Modern Chinese Prints

Auction China Contemporary Art - 548 ends Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 8:00:00 PM local time (CET) = 6 hours ahead of US EAST in 2 days, 18 hours and 53 minutes. New users please register now!

Edutainment > Articles on Art > Chinese Prints > Modern Chinese Prints

Modern Chinese Prints I
Classics of Tomorrow

A Running Crowd No. 1
Zhang Minjie born 1959
copyright Zhang Minjie

After the end of the Cultural Revolution a wave of astonishing new Chinese prints began to set in around the early 1980s. The period of "new thinking", as the Chinese artists called it, created a prosperous and productive new art movement in Chinese printmaking - comparable to the Japanese "shin hanga" and "sosaku hanga" movements of the early 20th century.

We still remember the day when we received our first shipment of these modern prints from China in springtime of 2003. We were pretty excited and had never seen anything similar before. In this essay, written in May 2005 and updated in March 2006, we want to discuss some aspects of modern Chinese prints.

Historical Development

The Chinese invented paper and the technique of woodblock printing. Originally woodblocks had been used to make books. When the inventions were made, is in the mist. It could be older than two thousand years. The oldest known book is from 868. Later, starting around the 14th and 15th century, woodblocks were also used for artistic purposes.

A popular and inexpensive form of artistic and religious woodblock prints among the common people were the so-called Chinese New Year Prints. They can be dated back to at least the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). People hung these nianhua on the outside of their entrance doors or inside the house for good luck and to ward off the bad spirits.

In the twentieth century the famous writer ("father of modern Chinese literature") and intellectual Lu Xun (1881-1936) promoted the technique of woodblock printmaking as a means of political expression. His paragons were the social-critical works of German artists like Käthe Kollwitz and the works of Russian social-realism. Works from this period show mostly heart-rendering scenes of suffering and oppressed people. They are kept in black and white, and are from the view of today's average art lovers not really attractive. But they are rare and are bought for high prices by collectors.

After the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, printmaking and painting became a means of political propaganda. Chinese propaganda posters, often referred as Mao posters, were produced in billions on cheap offset paper. Today the originals have developed into collectors' items.

The end of the Cultural Revolution with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, marked the beginning of a new era of modern Chinese printmaking. Starting in the early 1980s a new liberalism for the arts had set in - accompanied by the import of Western printmaking techniques and tools.

Techniques

Modern Chinese Prints II
Cynical Realism

Taking Off
by Zhou Lu born 1973
copyright Zhou Lu

The techniques of traditional Chinese woodblock printmaking are different from the methods that Japanese artists and artisans used (and still use). One of the major differences is the printing with water-soluble inks. This is rather difficult to apply, and the final result looks similar to a watercolor. The German printmaker Eva Pietzcker describes in an article, which she wrote for artelino, the techniques and other aspects of the Chinese woodblock print in detail. She had attended woodblock printmaking courses both in China and in Japan.

Among China's contemporary artists, the technique of water-soluble inks is still widely used, for instance by Shi Yi, born 1939, one of the outstanding printmakers. He achieves stunning results in depicting rural landscapes of beauty and purity - a kind of half-dreamy, half-real shangri-la world.

However most of today's Chinese woodblock artists use oil-based inks - sometimes in very thick coating that gives their print works a kind of oil-painting feeling. Hao Ping is a good example for this impression technique.

Over the last years, a new and progressive form of making a woodblock has become more and more widespread - also among Western printmakers. It is the technique of reduction woodblock prints. Instead of carving one block for each color, the artist carves the pattern for each color on the same block. Thus the woodblock is gradually destroyed, and it is technically impossible to pull any further copies after the "first edition" was created. Needless to say that the technique has a lot of charm for collectors. It makes sure that their purchases are not later devalued by a second or third edition pulled from the original blocks.

According to the information that we received from our Chinese partner, the technique of the reduction woodblock print was first developed by Cheng Hsu and others in the early 1980s at the Art College of Yunan, the South-West province of China, adjacent to Birma, Laos and Vietnam.

It should not remain unmentioned that quite a few of today's Chinese printmakers successfully use Western techniques like etching or mezzotint. But also many, like for instance Li Yanpeng returned to traditional Chinese roots and devoted themselves to woodblock printmaking, after dabbling for a while in Western techniques.

Academies and Art Schools

Modern Chinese Prints III

Shadow of Breeze No. 4
Wen Mujiang born 1970
copyright Wen Mujiang

We do not want to show up with a long list of Chinese printmakers on this page. During the two years of selling modern Chinese prints, we have discovered dozens of great and mostly leading artists. You find a selection of them in our Chinese showcase galleries. But we know that there are still many, many great and exciting artists who we have not yet presented to you. Thus, we hope that the list becomes longer with each month.

Two to three major 'art schools' have developed in China. It is not about real schools, but regional printmaking 'centers' that emerged as leaders - each with a certain focus. These printmaking centers are:

China has a number of small and larger art academies with departments for printmaking. The importance for the development of fine arts in China after the end of the Cultural Revolution went beyond art training. Most Chinese artists have been kind of state-employed - for instance as art teachers at these institutions. Until recently, there has been no commercial art market in China for prints that could have enabled an artist to make a living from selling his works.

