The decade of the 1980s was historical to Chinese art. It was a period when the foundation of mainstream art, mainly Socialist Realism, had been fundamentally shaken, as new art, represented by the avant-garde movement, emerged nationwide, changing and reshaping the topography of contemporary Chinese art. China’s avant-garde movement in this decade will be discussed in the talk. As a participant and critic of the movement, the speaker will examine the initiative, the evolution, and the eruption of China’s avant-garde from the late 1970s, when Cultural Revolution ended, to the year of 1989, when the monumental exhibition China/Avant-Garde was held, and the Tiananmen Incident occurred, terminating the movement

About the speaker:

Zhou Yan, critic, received his B.A. in philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University; M.A. in art history, Central Academy of Fine Arts, both in China; Ph.D. in art history, Ohio State University, USA. He has co-authored A History of Chinese Contemporary Art: 1985-1986 (1991, Chinese), authored Cultural Odyssey: Wenda Gu and His Art (2015, English), written a series of critical articles on Chinese art and culture (in Chinese and English) and co-organized the exhibition China/Avant-Garde in Beijing (1989). He is currently an adjunct professor at Kenyon College, Ohio, teaching history of Chinese art. His book, A History of Contemporary Chinese Art: 1949-Present, will be published in 2019.