Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Question of Modernity in Chinese Art: Self-Awareness and the Four Major Ideologies

The Question of Modernity in Chinese Art: Self-Awareness and the Four Major Ideologies

Littler, Darcy
Pan, Gongkai

Hardcover

Series: Brill's Humanities in China Library, Book 22

Art History

ISBN10: 9004771050
ISBN13: 9789004771055
Publisher: Brill
Published: Sep 16 2026
Pages: 846
Weight: 3.12
Height: 1.88 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.25
Language: Chinese
This landmark volume offers a long-overdue, theoretical framework for understanding modern Chinese art within the broader problem of cultural modernity. Developed through the author's Road of Modern Chinese Art research project (est. 1999), it seeks to articulate a theoretical discourse grounded in China's own historical and intellectual conditions.

Reassessing dominant paradigms of modernity, the study introduces a future-oriented perspective in modernity discourse shaped by the profound transformations of the modern world and the rupture of the Modernity Event. At its core is the concept of self-awareness as the critical threshold distinguishing tradition from modernity in late-developing societies. On this basis, the book advances the systematic framework of the Four Major Ideologies: Traditionalism, Syncretism, Westernisation, and Populism, as the principal forces structuring the development of modern Chinese art.

Spanning the period from 1840 to 2000, the volume traces the historical evolution of artistic practices and debates across a century and a half of social and political upheaval. By integrating theoretical reflection with close historical analysis, it offers a comprehensive account of how modern Chinese art has negotiated the tensions between inheritance, transformation, and global exchange.

An essential resource for scholars and students of modern Chinese art, global modernism, and the theory of multiple modernities, this work makes a major contribution to the rethinking of modernity.

Translated into Japanese and Korean.
Winner of the Seventh Outstanding Achievement Award for Research in Institutes of Higher Education (Humanities and Social Sciences) - First Prize
Recipient of the China Publishing Government Award and the Three Hundred Original Book Publishing Project Award, affirming its landmark contribution to the study of modern Chinese art and global modernism.

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