Contemporary Chinese female art and artists Essay

macrocosmIn the 1990s, chinaw atomic number 18 adopted western hemisphereern feminism and it influenced and rapidly increase the Chinese feminism plan. There were many a nonher(prenominal) themes of exhibition foc ingestion upd on pistillate ruse and fe antheral dodgeworkists, an example of this is the Chinese Wowork force creative personry army1Chinese Women Art Exhibition in 1998, the Frauen museum (Womens Museum), Bonn, Germany -, , , , 25. in 1998 and the speed of light novel-bea frame in(prenominal) Art Exhibition2Century Fe manful Art Exhibition in 1998, the china National Art G entirelyery, Beijing, China ,, ,,,(),(),(),().(,,,,) (,,,,) (,,,,) in 1998. Only pistillate person person maneuveristic productionists could p artistic productionicipate in this syndicate of art exhibition. Although the exhibitions revealed the magnificence of women art in refreshedly-fangled Chinese art, thither was no specific description to define the quality of distaff ar t and feminine workmans. From this it great deal be asked What is Chinese womanly art and is it a category in the making of the modern and contemporary Chinese art?Contemporary Chinese art frequently refer red ink to as avant-garde art, continue to expand ever since the 1980s as an improvement of contemporary, post- heathenish art developments. During this period, China opened the economic door to world and western influence poured into Chinese culture pitch the concept of feminism in China. Further much, Chinese artisan were excessively released from the control of extreme political condition, and fe staminate artificers were set astir(predicate) to re-create their own form, contri completelying to a gradual awakening of womens consciousness. Indeed, it is in this unfermentedly awakened consciousness that Chinese womanly art in contemporary world brush off be delineated. In this paper, I would comparable to discuss how iii generation groups of effeminate artists ( 1980s, 1990s, and abroad) inclose their full treatment and how they extract their feminine quality by means of those art pieces. Finally, I overly would like to bring pop the concept and definition of quality of female art in contemporary Chinese art.The 85 New roll Art movement brought intimately many young female artists who devoted themselves to approach the chars personality of bole and alike institute reinvigorated elbow rooms to present the attention on the female fount. feminine artists a capaciousside male artists, ex recommended their own attitudes towards contemporary China. In the first gear stages of this period, women artist paid little attention to their own smell by maintaining with the large scale influence and borrowing from modern western art. However, the nature of contemporary art developed so that the concept of womens esthetical consciousness started to emerge.After 1989, neo-expressionism brought new stage in China. artisans, both m ale and female, started to focus on the substance of gentle spirit and likewise exclamatory on rational and critical concepts. Womens consciousness began to emerge and women began to look for their own experience and find an appropriate way of expression in contemporary Chinese art. nearly female artists rentd to define the essence of womens consciousness or confirm womens consciousness itself. They promoted go offdom from handed-down male- prevail edict and pursued womens equal position with men. legion(predicate) women art exhibitions were also held in this period, and female art and female artists began to be paid attention.Since the 1980s, not precisely local Chinese female artists came intimately to give rise to Chinese womens art, but near overseas Chinese female artists also worked to this end. They created the working through different experiences and sapiditys in looking for the essence of womens consciousness. These artists mostly left China aft(prenomin al) the pagan Revolution, prior to the angleer sortings in China. They put on a bun in the oven their unique ways to present their ideas and expressions, like looking back to Chinese hi score and move the art essences that they need.With differences in personal backgrounds and generations, female artists in all these terzetto groups suck in varying and unique ways in presenting their art through different content and influence. But to Chinese female artists, the intention is to express their female strain and feeling in a ever-changing Chinese troupe in which the womens sexual practice consumption is constantly changing and reshaping. In their art, females in these deuce-ace groups sh ar not tho expressions and feelings ground on their female sensitivity but also their utterances to companionable concern. In the following sections, I choose three contemporary Chinese female artists, Hung Liu, Yu Hong, and Cui Xiuwen, and define the quality of female art through t heir kit and caboodle.Traditional female role in ChinaMost literature focuses on Chinese culture and history with key stresses on the function of language, geography, philosophies, and art. On the melodyer(a) hand, women argon wanting(p) in close all fields. Chinese finishs culture and arts argon male-dominated and male-oriented. Chinese art, whether primordial or contemporary, is art that instigated in or is practiced in China mostly by Chinese male artists. The arts of a connection reverberate mans appreciates and attitudes. Women were endlessly portrayed as objects of observation by men. Moreover, according to I-Jing, women atomic number 18 much naturally aligned with the eldritch and emotional bodies, which atomic number 18 more non-linear and spatially oriented (all those yin qualities) plot of ground men atomic number 18 more naturally aligned with the mental and physical bodies, which are more linear and temporally oriented (all those yang qualities).3Malin, David. 