Touching the stones : China art now

In a 2007 article in The New York Times, David Barboza wrote about recent record-breaking auctions of Chinese art, "With auction prices soaring, hundreds of new studios, galleries and private art museums are opening in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai...Western galleries, especially in Europe, are rushing to sign up unknown painters; artists a year out of college are selling photographic works for as much as $10,000 each; well-known painters have yearlong waiting lists; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris are considering opening branches in China." This fifty-third issue of the respected Cologne-based, English-language art journal Jahresring is an in-depth study of what's happening in Chinese art today, as well as a penetrating look at where the new trends and ideas have come from, and where the market stands. With equal emphasis on images and text, this essential survey features artists such as Ai Weiwei, Big Tail Elephant Group, Cai Guoqiang, Huang Yongping, Sze Tsung Leong, Qui Zhijie, Xu Bing, Xu Tan, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong and Zhang Xiaogang, among many others, and includes critical texts by international art world luminaries like Thomas Bayrle, Jonathan Monk, Christian Jankowski, Erik van Lieshout, Mark Siemons, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Stephanie Tasch and Philip Tinari.… (more)