Zhang Hongtu: Expanding Visions of a Shrinking World

Queens/Durham: Queens Museum/Duke University Press, 2015. Paperback. Good (Ex-Library from Visual Studies Workshop, with sticker on lower spine, front and rear covers and on the rear of the last page; wraps are lightly edgeworn/scuffed/smudged; textblock edges are lightly smudged/scuffed; interior is very clean; binding is solid.). Light grey wraps with black lettering; 338 pp.; richly illustrated (chiefly color). "In this book, leading art experts, art historians, and critics review the life, career, and artistic development of New York based Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu. A pioneer in contemporary Chinese art, Zhang created the first example of "China Pop" art, and his oeuvre is as diverse, intellectually complex, and engaging as it is entertaining. From painting and sculpture to computer generated works and multimedia projects, Zhang's art is equally rich in terms of China's history and its current events, containing profound reflections on China's oldest cultural habits and contemporary preoccupations. He provides a model of cross-cultural interaction designed to make Asian and Western audiences look more closely at each other and at themselves to recognize the beliefs they hold and the unexamined values they adhere to. From his early work in China during the Cultural Revolution to his decades as an artist in New York, Zhang reflects the complex attitudes of a scholar-artist toward modernity, as well as toward Asian and Western societies and himself. Placing Zhang in the context of his cultural milieu both in China and in the Chinese immigrant artist community in America, this volume's contributors examine his adaptations of classic art to reflect a contemporary sensibility, his relation to Cubism and Social Realism, his collaboration with the celebrated fashion designer Vivienne Tam, and his visual critique of China's current environmental crisis."-- Publisher's description.