DSL Magazine: Issue 6

Today, Chinese artists increasingly go abroad for study, boosting exchanges with the West. The younger generation quotes easily Proust, Breton or Foucault while classical western artworks are often taken as inspiration sources for Chinese creations. It would seem that the artists resume, with the West, a dialogue which had started one century before, and which had been stopped too early by Chinese modern history. However, the issue of a galloping Westernization raises many questions. Mao Zedong said “Put the past at the service of the present, make the foreign serve what is national ”. There are probably no limits to such an assimilation: mixing past and present as well as integrating new cultures and thoughts have always been at the core of all creation. Furthermore, today’s art history tends to be written more and more regardless of nationalities.