Institute for Chinese Studies presents the "Global and Transnational Experiences" Lecture Series in collaboration with History of Art
Arnold Chang, artist and art historian
"The Persistence of Tradition in Chinese Painting: a Personal Journey"
Flyer: 
ArnoldChangflyer.pdf
Abstract:
In recent years there has been a boom in the market for contemporary Chinese art. Works by mainland Chinese artists such as Xu Bing, Cai Guoqiang, Ye Mingjun, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zeng Fanzhi, have sold for astronomical amounts of money and have received a great deal of critical and popular attention. Curators, scholars, and artists themselves have been forced to rethink their attitudes about what constitutes Chinese art in the 21st century. Is Chinese art defined by nationality? Ethnicity? Medium? Or something else? What is the role of tradition in all of this?
Arnold Chang is an American of Chinese descent. He paints ink landscapes in a traditional manner that have been widely exhibited as contemporary representations of Chinese literati-style art. How did a native New Yorker grow up to be an internationally recognized traditional ink painter? In this talk Chang will recount his personal artistic journey and, in the process, will shed light upon the complex issues of identity, ethnicity, and aesthetics that challenge contemporary artists who choose to work within an established artistic tradition.
Bio:
Arnold Chang (Zhang Hong) was born in 1954 in New York City. He studied art history with Professor James Cahill and holds a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado. Chang studied painting and connoisseurship with C.C Wang for twenty-five years. He also studied painting with Kuo Yen-ch’iao in Taipei and calligraphy with Wang Chi-yuan in New York. His landscape paintings have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Asian Art Museum, LACMA, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Brooklyn Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Norton Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Princeton University Art Museum, and Harvard University Art Museum. Chang has previously taught Chinese art at the University of Colorado, San Francisco City College, Connecticut College, and Arizona State University. He has organized several exhibitions, and is the author of a book and numerous exhibition catalogues and articles on Chinese painting. Chang served for many years as Vice President and Director of Chinese Paintings at Sotheby’s, where he is presently a consultant, and was formerly a painting specialist at Kaikodo gallery in New York.
Co-sponsor: Department of History of Art