The Muban Collection

Modern Chinese Prints
New Era

Belief - Tibetan Buddhism No. 4
by Zhuang Yanjun born 1981
copyright Zhuang Yanjun

The Muban Foundation was established in 1997 by Christer von der Burg and the late Verena Bolinder-Müller. Muban is the Chinese word for woodblock. The goal of the Foundation is to encourage contemporary Chinese woodblock printmaking and to make this art form aware to a wider audience outside of China. In 1997 Christer van der Burg and Verena Bolinder-Müller undertook the first print purchasing trip to China. They visited the Chinese art academies and thus got contact with the printmakers. During several visits a portfolio of hundreds of prints was purchased.

The purchasing activities culminated in a project of a commission to 60 contemporary Chinese woodblock printmakers to produce one print representative for their work in an edition of 155 copies. These 60 prints were published in 2003 in the book The Art of Contemporary Chinese Woodcuts.

The book and a subsequent exhibition in London and a second publication - the official exhibition catalog with a wider range of artists than the original 60 selected for the Muban project, set a kind of standard outside China.

Some Tips for New Collectors

Modern Chinese Prints V
Tradition and Modern Times

Chinese Colorful Bowl with Hundred Children 1
by Dai Jia born 1985
copyright Dai Jia born

Collecting modern Chinese prints is an exciting and rewarding way to spend money on art. And the whole subject is at least for Westerners still a huge, unexplored field with most of the stakes not yet claimed. We would like to compare it to collecting Japanese shin hanga before world war II.

Nearly all printmakers create limited editions. As there has hardly been any market in China for art prints, the edition sizes are small. Prints from the 1980s or 1990s often have mini-editions of less than 50 copies. This makes these prints very rare and - if Chinese modern prints should have a commercial breakthrough one day - it will make originals very expensive.

Most buyers of Chinese prints on artelino know Japanese woodblock prints quite well and are used to the Japanese washi paper or are familiar with Western papers like the French BFK Rives. The paper on which the early modern Chinese prints from the 1980s and 1990s and even after 2000 are printed, is usually of lower quality. This does however not influence the artistic quality of the prints. After artelino had begun to sell Chinese prints and the first money began to flow back to China, some artists made a joint effort and had ordered high quality paper from France. But it turned out that it was not necessarily ideal for Chinese printmakers. The technique of water-soluble inks does for instance not work well with this Western paper.

Another aspect that collectors should know, is print conditions. Modern Chinese prints have often creased margins and corners or ink spots - not unlike modern Japanese prints. It is a reflection of a different view of quality. And we have seldom had so many transport problems as with shipments from China. The Chinese artists and the few people who professionally deal in Chinese prints have little commercial experience and thus little experience in safe packing. Put for instance a pile of 30 prints into a tube with some bubble packaging material at both ends, and you can be sure that the prints will arrive with accordion-like creases on both ends.

Nearly all Chinese prints that we have seen had on the lower margin the signature, the edition number, the title and the date in pencil. Edition number and date are in Western numbers, the title and the signature are held in Chinese characters. We have experienced different dates for different copies from the same edition. It has a simple explanation. The Chinese artists of the 1980s and 1990s have created prints for national Chinese exhibitions - for fame and recognition - but not for a commercial market. There was no market. Therefore some of the artists neither printed the complete edition nor did they sign the prints immediately, but when they sent them to an art show or when they sold them. Then they signed not with the year of the original publication but the year when they pulled the print and some when they sold the print. This is by the way, a quite common practice among contemporary Western artists as well.

We also encountered second editions of successful designs. They were marked as "B" next to the edition number like "B 3/50". We also found second editions that were harder to recognize. Lu Ping creates successful views of canal scenes from Souzhou. His second editions are recognizable by a different date.

We found also variations of printing for some designs. This happens when the artist does not print the complete edition at the time of the creation of the blocks and pulls copies many years later. The colors are no longer the same. We also found some prints with later changes to the design.

If you want to be sure to acquire a print that will not be followed by a second edition, buy a print made in reduction woodblock technique.

Books on Modern Chinese Prints

Modern Chinese Prints VI
Life in the Cities

City Scenery No. 2
Li Ju born 1963
copyright Li Ju

As Chinese printmaking is still little known outside of China, the number of books in English about this subject is still very small. We introduced on this web site the major books about Chinese printmaking. The two standard works are available thanks to the activities of the Muban Foundation.

The Art of Contemporary Chinese Woodcuts introduces the Muban collection of 60 prints and has several articles, a glossary and some more information of interest. The book Chinese Printmaking Today was published at the occasion of the exhibition at the British Library.

As a primer to modern Chinese prints we recommend foremost The Art of Contemporary Chinese Woodcuts.

EDUTAINMENT

Select Category

Edutainment > Articles on Art > Chinese Prints > Modern Chinese Prints

Historical Development

Techniques

Academies and Art Schools

The Muban Collection

Some Tips for New Collectors

Books on Modern Chinese Prints

More Articles about Chinese Art Prints

Search for Chinese prints

artelino Art Auctions since 2001.. open

Chinese Prints