2006. Creating Sacred Space. Bodymath.com. http//www. consistencemath.com/articles/ autobiography/Feb06_Creating_Sacred_Space.pdf (February, 2006)Yang is mostly considered more distinguished than yin, and is regarded as of secondary importance. This prevails gender roles subscribe typical stereotypes with women always portrayed with weakness and sickness.Chinese women had been confined to the family, at the mercy of their husbands for thousands of pass of instructions. History and tradition save stifled womens vowelises. In China, women lived within a society dominated by men, where women were not accepted to involve themselves in the public field and consequently were not co-ordinated in historical descriptions. For example, in the Forbidden City, women were not allowed to walk in some public spaces because those spaces were symbolized as the males power and authority. No woman ever took part in the talkative ceremonies staged onward the Hall of Supreme Harmony, which were supreme demonstrations of male ruling power.4Wu, Hung. beyond Stereotypes The Twelve Beauties in Qing Court Art and the Dream of the Red sleeping accommodation. Writing Women in Late Imperial China, ed. Ellen Widmer& Kang-I Sun Chang, 315-316. Stanford, CA Stanford University Press, 1997.Undertakings by Chinese women highlight the custom of foot binding succeeded from late neural strain to Ming Dynasties and even sustained to several indications into the 20th vitamin C. Foot binding has an offspring to a degree in all tieres of Chinese women and at a certain point, persuaded women to move over skip over feet and to lie in the private study of their homes. Having bound feet was directly cor think to Chinese art in modern times.Contemporary Chinese women roleThe year 1976 marked a conjure in political, economic, and heathen policy, a shift that erupted out of the self-imported isolation of three ten dollar bills and opened China up to the foreign world. Western influence started to find into China and brought many new concepts to strike Chinese society. During the 1980s, the western feminism also began to influence and raised rapidly womens consciousness.By the mid-1980s, though, the plethora of newly lay outed womens magazines explicitly discussed womens problems at work and in the family. The pages of China Womens News were filled with exposs and denunciations of discrimination face up by women. womens rightist outcries began to appear with some regularity in print. This light of gender inequality also found expression in the emergence of separate womens organizationsschools, professional societies, and womens studies groups.5Hershatter, Gail& Honig, Emily. Feminist Voices. personal Voices Chinese Women in the 1980s. 308. Stanford, CAStanford University Press, 1988.Women became aware of their unequal state in society and began to cede attention on female issues. In 1990s, new modern women doublings emerged. Women focused on cas e-by-case characteristic and pursued their b greyness and profession.The new women were as intemperate and intellectual as men or better, and they could even afford more of what they inclination without anymore having to depend on men and be at a lower statute in society. Metropolis ran a special feature on women of talent in its November 1999 issue. One illustration show a confident woman pointing to the assort of her laptop computer while a male colleague with turn over brow struggles to comprehend what he sees. An article entitled Thirty Traits of the sharp fair sex6Thirty Traits of the Talented Woman explains that the woman should be intelligent, sharp-witted, well-informed, knowledgeable, well-spoken, and has good taste she is independent, self-respecting, and conscious of womens equality she if principled but gentle, with a good virtuoso impression of humor, and roaring to get along with. She is understanding, generous, and exceedingly sensitive to the feelings to others, but not suspicious. She is a doer-straightforward, efficient, and self-controlled. She is a bit of a rise up but not con appearational. While she may be lovable to men, her haul is based on personality, not beauty. Her heart is well- equilibrised love is never her unless concern. Dadushi (Metropolis) 14 (November 1999) 102-103lists her characteristics.7Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen. The New Chinese Woman and life style Magazines in the Late 1990s. Popular China Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society. Ed. Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen, and capital of Minnesota G. Pickowicz, 151. Lanham, Maryland Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002New modern women were portrayed as beautiful and intellectual individuals. They could stand in the corresponding level in society with men.Contemporary Chinese female artists and worksContemporary Chinese female artists use a lot of ways to express and assume their feelings and this is d sensation effectively in their two-bas er. Basically, there are five grand themes involved in their works to describe their voice and thought. First, female artists unremarkably use their sensitivity to express womens touch through body and gesture. Body and gesture presentations help artists to voice their opinions and feelings accompanied with their understanding of macrocosm women. Cui Xiuwen8Cui Xiuwen, natural in Heilongjiang, China, 1970. She graduated with MFA from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China in 1996. Cui Xiuwens works have consistently engaged themes of grammatical gender and gender. Her paintings show the blurred boundary betwixt public and private, and the gracious relationship between history and memory. She uses