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Art And Artists of Chinese Modern Painting: 1830-1949

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Mu Lin is a professor of Chinese art and related subjects at China's Sichuan Normal University. the other two authors are associated with American universities. In these years when it was coming into contact with modernism, Chinese art ranged from paintings of flowers and other parts of nature in the traditional style of delicate colors and composition and artful brushwork, Buddhist subjects and themes, socialistic scenes of suffering and turmoil, to Cubist-like and other modernist styles. One sees that this was both a fertile and a formative period in Chinese art. Though it did not manifestly survive the Maoist years of enforced uniformity and cultural purges, this period is seen as a precursor and source for references and directions for Chinese art as it again takes a place among world art with China's growing economic strength, cultural influences (in cinema as well as art), and expanded, though yet tentative, freedoms. This is a work for a specialized interest in Chinese art, with its informative, but brief mention of numerous Chinese artists of the period and its 6-page bibliography containing many references which would not be found elsewhere. It's best looked at as a mapping out of the 60-year period rather than a full history or a critique of its art.