Chinese art has experienced its most profound metamorphosis since the early 1950s, transforming from humble realism to socialist realism, from revolutionary art to critical realism, then avant-garde movement, and globalized Chinese art. With a hybrid mix of Chinese philosophy, imported but revised Marxist ideology, and western humanities, Chinese artists have created an alternative approach after a great ideological and aesthetic transition in the 1980s toward its own contemporaneity though interacting and intertwining with the art of rest of the world. This book will investigate, from the perspective of an activist, critic, and historian who grew up prior to and participated in the great transition, and then researched and taught the subject, the evolution of Chinese art in modern and contemporary times. The volume will be a comprehensive and insightful history of the one of the most sophisticated and unparalleled artistic and cultural phenomena in the modern world.

Yan Zhou has been an activist, critic and historian of Chinese contemporary art for three decades, having taught art theory and art history at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China in the 1980s and afterward, at Kenyon College, Ohio, USA, with guest teaching stints at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, in addition to lectures given in more than thirty art schools, colleges, universities and museums in China and USA. He has widely published on the topic of contemporary Chinese art, including Journey of Culture: Wenda Gu and His Art (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2015),  A History of Chinese Contemporary Art: 1985-1986 (In Chinese, co-author, Shanghai: Shanghai Peoples Publishing House, 1991) and Zhang Jianjun: Visual Inquiry into Existence and Temporality (bilingual, Zhang Jianjun, exhibition catalogue, Shanghai, 2012).

Abstract.- Acknowledgments.- List of Figures.- Introduction.- Visual Utopia: Art in the Seventeen-Years (1949-1966).- Revolutionary Action: Art in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).- Truth, Virtue and Beauty: Art in the Post-Cultural Revolution.- Idealism and New Utopia: Avant-Garde Movement (1985-1989).- Art under Impact of Globalization (1990-1999).- Institutionalization of Contemporary Art (2000-2015).- Chronicle of Events 1949 2015.- Bibliography.- Abbreviation of Institutions and Title of Periodicals.- Chinese glossary (peoples names and art terms).- Index.