a wide range of media and subject matters to explore the messages she involves to pass, bringing disturbing insights to bear on those issues., her series works, Lovers (1999), she creates bold and sensitive relationship and intimate activity between man and woman. In the p iece, she reveals both straight and homosexual features, and presents a nervous sexual interaction that hints at Paul Cezannes strains. In Lovers 5 (1999), strong and intense orange color background emphasizes the two human figures in the front when having sex, and also attach the nervous and excited atmosphere between them. While seeing this painting, the feeling is along with two figures through position, activity, and touch. This is primary human nature and human form however is heterosexual or homosexual. I create themes most gender, not themes most sexuality, she explains. I focus on human existences, only the human form in the world. If you want to know what it is to be human, you have to gain an insight into the relationship between man and woman.9Ma, Maggie. The colors of Cui Xiuwen. Artzine A Chinese Contemporary Art Portal. http//www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid168_en.htmlYu Hongs10Yu Hong, born in Xian,China, 1966. 1995 earned MFA from the Central Academy of Fin e arts, Beijing, China. Simple and trustworthyistic are the two best speech to describe her works. Initially, Yu Hongs paintings combine highly realistic portraits wit unreal surroundings and colorations, suggestion a sense of dislocation from the world. She presents her world and experience through works without any incomparable anatomys or ideas. Though paintings often pose a tranquil feeling, they provide the signifi squirtce of life.Her early work, Nude (1988) was against masculinity appropriation of the spectacle of womans body in the cultural Revolution. She portrays realistically, womans naked body, strike and soft pose which present the touch and quality of female. Yu Hong reverses the traditional must-be female image. She take ins naked woman body in front only with red high heel shoes. Chinese describes of the human body, clothes or semi-clothed, (in a furtive pornography of specifically erotic pictures), are-to Western look-meager, schematic and poor.11Angela Zito & Tani E.Barlow.The Body Invisible in Chinese Art?. Body, Subject & index number in China. Chicago The university of Chicago Press.There were no naked body images in traditional Chinese pictures, but here Yu Hong presented the naked woman body to represent the professedly nature and beauty of human form in fly the cooped against masculinity of the body and tradition.Another type of presentation, like Hung Lius12Hung Liu, born in China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, 1982 earned her MFA in mural painting from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China, immigrated to the fall in States ulterior on and also earned MFA in visual arts from University of California, San Diego. She is refer in looking at how women existed in Chinese history for long time. Her works are touched with the painful reality of womens term on China.As a Chinese woman and immigrant in the United States, Hung Liu chooses different ways to identify herself through looking back the Chinese hist ory and portraying female issue on art work. Her paintings are based on late 19th and early 20th century Chinese shoots. Some were taken by foreign tourists, while others were taken by the Chinese. Often, the pictures are of beautiful young prostitutes. In traditional Chinese society, prostitutes belong to the low social class and disdained by people. But, indeed, they play an burning(prenominal) role during that period, particularly for photograph art and portrait paintings.In her work, Odalisque (1992), she creates a monumental altar to an anonymous woman, a turn of the century Chinese prostitute. Hung Liu recl cyphers a deposit in history for the Chinese prostitute by transforming the small photograph into large scale painting. To the painting, with their flattened surfaces, Liu attaches wooden altars, on which she sets small jade-colored vases of glass flowers or tiny embroidered shoes for bound feet. give care the lacquer panels and the lifeless glass flowers, the prosti tutes are mere decorations, passive, powerless, and empty in a culture that traditional counted emptiness as a female virtue.13Kim, Elaine H.1996. Bad Women Asian American ocular Artists Hanh Thi Pham, Hung Liu, and Yong Soon Min. Feminist Studies, Inc. http//www.jstor.org/pss/3178131The traditional Chinese clothing of the woman contrasts with the ornate, Western design of the waiting rural area upon which she reclines and the flowered, Victorian-style backdrop. In addition, her gaze turns to the smasher and marks us conscious of viewers role as extracurricular observers. The painting recalls the western artist, Edouard Manets painting, Olympia (1863). She touches a moment that registers the encounter between a past tense China and the trope of the prostitute, sexuality as commodity advertised through the relation of dis contend body to the gaze of that Western technology, camera. I dont want their stories to be forgotten I dont want them to disappear without a trace. 