Anxiety aesthetics : Maoist legacies in China, 1978-1985 / Jennifer Dorothy Lee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Jennifer Dorothy, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communism and art--China--20th century.

Communism and art.

Communist aesthetics.

Physical Description:

xiii, 193 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Anxiety Aesthetics is the first book to consider a prehistory of contemporaneity in China through the emergent creative practices in the aftermath of the Mao era. Arguing that socialist residues underwrite contemporary Chinese art, complicating its theorization through Maoism, Jennifer Dorothy Lee traces a selection of historical events and controversies in late 1970s and early 1980s Beijing. Lee offers a fresh critical frame for doing symptomatic readings of protest ephemera and artistic interventions in the Beijing Spring social movement of 1978-1980, while exploring the rhetoric of heated debates waged in institutional contexts prior to the '85 New Wave. Lee demonstrates how socialist aesthetic theories and structures continued to shape young artists' engagement with both space and selfhood and occupied the minds of figures looking to reform the nation. In magnifying this fleeting moment, Lee provides a new historical foundation for the unprecedented global exposure of contemporary Chinese art today"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : endings or beginnings? Art as practice

Democracy walls

Memorializing Huang Rui's Beijing

Wu Guanzhong's abstract expression

The serial images of Qu Leilei

Do androids dream of me? Liu Zaifu's theory of the subject

Conclusion : are Lennon walls also democracy walls?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Lee, Jennifer Dorothy, 1978- Anxiety aesthetics

ISBN:

9780520393776

0520393775

9780520393783

0520393783

OCLC:

1394996470