Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art
By staff reporter ZHANG XUEYING Chinatoday 2008-4
IN 2007, Chinese artists held a number of retrospective exhibitions, such as the Retrospective Exhibition of the No Name Group (1979), the Exhibition of 1985 Avant-garde Fine Art, the Retrospective Exhibition of the Star Art Group of 30 Years Ago, and the Exhibition of the Qingdao Dream of Modern Artists in the 1980s. Thirty years ago, however, many of the works now openly displayed were exhibited unofficially, and some were even banned by the government. Conventional wisdom holds that China’s contemporary art can be divided into four periods – the first being the post-“cultural revolution” period of 1976-1984, the second lasting from 1985 to 1989, the third from 1990 to 1999, and the fourth from 1999 to the present.