Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader

In 2008, Asia stormed the citadel of the New Yorkart world when two major museums presented retrospectives of Asian contemporaryartists: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim Museum and Takashi Murakami at theBrooklyn Museum. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a painting by Zeng Fanzhi sold for $9.5 million, settinga new world auction record for Chinese contemporary art. The Western art worldis still coming to grips with the challenge: it is all about Asia now. This book is the first anthology ofcritical writings to map the shift in both the nature and the reception ofAsian art over the past twenty years. Offering texts by leading figures in thefield (mostly Asian), and including more than fifty illustrations in color andblack and white, it covers developments in East Asia (including China, Korea, andJapan), South Asia (including India and Pakistan), and Southeast Asia (includingVietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand). Together, the twenty-three textsposit ahistorical and pan-Asian response to the question, “What is Asiancontemporary art?” Considering such topics as Asian modernism (“productivemistranslation” of the European original), Asian cubism, and thecurating, collecting, and criticism of Asian contemporary art, this bookpromises to be a foundational reference for many years to come.