Photography from the New China at the Getty Museum

Wang Qingsong
Chinese, born 1966
New Women, 2000
Chromogenic print
Image: 120 x 220 cm (47 1/4 x 86 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Wang Qingsong
2009.18.2

Rong Rong
Chinese, born 1968
No. 1 (1), Beijing, 2000
Gelatin silver print with applied color
Image: 40 x 40 cm (15 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.)
Sheet: 60.7 x 50.5 cm (23 7/8 x 19 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Rong Rong
2010.15.1

Photography from the New China at the Getty On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, at the Getty Center, December 7, 2010 — April 24, 2011, Photography from the New China will display a selection of Chinese photographs produced since the 1990s, when People’s Republic leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the current period of Opening and Reform]]>

Source: J. Paul Getty Museum
“Photography from the New China” will be shown concurrently with”Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road”, an exhibition featuring nineteenth-centuryviews of China and other parts of East Asia, creating a powerful contrast with the contemporaryworks.

“This exhibition highlights the Getty Museum’s recently acquired photographs by some of theyoung artists emerging from the reinvented society that is present-day China,” says Judith Keller,senior curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. “The photographs on display provide acontemporary view of Chinese art and culture.”

This exhibition looks closely at recent acquisitions of photographs by Hai Bo, Liu Zheng, SongYongping, Rong Rong, and Wang Qingsong, which feature dominant styles in recent Chinesephotography, including performance for the camera, the incorporation of family photographs, and anemphasis on the body. Supplemented by private collection loans of work by Huang Yan, Qiu Zhijie,and Zhang Huan, the exhibition also explores such themes as pre-revolutionary Chinese literati art,vestiges of the Cultural Revolution, and the newly rampant consumerism.

In the past 20 years, China’s economy has made huge strides. The rapid transition, anamazingly compressed transformation in the lives of millions, has meant great progress in the way artis taught, made, and talked about in China’s flourishing urban centers. This exhibition presents thework of eight Chinese artists using photography to respond to their changing world