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This book decodes the rhetoric of Chinas turbulent decade, a time of both brutal iconoclasm and radical experimentation in the arts, to offer new insights into works that have transcended their times.
Using a unique interdisciplinary, cultural-institutional analysis, Politics of Control is the first comprehensive study of how, in the early decades of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party reshaped people’s minds using multiple methods of control. With newly available archival material, internal circulars, memoirs, interviews, and site visits, the book explores the fascinating world of mass media, book publishing, education, religion, parks, museums, and architecture during the formative years of the republic. When the Communists assumed power in 1949, they projected themselves as not only military victors but also as peace restorers and cultural protectors. Believ...
This study explores the interplay between money, status, politics and art collecting in the public and private lives of members of the wealthy trading classes in Brighton during the period 1840–1914. Chapters focus on the collecting practices of five rich and upwardly mobile Victorians: William Coningham (1815–84), Henry Hill (1813–82), Henry Willett (1823–1905) and Harriet Trist (1816–96) and her husband John Hamilton Trist (1812–91). The book examines the relationship between the wealth of these would-be members of the Brighton bourgeoisie and the social and political meanings of their art collections paid for out of fortunes made from sugar, tailoring, beer and wine. It explores their luxury lifestyles and civic activities including the making of Brighton museum and art gallery, which reflected a paradoxical mix of patrician and liberal views, of aristocratic aspiration and radical rhetoric. It also highlights the centrality of the London art world to their collecting facilitated by the opening of the London to Brighton railway line in 1841. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies and British history.
Anxiety Aesthetics is the first book to consider a prehistory of contemporaneity in China through the emergent creative practices in the aftermath of the Mao era. Arguing that socialist residues underwrite contemporary Chinese art, complicating its theorization through Maoism, Jennifer Dorothy Lee traces a selection of historical events and controversies in late 1970s and early 1980s Beijing. Lee offers a fresh critical frame for doing symptomatic readings of protest ephemera and artistic interventions in the Beijing Spring social movement of 1978–80, while exploring the rhetoric of heated debates waged in institutional contexts prior to the '85 New Wave. Lee demonstrates how socialist aesthetic theories and structures continued to shape young artists' engagement with both space and selfhood and occupied the minds of figures looking to reform the nation. In magnifying this fleeting moment, Lee provides a new historical foundation for the unprecedented global exposure of contemporary Chinese art today.
Revolutionary Stagecraft draws on a rich corpus of literary, historical, and technical materials to reveal a deep entanglement among technological modernization, political agendas, and the performing arts in modern China. This unique approach to Chinese theater history combines a close look at plays themselves, performance practices, technical theater details, and behind-the-scenes debates over “how to” make theater amid the political upheavals of China’s 20th century. The book begins at a pivotal moment in the 1920s—when Chinese theater artists began to import, use, and write about modern stage equipment—and ends in the 1980s when China's scientific and technological boom began. B...
This volume focuses on the unstudied geographic margins of Dada, delving into the roots of Dada in Israel, Romania, Poland, and North America. Contributors consider some of the practices and experiments that were conceived a century ago, surfaced in art throughout the twentieth century, and are still relevant today. Unearthing its Israeli origins, examining Dadaist expressions in Poland, and shedding light on overlooked facets of Dadaist art in Romania and North America, the authors cast a spotlight on the less-explored geographical peripheries of Dada. The book is organized around four thematic trajectories—space, language, materiality, and reception—which are dissected through the lens of micro-histories. Recognizing the continuing validity of questions raised by Dadaist artists, this volume argues that Dada persists as an ongoing endeavor—a continual reexamination of the fundamental tenets of art and its ever-evolving potential manifestations. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, modernism, and history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
This study provides new interpretations of the little-known but fascinating Palazzo Trinci frescoes, relating them for the first time both to their physical context and to their social, political, and cultural environment. Chapters show how a humanist agenda subverted the historical and mythical associations more frequently used to promote powerful families, to point the Trinci family in new directions. It also shows how the artists involved adapted established civic, religious, and chivalric imagery in support of these ideas. The book argues that the resulting decorations are highly unusual for the period, in their serious political and social purpose. Positioning the Trinci as bringers of peace, not war, the family is now associated with culture and education and presented as willing to encourage debate about the character of the virtuous ruler and the nature of good government. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history and Renaissance studies.
This book examines the rising global prominence of China’s art market throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To understand the far-reaching impact of Chinese art on global consumption, this book traces the shift from regional markets to global markets. It asks how the Chinese art market re-emerged from its politicized past, innovated within the private economy boom, remained resilient despite the global financial crisis, and flourished on the global stage despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, it argues that cultural entrepreneurship enabled Chinese art professionals to reinvent their space and to participate in the global artworld.
An insightful examination of the political and economic ties between China and Latin America from the 1950s to the present This book explores the impact of Chinese growth on Latin America since the early 2000s. Roughly twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs headed to the Western Hemisphere in search of profits and commodities, specifically those that China lacked and that some Latin American countries held in abundance—copper, iron ore, crude oil, soybeans, and fish meal. Focusing largely on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru, Carol Wise traces the evolution of political and economic ties between China and these countries and analyzes how success has varied by sector, project, and country. She also assesses the costs and benefits of Latin America’s recent pivot toward Asia. Wise argues that while opportunities for closer economic integration with China are seemingly infinite, so are the risks, and contends that the best outcomes have stemmed from endeavors where the rule of law, regulatory oversight, and a clear strategy exist on the Latin American side.
MAO Zedong was a Chinese communist leader and founder of the People’s Republic of China. He developed his own ideology and methodology known as Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought, and his thought has a great influence in China or even overseas. This book aims at bringing together a group of scholars to address the uses of Mao in China (PRC) today with special reference to the Bo Xilai case. It also provides insights and detail on how and what we know about modern China. Contributing authors, including a number of French scholars, illustrate how Maoism influences and engages in government, business sector or social life. This timely volume will be of considerable interest to scholars, journalists, and those keen to better understand the changing values in China today.