TOP BLOGS, BOOKS, NEWSPAPER SOURCES FOR CHINESE ART
What do you read? What information are you looking for? Where do you find it? These are the questions on our lips every day when we talk with art world movers. We have learnt that, despite exploding levels of activity in the art scenes across Asia, reporting remains sparse and uneven and that people have a surprisingly diverse range of sources depending on their base country and background.
In this post we ask Ashley Lee, one of our new intake of interns who studies Asian art in the US and London, to give us her perspective.
As a young full-time scholar based in the west, what, Ashley, are your favourite sources of information about Chinese contemporary art?
As an art history major specializing in contemporary Asian art, here are the list of sources that I utilize regularly in my studies to keep up with the fast-paced scene. These are my absolute favorite sources—everything that I read and recommend frequently.
e-flux - http://www.e-flux.com – A basic yet comprehensive list of new exhibitions and announcements in the art world. Its journal, which has been published online since November 2008, raises questions about contemporary art issues.
Art AsiaPacific - http://www.aapmag.com - One of my favorite periodicals: it covers the Middle East and Central Asia as well as East Asia. AAP also has articles that describe the major successes and progressions of major Asian artists and movements, which makes it especially helpful for research—for example, in the last issue, Zhang Huan and Roberto Chabet were mentioned.
Art Radar - http://artradarasia.wordpress.com – As a student, I appreciate Art Radar for its broad range of topics covering all of the Asian art world. It’s an excellent resource for finding a paper topic or finding an overview of a movement or a specific area of Asia.
New York Times exhibition reviews – http://www.nytimes.com – The New York Times art critics often review Asian art shows in the New York area. I would especially recommend reading reviews by Holland Cotter because they contain valuable specialist information on Asian art.
Asia Art Archive – http://www.aaa.org.hk – A library of contemporary Asian art resources in Hong Kong which contains reference materials, exhibition catalogues, periodicals, pamphlets, exhibition invitations, newspaper articles, among other things. It’s comprehensive (it has over 25,000 catalogued materials), especially for East and Southeast Asia, and its catalogue is viewable online. It also has a listing of special events related to contemporary Asian art.
Wu Hung, Exhibiting Experimental Art in China: This is my favorite book about the development of contemporary Chinese art. Wu Hung, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese contemporary art, wrote this book as a catalog for Cancelled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, a 2000 show at Chicago’s Smart Museum. It explains the reconstruction of Song Dong‘s installation Father and Son in the Ancestral Temple, which had originally been shown in the 1998 exhibition It’s Me, which was shut down by the Chinese government. It also lists all the exhibitions that were shut down or censored in the 1990s.
AL/KCE
Related Posts:
- Top 5 Sites for Japanese Contemporary Art News by Matthew Larking – June 2009
- Top 14 Books on Southeast Asian Art by Adeline Ooi – April 2009
- Top 5 Books on Chinese art by Chinese art specialist, Pippa Dennis – October 2008
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