然充斥着的庸俗语义学时尚进行了消解性的 批判。同时，“极多主义”艺术也启发我们去思考建立当代新的艺术本位意识和艺术家人格意识的重要性和迫切性。

目录：
中国“极多主义”——一种另类“形而上”艺术
前言：中国“极多主义”的定义及其发生背景
中国“极多主义”的方法论批判
结论：“极多主义”是一种可以共享的方法论
插图目录
彩色图版
彩色图版目录
艺术家简历
后记

To what extent has Chinese “abstract art” developed? How do Chinese artists understand “abstract art”? “Chinese Maximalism” takes “maximalism” as a basic foundational methodology of “abstract art,” and uses it to develop a survey analysis of Chinese “abstraction” in art. Those who want to understand “abstract art” in China would do well to read this book––“Chinese Maximalism.”

“Chinese Maximalism” analyzes the characteristics of these “Chinese” “maximalists” through the different angles of contemporary background, Chinese traditional thought and its differences from Western abstract art. The author takes off from specific theories and works, and from the angles of the contextual relationship between the works themselves and their creative contexts, analyze this unique artistic phenomenon and its “significance.” The author points out, Chinese “Maximalist” art is not a personal expression, and neither is it an “abstract” representation of the exterior world, but is an inseparable part of these artists’ artistic philosophy and life philosophy. It is an exploration of the crystallization of an an artistic method that contributes to the fusion of the traditional and contemporary. Until today, “Chinese Maximalism” and extreme repetition, process, quantity and other linguistic forms filled with dismissive criticisms of a semantic fashion. At the same time, art inspired us to think about the establishment of a new contemporary art and the importance of and sense of urgency in artists’ personal awareness. (translation mine)

TOC:
Chinese Maximalism: An Alternative “Metaphysical Art”
An Introduction: The Definition of Maximalism and its Artistic Context
Critiques on the Methodology of Chinese Maximalism
Conclusion: Maximalism is a Methodology to be Shared
Postscripts

  The title alone of Barbara Pollack’s part exposé, part romp through the Chinese art world seems enough to identify the author’s New Yorker status. But she wears her outsider status like a badge, humbly poising herself to profile art world power players and make a broad outline of the yet infantile Chinese art infrastructure. As an American art critic covering contemporary art from China since the late 1990s, but who remains physically and metaphysically rooted in the Western hemisphere, her observations strive to be impartial and critical, as she wields her pen not on Chinese art objects per se, but the people and the institutions that beget them.

Her reporting skills, and relatively guanxi-free status among what can seem like a tiny, and steamy art world in China help her to collect and present enough information to capture the complexity and scratch the surface of this microcosm. She dives into personal impressions of Ai Weiwei with relish and bares her astonishment at dubious museum shows––all in-between Benson & Hedges and ladies’ nights out with one of her gatekeepers to the Chinese art world, the gallerist Meg Maggio.

The Wild, Wild East isn’t quite a Seven Days in the Art World for the Chinese contemporary art scene, but Pollock smartly plays her “foreign journalist” credentials to work her way to the highest echelons of Beijing and Shanghai’s art world power structure. While every “insider” will surely find points to dispute, they are equally sure to take away something new; newcomers or casual readers will find it a highly readable introduction, especially with regard to the art market.

Pollock well knows, the laowai status within China can be a double-edged sword, and many people have obviously worked on maintaining their “face,” never quite withholding information, but surely not “airing their dirty linens” before the foreign journalist. Although she doesn’t address this directly, Pollock’s self-awareness and sensitivity to her dilemma is reflected in divulging portrayals of her translator, Zhang Fang (also the wife of artist Wang Qingsong, whose intermittent commentary was valuable and entertaining).

Approaching this behemoth––the very complex, very foreign rising art world in the East––takes moxie, which this native New Yorker indubitably reflects in her first book. The Wild, Wild East wavers between dish and reportage, and is unquestionably the most ambitious attempt to date at a narrative account of the light-speed developments in Chinese world of contemporary art, in either English or Mandarin.

Barbara will launch her book at the Bookworm on the 22nd, and at Beijing’s UCCA on April 24.

Review from artforum.com (in English here), and in Chinese 尹秀珍的作品“软绵绵”的气质源自艺术家由此而成名的材料：二手服装的面料。不过艺术家的女性特质在她创造的“可进入”的空间里可谓达到了顶点；这一概念在纽约现代艺术博物馆最近展出的《集体潜意识》(2007）中得到了更深的递进。在这件作品里，观众被邀请进入一条拼凑面料构成的毛毛虫里，旁边是一辆被锯开了的具有怀旧感的中式“面包车”的车头车尾。而《集体潜意识》五彩缤纷的空间里，则是一些散放在地面的旧凳子，由此引发了一种共同的集体经验。而在北京的展览里，尹秀珍对交通运输手段的兴趣似乎更偏向于对人类身体的探索和对个人层面的经验培养上。在《思想》（2009）里，衣领和袖子从巨大的蓝色大脑雕塑表面伸出或吊下来；这些被废弃的衣服好似试图逃出集体意识的灵魂掌控。在海马的附近，这件雕塑还有一个小口，个人可以从中进入到里面，对这一结构精心的金属框架进行更深一步的思考。《皮立方》（2009）与展览名字“第二张皮”相呼应,它是人类表皮被放大的截面，也是用旧衣服做出来的；人们不禁将其与不远处的透明盒装的粉斑点肉质海绵联系起来。在《高速路》（2009）里，缩小化的高速公路剖面是用旧衣铺就而成的，同时又运用了特制的真实灯具与护栏。此刻，尹秀珍以往所表现的交通状况被一番凄凉的景象所替代。作品里悲哀凝重的葬礼意味在此显现出来，被抛弃的旧衣 ——依然是她最具说服力的材料——暗示着曾经穿过这些衣服的人们已经化成了这黑色的路面和白色的线条本身。Inside of Thoughts, 《思想》内景more works below (more…)