1st Edition
American Art in Asia Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence
This book challenges existing notions of what is "American" and/or "Asian" art, moving beyond the identity issues that have dominated art-world conversations of the 1980s and the 1990s and aligning with new trends and issues in contemporary art today, e.g. the Global South, labor, environment, and gender identity.
Contributors examine both historical and contemporary instances in art practices and exhibition-making under the rubric of "American art in Asia." The book complicates existing notions of what constitutes American art, Asian American (and American Asian) art. As today’s production and display of contemporary art takes place across diffused borders, under the fluid conditions of a globalized art world since transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, new contexts and art historical narratives are forming that upend traditional Euro-American mappings of center-margins, migratory patterns and community engagement.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, American studies, Asian studies and visual culture.
1. American Art as Cultural Hegemony: 1945–1989
Kyunghee Pyun
PART I: Post-War American Art in Postcolonial Asia
2. Leaving Yourself Behind: Bourke-White, Zarina, and the Partition of British India
Asma Naeem
3. What Can Ad Reinhardt Teach Us About Asian Art?
Michael J. Hatch
4. Painting as Information: The Reception of Abstract Expressionism in Japan
Kenji Kajiya
5. Minimalism: A View from Singapore
Russell Storer
PART II: American Artists in Asia Today
6. The (im)Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity: American Artist in Setouchi
James Jack
7. Rare Earth Image Bank: Extraction Geology and Stock Photos, from Wyoming to Inner Mongolia
David Kelley
8. Interstates and Inner States: Howard Henry Chen
Việt Lê
Part III: Locating Asia in American Art
9. Mapping Lee Mingwei’s Transnational Art Practice
Leslie Ureña
10. American War in Việt Nam: We Are Besides Ourselves
Hồng-Ân Trương
11. America in China: Cross-cultural Confluences in Contemporary American Art
Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe
PART IV: Connecting Asia and the Americas in the Global South
12. Buying and Selling American Taste: Pop Art and the Inscription of Violence as Artistic Strategy in Colombia
Jennifer Burris
13. Considering Dhaka Art Summit from a CHamoru Perspective: A Walk Through its Institutional History
Diana Campbell
14. The Artpologists: Rethinking Food Justice in Central Asia
Zhanara Nauruzbayeva
15. Points of Intersection: Realigning Future Art Histories
Michelle Lim
Biography
Michelle Lim is Assistant Professor at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Kyunghee Pyun is Associate Professor of History of Art at the State University of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology.
This book challenges existing notions of what is "American" and/or "Asian" art, moving beyond the identity issues that have dominated art-world conversations of the 1980s and the 1990s and aligning with new trends and issues in contemporary art today, e.g. the Global South, labor, environment, and gender identity.
Contributors examine both historical and contemporary instances in art practices and exhibition-making under the rubric of "American art in Asia." The book complicates existing notions of what constitutes American art, Asian American (and American Asian) art. As today’s production and display of contemporary art takes place across diffused borders, under the fluid conditions of a globalized art world since transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, new contexts, and art historical narratives are forming that upend traditional Euro-American mappings of center-margins, migratory patterns, and community engagement.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, American studies, Asian studies, and visual culture.