14Kim, E laine H.1996. Bad Women Asian American Visual Artists Hanh Thi Pham, Hung Liu, and Yong Soon Min. Feminist Studies, Inc. http//www.jstor.org/pss/3178131As she says, she intends to document the anonymous women in history. Hung Lius painting combines western aesthetics with Chinese subject matter (prostitute), a cross-cultural blend that communicates her unique sense of beauty and emotion to the viewer through extraordinarily skillful handing of paint.Second, family and growing background are the real influences to female artist when creating their works. Their works sometimes are revealed the images roughly family or childhood memory, and even extend to related personal expression and concern. Yu Hong, proclaim to Growth (1966-2006), in which Yu Hong uses her own family photographs to create a self-portrait for each year of her life, and portraits for each year of her daughters life. The idea and composition of paintings dwell deeply in her concerned questions What is the social e xpectation to female role in our society? How do these expectations build up the life of a woman? In this series of paintings, she not only secernates the story in how growing process, but also how society transports a womans life.Yu Hong discards an en therefromiastic and rational thinking, but returns to the history by an imperturbable and physical object manner instead. Yu Hong chooses a newspaper or magazine spread to full complement each image of painting, and makes connection between private and public area of her own life. Witness to Growth(1995),a painting of herself aged twenty-nine days old, Yu Hongs daughter lying on her body, family burden (role of pose) and society change (modern woman) bring clayey pressure and make her rethink the meaning of gender role and seek the balance between those roles.Next to the painting, artist prescribes a contemporaneous China 1995 newspaper visualizeing women waiting for job fortune. Chinese economy was flourishing rapidly durin g this period, and it also brought super emulation in on the job(p) position. Many women deep in thought(p) jobs, and many young girls lose opportunity of education. Society change quickly marked negative effect to female and deprived of their chance. At this time, western feminism came into China women began to pursue their equality to men in society and also look for their female identity.This feminism trend aroused women to think around their roles between family and society as mothers and working women. In contrast, one year-old Yu Hongs daughter, she seemed a new generation is growing. A new age is coming. The painting engages the juxtaposition of the metric weight unit of contemporary Chinas history with the simplicity of life in its purest, most uncomplicated state of being. Here is a relatively unflurried life lived in the midst of an almost constant political, cultural, and economic maelstrom. Yu Hong provides the demand retreat into ordinary that enables the progr ession of life through the juxtaposition of the photograph and painting.Cultural Revolution was a significant historical event, especially grow in people who grew up during this period. Hun Lius stunning reproductions of historical photographs of Chinese life, which ad gazump the cultural collisions she faced while coming of age during the decade of the Cultural Revolution in China. Personal items such as photographs were forbid during Cultural Revolution, and her family destroyed most of their family photos out of fear. As a result, Hung Liu creates her paintings from anonymous photographs of historical China, particularly with reclaiming the lost histories of nameless women, has been strongly influenced by the losses she and her family suffered.Many of her paintings depict restrictive Chinese Cultural Revolution movie and express her voice to against this history. Hung Lius painting, trey Graces (2001), the source photographs for this painting depict women in paramilitary unif orms in undismayed poses, shown from below to give the carriage of greater height and stature. These fighters for Maos cause carry vulgar rifles as they march forward to engage in the revolutionary struggle. During the Cultural Revolution, young students and young people were mobilized by Chinese government, called red guards or Hong Wei Bing. The Hong Wei Bing traveled throughout China, going to schools, universities, and institutions, spreading the teaching of Mao.They aimed to attack the old society (old ideas, cultures, manners, and customs) with violence, but indeed they followed blindly by governments propaganda. And the Cultural Revolution also put young intellectuals and artist like Hung Liu into the rice fields to be re-educated by peasants. Hung Liu chooses plain clothes fatigued by the women in the overlord photographs with flowers, painted in the traditional Chinese style.The drips of vegetable oil paint that enliven the paintings surface are a part of Western prax is with its reference to the personifications of beauty, charm, and grace. As she says, The oil washes and drips hat seep through my paintings contributes to a sense of loss while dissolving the historical authenticity of the photographs I paint from. Color is a way of making contact with subjects that are fading into the gray tones of history.15Going Away, Coming Home 80 Blessings from Oakland Artist hung Liu. Port Of Oakland. http//www.museumca.org/press/pdf/Liu%20fact%20sheet%20fnl.pdfThrough this revolutionary background, Hung Liu had experienced a deep touch. This painting not only looks for the memory of girls but also expresses Hung Lius feeling of the Cultural Revolution through the image and drip.Third, artists look for identifying womens importance and missing recognition of social term because women in society are always ignored and make to play an unimportant role. Indeed, they are actually as significant as men in our world. Hung Lius paintings often narrate identity a nd story issues. She documents in her art the forgotten lives of anonymous people, especially those of women. She tries to recall their erased identity from society and appear their stories and meaning of existence back.Her work, We have Been Naught We Shall Be all(2007), a series of three canvases edged by bands to mimic widescreen film format, those works are inspired by Daughters of China (1949), a Ling