Julia Chi Zhang. The Meaning of Style: Postmodernism, Demystification, and Dissonance in Post-Tiananmen Chinese Avant-Garde Art

Abstract

Julia Chi Zhang analyzes the Chinese avant-garde movement and in particular focuses on the transformations of artistic style after 1989. She emphasizes that approaches in contemporary sociology of art reduce art and culture to external phenomena of political and economical life. She argues that these approaches are not applicable to avant-garde which is to a considerable degree autonomous art and operates with regard to the motion “art for art’s sake.” To analyze Chinese avant-garde she develops alternative approach — meaningful sociology of art. Julia Chi Zhang studies the social and cultural meanings of style and its transformations after the events on the square Tiananmen.