Book Description

A selection of today's most important and successful contemporary Chinese art would have to include Guo Wei and Guo Jin's mischievous children, Tang Zhigang's bulbous-headed babies, Zhang Linhai's ominous bald youths, Yu Chen's chubby pink infants, and of course Zhang Xiaogang's family portraits, featuring the cherished male child displayed prominently in front. It seems as if babies and children are popping up everywhere in contemporary Chinese art, but it was not until recently that these images began surfacing. With the exception of their brief appearance in Maoist propaganda posters, children simply were not a popular trope as was the case in European art traditions. Presently, as artists freely experiment and express themselves, babies curiously appear again and again in the most critically acclaimed and desired works of contemporary Chinese art. Historically, art production in China had always been more about social and spiritual ritual as opposed to a modernist form of personal artistic expression, with common and accepted genres being limited to traditional ink paintings of flowers and birds, landscapes, folklore, Buddhist and Chan monks, and imperial or moral virtue. After the tentative--and to some suspicious--incorporation of Western methods and materials, contentious artistic debate put a damper on what might have been a time of free-flowing artistic development. Any chance for personal expression was successfully quashed as Mao Zedong's restrictive regime took over and accepted artistic genres became ever more narrow. The death of Mao, however, activated changes that to this day are transforming and shaping an ever-morphing China. Complete alterations and revisions in policies, economics, and culture have allowed for unprecedented individualism, innovation, and experimentation--especially in art. As artists enjoy the newfound freedom to experiment and discover novel modes of expression, a new iconography emerges, and images of babies and children have become conspicuously ubiquitous in the most current contemporary Chinese art. Babies and children are young, and their future is unknown--much like China itself in this turbulent time of change. This thesis will consider how artists use the imagery of childhood to address their own personal issues as well as the larger concerns of China's people, their past, and their future. As the modern state of China comes out of its infancy--casting away the impediments of history and tradition that stunted its development--and grows into the next world power, these images of babies and children are particularly eloquent and timely.