CategoriesStyles and Movements
'85 New Wave
Chinese avant-garde of the mid- to late 1980s, when artist groups across the country took up modernist and conceptual strategies.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for '85 New Wave are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
In the years after the Cultural Revolution, translated books and magazines brought Dada, Surrealism, Pop and conceptual art into Chinese academies almost all at once. From about 1985 young artists responded by forming dozens of self-run groups in cities from Hangzhou to Harbin and Chengdu, writing manifestos and staging informal shows after decades of official Socialist Realism.
The work ranged widely. Huang Yong Ping and Xiamen Dada burned the contents of one of their exhibitions in 1986, and in 1987 Huang put two art-history textbooks through a washing machine. Xu Bing began Book from the Sky (1987–91), printed with thousands of invented, unreadable characters. Wang Guangyi of the Northern Art Group painted cool, rational figures, while Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi founded the Pond Society in Hangzhou. This energy converged on the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing in February 1989, where Xiao Lu fired a pistol at her installation Dialogue.
Related artists
More in Styles and Movements
19th Century American Art
19th Century American Paintings and Works on Paper
19th Century French Academy
19th Century German Realism
20th Century Art
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D960&w=3840&q=75)
Abstract Art
Abstract Expressionism
.png%3Fwidth%3D960&w=3840&q=75)
Abstract Painting
Abstract Photography
Abstract Sculpture
Abstract versus Figurative Art
Abstraction-Création
