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A Study about Ai Weiwei's Independent Publication: Black Cover Book, White Cover Book, Grey Cover Book

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2023, (53), pp.237-261
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : May 2, 2023
  • Accepted : June 8, 2023
  • Published : June 30, 2023

Doyeon Kim 1

1XY Contemporary

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Publications as events and field records of art are among the best materials to observe art in the passage of time and the views of the time. Starting with The Stars exhibition in 1979, modern Chinese art grew and changed rapidly. The ’85 Art Movement bloomed as a modern art exhibition in 1989, but many artists left the country before and after the Tiananmen Square incident in the same year, and Chinese art in the 1990s was divided into domestic and overseas spheres. Three independent publications, The Black Cover Book(1994), The White Cover Book (1995), and The Gray Cover Book (1997) were published in China during this period. They represent the first activities of Ai Weiwei on his return to China after a long stay in the United States: they show an aspect of the work and criticism of early Chinese contemporary art and have been mentioned by many writers and critics. However, only a small number of these three books were printed due to national restrictions on independent publishing in the 1990s, and even these were traded on the black markets. This paper discusses the process of finding these three books and interviewing contemporary artists introduced in them to study the publishing process and to understand the meaning of these three publications in Chinese contemporary art history.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.