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ARTH 369: Chinese Art in the 20th and 21st centuries

Videos

Streaming Video

In addition to our film collection searchable in Primo, you can also discover streaming films in Films On Demand. Here are two examples.

Beijing 798: The Chinese Avant-Garde (92:00)

Revamped during the 1950s, the former ordnance plant now known as Factory 798 has become China’s hub of contemporary art. This program profiles Chinese painters and sculptors who work at 798 and have helped turn Beijing into one of the world’s artistic capitals. Interviewees include painter Yang Shaobin, sculptor Wang Shugang, and photography duo Rong Rong and Inri, as well as critics and gallery owners who underscore the creative freedom that emerged following the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Making Mao (52:00)

When the Communist Party took over China in 1949, it engineered a massive propaganda campaign to promote a workers’ utopia and make Mao Zedong a god. This program examines the creation of the Mao-centered iconography that permeated the visual, performing, and popular arts as China struggled through its brutal metamorphosis into a modern nation. Artists relate the experience of being forced to work in the Soviet-inspired style that fueled the leader’s popularity, as the video tracks Mao’s image from revolutionary symbol to its appropriation for kitschy Pop Art.