ICS Lecture: Jane DeBevoise, "The Market as Imaginary in Post-Mao China"

The Ohio State University's Institute for Chinese Studies presents the "China and the International Mediasphere" Lecture Series with a lecture by Dr. Jane DeBevoise.

"The Market as Imaginary in Post-Mao China"

Dr. Jane DeBevoise
President and Chair, Asia Art Archive, U.S.A.
Chair, Board of Directors, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong

Abstract:
In 2007 a UK-based newspaper reported that five of the top selling contemporary artists worldwide were Chinese. Yet less than 10 years before Chinese contemporary art at auction was rare. Where did the market come from? Was its introduction a positive or negative agent of change? This paper considers the period from 1978 to 1989 and examines the impact of the institutional shift, from a centrally planned system to the introduction of economic reform, on the development of contemporary art in China.

The market for art both attracts and repels, and in the 1980s it triggered a vociferous debate. One artist captured the complexity of this paradigm shift. The last section of this paper focuses on Wu Shanzhuan’s 1989 performance Selling Shrimps that not only comments on the enduring entanglements between the state and market, but also reveals art’s new energy source.

Bio:
Jane DeBevoise is Chair of the Board of Directors of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and New York. Prior to moving to Hong Kong in 2002, Dr. DeBevoise was Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum, responsible for museum operations and exhibitions globally. She joined the Museum in 1996 as Project Director of China: 5000 Years, a large-scale exhibition of traditional and modern Chinese art that was presented in 1998 at the Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao. Dr. DeBevoise has an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD from The University of Hong Kong, both in art history. Her recent book, Between State and Market: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Post-Mao Era, was published in 2014 by Brill. She has been a Trustee of Asian Cultural Council, New York since 2009.

Co-Sponsors:
Department of History of Art
East Asian Studies Center
 

This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.