Ecologies of Art: A Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art Debate
A conference at SOAS, University of London
23rd-24th September, 2016
'Ecologies of Art' is a two-day conference intended to accelerate multi-vocal discussions on developments in modern and contemporary art in China in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. It is held in conjunction with Hong Ling: A Retrospective in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS (14th July-24th September 2016; admission free), an exhibition occasioned by the retirement in 2015 of the landscape painter, Hong Ling (b. 1955), from the faculty of the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, where he taught oil painting since 1987. Twenty-eight international scholars gather to present research and debate a wide range of topics including subject and genre, mediality and technique, regional and transregional aspect of artistic practice, space and temporality, and institutional collecting and cannon formation.
In its title, 'Ecologies of Art' highlights multiple aspects of place and context in modern and contemporary Chinese art. It considers the landscape as an art subject and genre as well as contingent environmental issues. It recognises landscape, landmarks and horizons as features of a mode of art historical visualisation. It explores the places, situations and contexts, including evolving forms of art space and surveillance regimes, in which art is experienced by audiences. It examines the ecology of collecting, curating and display practices.

Hosted by the Department of the History of Art & Archaeology at SOAS, this conference is organised by Professor Shane McCausland and Dr Tian S. Liang. The exhibition and its academic programme are sponsored by UNEEC Culture and Education Foundation, Taiwan, and by the artist's gallery, Soka Art.

Program

23 September
Looking at Painting and Art Practice

9:20 Registration

9:50 Welcome
Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London

10:00 Keynote Lecture I: Modern Chinese Art and the Cosmopolitan
Craig Clunas, University of Oxford

Panel 1: Subjects and Practice
Chair: Nancy Berliner, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

10:45 Jiang Eshi (1913-1972): Traveller between Two Worlds
Uta Rahman-Steinert, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

11:10 Revisiting Ink Art: The Legacy of 1980s Activism
Sarah E. Fraser, University of Heidelberg

11:35 Hong Ling's Art: The Literati Tradition Congenial to Modern Tastes
David Teh-yu Wang, University of Taipei

12:00 Russia in Twentieth Century Chinese Art
Shelagh Vainker, Ashmolean Museum

12:25 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

12:55 Lunch Break (lunch provided for speakers and chairs)

Panel 2: Locating Line, Colour and Form
Chair: Craig Clunas, University of Oxford

13:55 Chinese 'Bone', Western 'Flesh' - The Paintings of Hong Ling
Zhu Ling, Lyon and Turnbull

14:20 The Crisis with Colour: Rethinking the Nationalization of Chinese Oil Painting
Yi Gu, University of Toronto

14:45 Capturing the Human Form: Life Classes in Early-twentieth-century China
Tian S. Liang, SOAS University of London

15:10 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

15:40 Coffee/Tea Break

Panel 3: Regional Aspects of Modern Art
Chair: Nixi Cura, Christie's Education London

16:10 Charting the Landscape: Ink Painting, Photographic Realism and Visual Truth in Yu Jianhua's Travel Albums
Juliane Noth, Freie Universität Berlin

16:35 Mediating Modernism - The Bifurcating Brush of Wu Guanzhong and the Twenty-first Century 'New' Painting
Yin Hwang, National University of Singapore

17:00 Object Script: Situating Contemporary Calligraphic Art from Vietnam
Pamela Corey, SOAS University of London

17:25 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

17:55 Day one ends

18:00 Drinks Reception (for all registered delegates)
Brunei Suite (ground floor)

24 September
Contemporary Art World and Institutional Borders

9:55 Welcome Back
Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London

10:00 Keynote Lecture II: A Drop in the Ocean: How Did a Seascape Make Waves in China and Beyond?

Eugene Y. Wang, Harvard University

Panel 4: Perspectives on Contemporary Art
Chair: Paul Gladston, University of Nottingham

10:45 How Do We Evaluate Chinese Abstract Art?
Wang Chunchen, CAFA Art Museum

11:10 Zhang Huan: Spring Poppy Fields No. 31
Malcolm McNeill, Victoria and Albert Museum

11:35 Moving Mountains: The Potential of Collaborative Projects
Laia Manonelles Moner, University of Barcelona

12:00 Curating Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibitions in French Museums from 1933 to 2003
Eric Lefebvre, Musée Cernuschi

12:25 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

12: 55 Lunch Break (lunch provided for speakers and chairs)

Panel 5: Space and Display of Contemporary Art
Chair: Jan Stuart, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

13:55 Through the Lens of the Document: Curating and Display in the 1980s and 1990s
Claire Hsu, Asia Art Archive

14:20 Augmented Landscape: Chinese Contemporary Artists Recode Urban Space
Angela Becher, University of Manchester

14:45 From Painting to Performance to Participation: Chinese Engagements with European Modernism: Mainstreams and Margins in the Work of Chinese Artists in the Twenty-first Century
Katie Hill, Sotheby's Institute of Art, London

15:10 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

15:40 Coffee/Tea Break

Panel 6: Institutional Collecting and Canon Formation
Chair: Zhang Hongxing, Victoria and Albert Museum

16:10 Paintings by Masters of the So-Called Beijing School of Painting and Their Introduction to Europe in the 1920s and 1930s
Michaela Pejcochova, National Gallery in Prague

16:35 Considering Context: Exhibiting the Art of Hong Ling at the Chester Beatty Library
Mary Redfern, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

17:00 Regional Museums and Temporary Exhibitions
Nicole Chiang, The Museum of East Asian Art, Bath

17:20 Chair's Remarks and Q&A

17:50 Discussion and Reflections on 'Ecologies of Art'
Chair: Craig Clunas, University of Oxford
Claire Hsu, Asia Art Archive
Sarah E. Fraser, University of Heidelberg
Jan Stuart, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Wang Chunchen, CAFA Art Museum
Eugene Y. Wang, Harvard University

18:10 Hong Ling's Concluding Remarks

18:20 Concluding Remarks
Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London

18:30 Conference ends

All are welcome. Entrance is free but registration is essential.
To register, click https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecologies-of-art-a-modern-and-contemporary-chinese-art-debate-tickets-27439189354?ref=estw.

To download the programme, click https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8HfyIRbEueSZjNSRGlSQzRyWjA/view?usp=sharing.

Contact email: Dr Tian S. Liang tl6soas.ac.uk.