Page 24 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

unprecedented primacy to three-dimensional work,
particularly to Buddhist sculpture.
These, then, are the great formative themes of
China: 5,000 Years, which emerged as a result of
Professor Lee's numerous trips to China over the
past four years. During these visits, he traveled
throughout the country to provincial museums and
archaeological excavations, as well as to the great
collections in Beijing and Shanghai. He searched
through warehouses of recently excavated material
and considered well-known objects currently on
display. The selection of objects he made for this
exhibition reflects his personal vision, and it has a
freshness and a breathtaking elegance that will
make scholars and laymen alike feel that they are
seeing Chinese art for the first time. Professor Lee's
vision has been supported by an impressive array of
international scholars, who have provided assistance
and consultation on every aspect of the project,
including Helmut Brinker, James Cahill, Regina
Krahl, Howard Rogers, and Jenny So, who rendered
continuous support and advice on all aspects of the
exhibition as it was being planned and on the
structure and rhythm of the installation at the
Guggenheim Museum. On the Chinese side, Zhang
Wenbin, Director General of the National
Administration for Cultural Heritage, and Wang
Limei, Director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the
National Administration for Cultural Heritage,
structured the lengthy discussions and negotiations
with the various museums and archaeological exca-
vations that have lent objects to the exhibition.
They also provided invaluable advice, as did the
directors of the Palace Museum in Beijing and the
Shanghai Museum, Yang Xin, Ma Chengyuan, and
Wang Qingzheng, who not only made their collec-
tions available, but often suggested improvements to
the checklist that went beyond our expectations. In
short, the traditional section of China: 5,oooYears is attracting a first-rate team of scholars to organize
a visionary and collaborative enterprise of unprece-
dented proportion between Chinese, American, and
international scholars.
The modern section of China: 5,000 Years has no
less an engaging history. As China has modernized
and gradually become more accessible to the
Western world during the past 150 years, so too has
its visual culture, but the country's most recent cul- Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History,
tural production has been largely ignored by a
Western sensibility dominated almost exclusively by
a Modernist Western canon. The turbulent political
and social context in which twentieth-century
Chinese art has developed, however, is no reason to
separate it from the larger history of Chinese art
from which it derives much of its inspiration, or
from the Western traditions that it also reflects. Its
particular fascination will not be found in the
degree to which it participated in the development
of a Euro-American Modernism, but rather in the
INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
struggle that is reflected in its attempt to bridge tra-
ditional Chinese attitudes with the inevitable con-
sequences of contemporary politics and expanding
contact with the West.
The late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries
brought a certain cultural cross-fertilization
between China and Europe. Just as European artists
were influenced by Asian block-printing tech-
niques, perspectival flatness, and decorative tenden-
cies, for example, Chinese artists were drawn to
Western approaches, methodologies, and tech-
niques, such as Impressionism, abstraction, realistic
portraiture, and oil painting. The late nineteenth
century in China saw innovations within the tradi-
tional context, which developed under the patron-
age of Shanghai's new economic elite. Highlights
included elaborate works with bird and flower
themes, and paintings based on fantastic narratives,
which appealed to a new class of collectors in this
vibrant industrial port city. Chinese art of the early
part of the twentieth century reflected the growing
cosmopolitan attitude of Chinese artists, many of
whom studied abroad. The 1920s saw a re-
emergence of the woodcut as a powerful artistic
medium, as art became swept up in the social and
political upheavals that were coursing through
China. The inherently stark contrast and imminent
reproducibility of woodcuts made this a natural
medium for communicating the horrific realities of
the Japanese invasion, and the numerous prints
reflecting the horrors of war from this period recall
the graphic work of Francisco de Goya in their
shocking impact. Postwar communism brought a
socialist-realist format that produced some of the
most outstanding examples of realist painting ever
seen. Although Chinese socialist realism was not
considered by most Western critics, there is no
doubt that painterly technique flourished in the
Chinese academy at a level of extraordinary sophis-
tication, and this laid the foundation for a rejuvena-
tion of Chinese art during the past two decades
through a blending of traditional, academic, and
international influences. In short, the art of China
in the twentieth century tells a compelling story,
which demands to be considered in the context of
the long train of Chinese art history, and in the
context of an emerging global sensibility.
The Guggenheim has been again fortunate in
this narrative of modern Chinese art, under the
leadership and direction of Professor Julia Andrews
of The Ohio State University, one of the world's
leading scholars of twentieth-century Chinese art.
Professor Andrews has been ably assisted in her
selection by contributions from Kuiyi Shen,
Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University;
Yale University; Shan Guolin, Chief Curator of
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