ChinaFile Recommends
01.06.17How ‘Bambi’ Got Its Look From 1,000-Year-Old Chinese Art
New York Times
The Chinese-American artist Tyrus Wong, who died last week at 106, was an incredibly accomplished painter, illustrator, calligrapher and Hollywood studio artist. But as Margalit Fox wrote in her obituary for Mr. Wong, “because of the marginalization...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.05.15A Painting of China’s First Lady, Before a Rise to Stardom
New York Times
On the exhibition notes, the painting of Peng Liyuan by Jin Shangyi is identified only as “a well-known singer.”
ChinaFile Recommends
06.02.1425 Years After the Tiananmen Crackdown
Creative Time Reports
The Asian American Arts Centre responded to the June 1989 events with an open-call exhibition of artworks related to the uprising and its suppression called “China: June 4, 1989.” To commemorate the event's 25th anniversary, Creative Time...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.25.14James Cahill, Influential Authority on Chinese Art, Dies at 87
New York Times
James Cahill was one of the foremost authorities on Chinese art whose interpretations of Chinese painting for the West influenced generations of scholars.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.25.13Line by Line, the Artist Luo Ying Alters Chinese Tradition
New York Times
Luo upturns centuries of tradition and offers a daring rethink of the meaning of traditional Chinese painting which has struggled for the past century with how to re-invent itself amid a haunting sense of being out of step with the modern world...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Zhang Huan’s Colorful Skull Paintings at the Pace Gallery
New York Times
“Unlike Western masters, who will stick with one style their entire life until they reach maturity, I am in a constant state of transformation,” said Mr. Zhang, whose new oil paintings, which modeled after Tibetan masks, are a stark departure from...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.18.13Zao Wou-Ki, Seen As Modern Art Master, Dies At 92
New York Times
Zao Wou-ki, one of the few Chinese-born painters to be considered a master of 20th-century modern art in the West, died at his home in Switzerland on April 9, 2013. He was 92.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.12The Hotan Project
ArtForum
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...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.20.12Ancient Havens of Reflection and Renewal
New York Times
"Daily I stroll contentedly in my garden. There is a gate, but it is always shut." In the early fifth century, the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, who called himself Tao Qian, Recluse Tao, thus described his life. Born into a politically...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.09.12An Art Star’s Creative Crisis
Wall Street Journal
For the past year, China's most expensive living artist hasn't been allowed to paint, doctor's orders. Zhang Xiaogang, age 54, a Beijing-based painter whose hypnotic portraits have topped $10 million at auction, recently suffered a...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.21.12Q&A: Shi Zhiying's "Infinite Lawn"
Randian
Shi Zhiying (b.1979; lives and works in Shanghai) is a painter known for her stark black-and-white paintings of rather uniform vistas — the wide, open sea, Zen sand gardens, blades of grass that occupy the viewer's horizons. In her latest...
The NYRB China Archive
04.05.12A Master in the Shadows
from New York Review of Books
How should one assess the best ways to survive in a revolution? What exactly is the tipping point between obedience and outright sycophancy? When does one try to hold on to the values that gave meaning to one’s upbringing, and when is it best to...
The NYRB China Archive
12.03.09Specters of a Chinese Master
from New York Review of Books
1.Luo Ping, who lived from 1733 to 1799, was perfectly placed by time and circumstance to view the shifts in fortune that were so prominent in China at that period. He grew up in Yangzhou, a prosperous city on the Grand Canal, just north of the...