Lorenzo Sassoli

The fairly brief introductory essays discuss the rapid change in art in China since the death of Mao Zedong, and the influences that have fuelled it. Each artist featured in the book has a paragraph’s worth of introduction, and there is a discussion on China’s Photographic Painting. The illustrations begin on page 25 and run through to page 297; the book concludes with a brief biography for each artist. There is no contents page and no index.

The book features seventeen artists, including Zhang Xiaogang with his passive faces and Zeng Fanzhi’s mask paintings. However notably missing are Yue Minjun and his smiling face paintings, Tang Zhigang’s “children” paintings, Liu Xiaodong’s very western looking work, and Cai Guo-Qiang whose set of fourteen drawings sold recently (November 2007) at double its estimate at over 8.5 million USD. But perhaps that in itself is indicative of the rapid changes in art in China today, and the artists represented do give some indication of the wide range of work, Realist, Pop influenced and more (but no Abstract included here), that is being produced in China today

This large format book itself is very impressive in appearance, the illustrations are all in full-colour and almost all full-page size with a few double page spreads, occasionally presented against a black ground; there is probably a total in excess of 250 illustrations in all. It makes for a very handsome looking book, but a little short on information.… (mehr)