ABSTRACT
The Introduction sets the essays within this volume into the context of modern Chinese art scholarship during and after the Cold War period. It shows how earlier accounts of Chinese art generally have struggled to find evidence of diversity in artistic styles of the Maoist period (1949–76), and tended to assume that Soviet-influenced Socialist Realism was the only accepted artistic approach, in polar opposition to “Western” modernism. While acknowledging that artists suffered major restrictions on their practice in those years, the Introduction notes that art scholars have steadily rediscovered a more complex environment that challenges this simple dichotomy. The Introduction shows how the essays in this volume, through their innovative archival and field research, open up whole new perspectives on the (sometimes hidden) artistic diversity, experimentation, and global cultural exchanges that continued to take place, helping to inspire art students to new ways of thinking and, at least in part, explaining why there was such a sudden explosion of modernist and experimental art so soon after China opened up in the post-Mao period.
