Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection
The study of Chinese painting often begins and ends with the  classics, considering anything after the middle of the 19th  century too contaminated by Western ideas of content and  perspective. This book dispels such notions, examining both  traditional and modern Chinese painters from the 1860s to the  1980s. Fong (Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Chinese Painting  and Calligraphy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) presents  the work and influences of such masters as Qi Baishi, painter of  shrimp; Zhang Daqian, whose skill and two years living in the  ancient caves of Mogao enabled him to forge perfect likenesses  of Tang dynasty works; and Xu Beihong, whose Paris training  unwittingly set the stage for the socialist realism that  prospered under Mao. The book covers many other 20th-century  paintings, all held at the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the  Metropolitan Museum of Art, and chapters on Japanese influence  and art under Mao give a comprehensive frame to contemporary  Chinese art. Recommended. David McClelland, PhiladelphiaCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.