The Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory featured course:
ARTH 361—Chinese Modern and Contemporary Art
2019 Winter Term 1 (Tuesdays/Thursdays, 2:00–3:30), with Dr. Julia Orell
This course employs the framework of transcultural movements and globalization to account for the history of Chinese art and visual culture from the (early) modern to the contemporary period, both within China and internationally. From the Qing empire and its inclusive yet also expansionist ambitions, through the Opium wars and foreign treaty ports, to the Chinese revolution(s) and the Maoist and post-Maoist era, the course explores how Chinese artists and institutions appropriated media and artistic styles from other parts of the world (copperplate, oil painting, photography, socialist realism, German expressionism, Pop Art, etc.) and how Chinese art and visual culture spread across the globe from Chinoiserie to the global art market of the late twentieth century. Throughout the course questions about the conditions of modernity, modernism, and contemporaneity and about the “Chinese-ness” of Chinese art in a globalizing world will be foregrounded.
ARTH 361 counts toward Faculty of Arts upper-level credit, either as general elective or toward the Art History or Visual Art major and minor. No prerequisite.
Image: invitation to the China/Avant-garde exhibition at the National Art Museum, 1989
