Chinese Art and Its Encounter with the World

The book offers a bridge into the critical understanding of modern Chinese art through its encounter with the world beyond China's borders. David Clarke demonstrates Chinese art's interconnections with Western cultures while exploring its inherited cultural traditions and internal historical change.

The first section deals with the cross-cultural trajectories of individual Chinese artists who traveled from China to the West and then returned. The focus then shifts from the movement of individual artists between cultures to the process by which specific genres of Western art have been interpreted by Chinese artists. The final section illuminates the encounter of cultures via visual representations of Macau and Hong Kong.

David Clarke is the founder and academic director of the Hong Kong Art Archive (http://web.hku.hkl-hkaa/). He has served as External Moderator of the Strategic Planning Group of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and as a member of its Visual Arts Committee. He has also served on the Board of Governors of the Hong Kong Arts Centre (and as chair of its Arts Programme Committee). He is currently a member of Council and chair of the Academic Committee for Hong Kong Arts Centre's Hong Kong Art School.

Clarke's artworks have been exhibited in a number of local and overseas invitational group shows, including The Metropolis – Visual Research into Contemporary Hong Kong. Photography Exhibition (1990-1996) (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1996), Cultural Chop Suey II (Fringe Club Gallery, Hong Kong, 1996), Museum 97: History, Community, Individual. (Hong Kong Incarnated) (Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1997), Recent Work (OP Fotogallery, Hong Kong, 1998), and Asian Traffic (Asia-Australia Arts Centre, Sydney, 2004). Amongst his one-person shows is: Hong Kong Nocturne' (Goethe-Gallery, Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes Hong Kong, 2002), A Year in the Life of a City: Recent Photographs by David Clarke (University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 2007) and Hong Kong Experience: All Exhibition of Photographs by David Clarke (Brewhouse Gallery, Royal William Yard, Plymouth, England, 2007).

Flawlessly researched and offering a wealth of information on topics that have not been studies in depth before, it is an important addition for the understanding of Chinese art in general. – Frank Vigneron, Chinese University of Hong Kong