This thirteen-volume catalogue documents the art and history of Wuming, an underground group of artists active in Beijing from 1973 to 1981. Painting landscapes, portraits, and still lifes in oil paint, the Wuming artists rejected academic conventions and shunned the political propaganda art that dominated the Cultural Revolution, eking out an early form of Chinese modernism still little known. As a group, their alternative, counter-culture identity also exemplified the underground movements that emerged in the closing stages of the Maoist era. By turns poetic, abstract, and socially penetrating, these small, apolitical plein air paintings remain aesthetically resonant today, while redefining our understanding of the culture and politics of China’s early modernization. Each volume of the catalogue is devoted to one of the thirteen primary members of the group: Du Xia, Li Shan, Liu Shi, Ma Kelu, Shi Zhenyu, Tian Shuying, Wang Aihe, Wei Hai, Yang Yushu, Zhang Wei, Zhao Wenliang, Zheng Zigang, and Zheng Ziyan.
Author: Aihe Wang is associate professor in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong.
