Mu Xin (b. 1927) is one of the leading expatriate artist-intellectuals of our time. Now living in New York City, he is known for his complex writings and paintings. Clearly a formidable figure in the cultural and intellectual history of Chinese modernism, Mu Xin is admired for his unique synthesis of Chinese and Western aesthetic sensibilities. This beautifully illustrated catalogue focuses on a group of thirty-three landscape paintings that Mu Xin painted in 1978–79, in the immediate aftermath of the Great Cultural Revolution. Many of these works have never been exhibited or published in the West. In addition, the book features Mu Xin’s Prison Notes, some sixty-six calligraphic sheets that were written when the artist was in solitary confinement in China in 1972.

The Art of Mu Xin: The Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes

Arts & Photography

Munroe, Alexandra

Monroe, Alexandra

Toming Jun Liu

History & Criticism

Yale University Art Gallery

Presents the catalog of an exhibition that features illustrations of paintings, sculpture, performance, video, and installation art

Japanese Art After 1945

Harry N. Abrams

Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe

I Want to Believe accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the innovative body of work by Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang--best known for his spectacular artworks using gunpowder and fireworks. It presents a chronological and thematic survey that charts the artist's creation of a distinctive visual and conceptual language across four mediums: drawings made from gunpowder fuses and explosive powders laid on paper and ignited; explosion events, documented by videos, photographs and preparatory drawings; large-scale installations; and social projects, wherein the artist works with local communities to create an art event or exhibition site, documented by photographs. Featuring works from the 1980s to the present, this volume illuminates Cai's significant formal and conceptual contributions to contemporary international art practices and social activism. Generously illustrated more than 368 pages, this volume includes essays by Alexandra Munroe, David Joselit, Miwon Kwon and Wang Hui--along with some 60 documented plate entries. It is the defining scholarly publication on the artist thus far.

Joselit, David

Kwon, Miwon

Guggenheim Museum

315 pages, exhibit catalog from a retrospective of work by Cai Guo-Qiang with information on the artist, his work and career, color illustrations

Guo-Qiang, Cai

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 illuminates the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literary texts and philosophical concepts on American artistic practices from the late nineteenth century through the present. Released to accompany a major survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Third Mind traces how the classical arts of India, China and Japan and the systems of Hindu, Taoist, Tantric Buddhist and Zen Buddhist thought that were collectively admired as the "East" were known, reconstructed and transformed by American cultural, intellectual and political forces. Featuring 270 objects in an array of media including painting, works on paper, books and ephemera, sculptures, video art and installations, this richly illustrated catalogue also includes scholarly essays by museum curators and academics specializing in art history, intellectual history, Asian studies and Postcolonial religious and cultural studies and representing a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989

KING, RICHARD

Harootunian, Harry

Greene, Vivien

Reference

Guggenheim Museum Pubns

Published for the Guggenheim's 2011 retrospective on Lee Ufan (born 1936), Marking Infinity charts the Korean artist and theorist's creation of a visual and conceptual language that has greatly expanded the possibilities of painting and sculpture in the postwar era. Whether placing brush marks on canvas or combining discrepant textures of steel and stone, Lee has consistently elicited the subtlest and most spacious effects from the particular qualities of his materials. Lee is also a key theorist of Mono-ha, a movement that developed in Tokyo in the late 1960s, and this hardcover volume includes a selection of his influential writings on aesthetics and philosophy, published in English for the first time--alongside a wealth of full-color reproductions of Lee's iconic paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the past 40 years.

Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity

Yoshitake, Mika

Akira, Tatehata

Guggenheim Museum Publications

The Gutai Art Association was founded by Yoshihara Jiro in 1954 in the cosmopolite town of Ashiya, near Osaka. The group spanned two generations, totaling 59 artists and is one of the most radical movements in postwar Japanese art history. Published in conjunction with the first United States museum retrospective ever devoted to Gutai, exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Gutai: Splendid Playground surveys the influential Japanese collective and artistic movement. This exhibition catalogue aims to demonstrate the range of bold and innovative creativity present in the avant-garde movement, to examine the aesthetic strategies in the cultural, social and political context of postwar Japan and the West, and to further establish Gutai in an expanded, transnational history and critical discourse of modern art. Organized thematically and chronologically to explore Gutai’s unique approach to materials, concepts, process, performativity and enviroment, this publication investigates the group’s radical experimentation across a range of media and styles, and demonstrates how individual artists pushed the limits of what art could be or mean in a post-atomic era. The range includes painting, conceptual art, performance, film, installation art, sound art, interactive art, light art and kinetic art. Illustrating some 120 objects by 25 artists and featuring both iconic Gutai and lesser-known works, Splendid Playground presents a rich survey reflecting new scholarship, especially on “late Gutai” works dating from 1965 to 1972. The bold and innovative catalogue design reflects the unfettered creativity of Gutai. In addition, an extensive appendix features a selection of Gutai artists’ writings, an illustrated chronology, artist biographies and a bibliography.

Gutai: Splendid Playground

Tiampo, Ming

Jiro, Yoshihara

Shoichi, Hirai

Twenty years of experimental art from a globalized China
Published on the occasion of the largest exhibition of contemporary art from China ever mounted in North America, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World explores recent experimental art from 1989 to 2008, arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history.
Featuring over 150 iconic and lesser-known artworks by more than 70 artists and collectives, this catalog offers an interpretative survey of Chinese experimental art framed by the geopolitical dynamics attending the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization and the rise of China. Critical essays explore how Chinese artists have been both agents and skeptics of China’s arrival as a global presence, while an extensive entry section offers detailed analysis on works made in a broad range of experimental mediums, including film and video, ink, installation, land art and performance, as well as painting and photography. 
Featured artists include Ai Weiwei, Big Tail Elephant Group, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Chen Zhen, Chen Chieh-jen, Ding Yi, Geng Jianyi, Huang Yong Ping, Kan Xuan, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Libreria Borges, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, New Measurement Group, Ou Ning, Ellen Pau, Qiu Zhijie, Shen Yuan, Song Dong, Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Yan Lei, Yang Jiechang, Yu Hong, Xijing Men, Xu Bing, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Peili, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Xiaogang and Zhou Tiehai. An appendix includes a selected history of contemporary art exhibitions in China, artist biographies and a bibliography.

Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World

Hanru, Hou

Tinari, Philip

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Yayoi Kusama: The 1950's & 1960's Paintings, Scultpure, Works on Paper

Paula Cooper Gallery

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