Joseph Needham once said: “In the history of intercultural communication, nothing seems comparable to the Jesuits’ arrival to China in the seventeenth century.” To be sure, in China, the opinion of a Western scholar can still not be regarded as historical truth, even if history textbooks in China’s high schools do make mention of the…

Whether in his artwork or in the lectures he gives his students, Qiu Zhijie’s “Total Art” principle permeates everything he does. According to Qiu, “Total Art” is a “an artistic strategy that, taking cultural research as its foundation and shouldering concerns about society and the everyday experience, proposes comprehensive solutions to the problems of art…

The casual visitor to the CAFA Art Museum late this spring would have noticed a giant nine-by-nine meter ink painting hanging in the atrium of the still novel Arata Isozaki building, in telling contrast to the characters of the CAFA moniker as written by Mao Zedong. The painting belonged to CAFA director Pan Gongkai, some…

This is an issue about “art youth,” a designation that sounds much more natural in Chinese. It’s hard to convey all the connotations it instantly summons, but for starters, it doesn’t mean “young artist.” It’s a subcategory of the “arts and culture youth,” a stock character in the contemporary urban imagination who sports Warrior sneakers…

For me the creative process is nothing but the pursuit of perfection … Great emotional and physical effort, energy and persistence are required. However, if tapestry art becomes one’s destiny, it requires one’s whole existence. —Maryn Varbanov (1932-1989) Maryn Varbanov was one of the most influential figures in the history of Chinese and international contemporary…