HAA 1640 20th-Century Chinese Art

(offered infrequently)

This lecture/discussion combined course will offer a general view of the development of contemporary Chinese. It begins with brief discussions about the beginning of Chinese modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the new modern art movement in 1930s, and Mao's revolutionary art of the 50's and 60's. The course, however, will focus on the avant-garde movements in the post-Mao period. Through lectures, readings, videos and discussions, this course will investigate the momentous changes - political, economic, and cultural - which have swept through modern Chinese history and have profoundly impacted on the development of contemporary Chinese art. The course will also examine how rapid modernization, changing political realities, and conflicting global, ethnic, and local identities are transforming centuries-old Chinese visual traditions and the cultural assumptions behind them.