Contemporary Art

In recent weeks Ai Weiwei has become embroiled, yet again, in apparent controversy.

The art world has embraced the evolution of Western art, but when it comes to China, we seem stuck in the past. A new exhibit at the Met wants to shake up these stereotypes.

Earlier this year, we invited the artist Ai Weiwei to visit the United States to take part in the New Yorker Festival, held in early October. At the time, the Chinese government had barred Ai from traveling abroad—an unofficial form of punishment...

Mr. Ai, who seems to lose his sense of humor only rarely, has characterized his increasingly dangerous jousting with the Chinese government as a kind of performance art. 

Ai Weiwei will probably be regarded as the most important artist of the past decade. He is certainly its most newsworthy and arguably its most inspiring. Over the repressions of Chinese authorities, he has used a wide range of resources to broadcast...

Last May, Liu Xiaodong and a team of assistants traveled to Hotan, a town in the Xinjiang region of China, where he painted monumental portraits of local Uyghur jade miners while a documentarian filmed the entire process. The project is on view at...

Although meeting with Western media is not without its dangers, Zhao Zhao doesn't hesitate for a second. It takes him 40 minutes to get from his studio on the outskirts of Beijing to the downtown gallery showing his work, and Zhao arrives...

Considering that their nation is preparing so stealthily to dominate the future, China’s artists seem strangely anxious about what that future may bring. But that is as it should be. We search in vain for signs of nervousness among politicians and...

Lars Nittve will never forget the first time he visited a museum alone. “There was this enormous sculpture of a woman and you walked into her between her legs,” he recalls. “It was like a museum within a museum there. For a 13-year-old boy, that was...

If you pay attention either to China or the art market, you’ve probably heard the story: China last year became – according to art industry experts – the world’s largest market for art and antiques, surpassing the USA. Well, here’s a shocker: it isn...

Years ahead of its anticipated opening date, Hong Kong’s visual-arts museum M+ received a significant boost on Tuesday when collector Uli Sigg, a former Swiss ambassador to China, donated the majority of his Chinese contemporary art collection to...

“The art of the book” / books-as-art / artists’ books / “bookworks” / book-objects.... The realm loosely bounded by these terms is characteristically amorphous. Book art’s aura of intrigue and charm hinges on the intimacy associated with reading,...

Following the whiff of recent blue-chip vendors, Shanghai-based Pearl Lam Galleries (PLG), formerly called Contrasts, opened a space in the Peddar Street building in May, representing a return of sorts for their eponymous socialite cum curator and...

Record-breaking Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi looks back on his time at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts and explains his obsession with calligraphy in this short by Hong Kong-based filmmaker Ringo Tang. Propelled onto the global stage after one work...