Zifeng film based on the heroic actions of a group of women officers and soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War. Hung Lius empathetic response to the final moments of the women, as they carry a wounded comrade into the river to draw away confrontation fire from the Chinese Resistance fighters, brings to the fore the theme of personal sacrifice. The images of women are taken by realistic presentation, Hung Liu bases on original photographic image of film.She reserves womens face without any color and intends to keep their original identify and recall their heroic dignity, accompan ied by respect. The paintings from left to right, it seems ancestral the moment and movement when women carrying the wounded body toward the front. Hung Liu uses the colour color on three canvases, the background of left painting is coloring yellow, yellow is on wounded body and womens figures of primaeval canvas, and only little yellow color on right canvas.Moreover, yellow symbolizes the sharp memory. Hung Liu arranges the yellow on three canvases perfectly along with womens action and moment. This presents a balance between image and time. Her art work is concerned closely what has been lost in transit between female and history. Hung Liu desires to give those nameless women place in history, and she would like to identify those women as significant heroes in our society.As Hung Lius concept, Yu Hong creates the She series to portray the spirit and lives of women. The meaning of existence in our world is then recorded. Different career women have also contend different roles to show their importance. She-security guard, Yu Hong arranges one photographic image picked by security guard aside with one oil painting made by her. The photographic image is taken in front of the museum in her leisure time. Security guard wears snowy shirt with likely smile.In the photo, she raises her hand and poses YA. Contrary to the conterminous, the painting shows her working place. She wears yellow ochrecolor uniform and concentrate on on her job with highly respect. The light is the parking light seems pencil lead us to take a glance on her working place and tries to understand her work. Artist organizes this placement purposely and intent to show the importance of security guard in society.Yu Hong depicts the portrait image to let sense of hearing snoop security guards life between working place and personal life. She is the individual with singularity no one can replace her in this career position. Yu Hong still presents her realistic style on paintings, and she i ntends to record different modern female in different levels of life. As she says, If life can move slower, people can notice and pay attention in every detail and experience. I wish life could be freed from the restraint, so the essence of real life could be discovered. 16, , . ,, . Enjoy the Life-Yu Hong. Febay.com. http//www.febay.com.cn/magazine/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=18433 (April, 2007)Yu Hong represents the reality of space on womans personal life and working life, elegant skills on portrait image, and female sensibility on womans experience. She also represents an inner desire of a female artist be responsible and conscious of womens social status.Fourth, the present reality of sadness and pain of Chinese women who are suffering under a cruelly male-dominated world illustrate the image to contend traditional patriarchy. In the works of Hung Liu, she has examined foot binding, practiced in China from the Song Dynasty until the beginning of the twentieth century. Many Chine se womens feet were bound from birth to artificially confine their growth, distorting them into small, twisted fists that were sexually attractive to men. The painful, deforming practice of foot binding was used to make a Chinese woman walk in an extremely difficult way, but their victorian steps were considered piano and lovely. Bound feet left women handicapped, which also ensured that they remained subservient.Moreover, it stressed the value of appearance while making a virtue of hiding ones pain and suffering, making it a combination of esthetics and cruelty. In one piece of her work called Bonsai (1992), Hung Liu put a photograph next to an anatomical line drawing showing the cross-section of a human body flanked on either side by Chinese characters. The only decipherable physiognomic attributes in this figural drawing are the heart, what appears to be a spine, and a suggestion of intestinal organs.What are most astonishing observations about this drawing are the absence of legs and the egg shape of the figure that almost mirrors the contour of the woman in the photograph. By placing these two images within the analogous interpretive context. Hung Liu has reinforced the notion of the womans incapacitated movement. Womans physical movement had been limited by the mutilation of her feet in the aforementioned(prenominal) way that a tiny bonsai tree is confined to restrict its growth. She had been bound by Chinese societal and cultural practices as an object of male gratification. Hung Liu shows the Chinese aesthetic tradition with cruel reality in male- dominated society. She also presents how unfair beauty standards were to women in the long period.As a Chinese woman, the piece would make a you think about your grand grandmother or grandmother suffering this pain in coordinate to satisfy mens taste and standard. Her art work is concerned about what has been severed from the surroundings. She touches the sadness and painful reality of womens status in China. As a woman, she uses her sensibility to depict and voice for womens gender role. From her paintings, not only narrate stories but also represent true reality in our society.The young artist Cui Xiuwen creates bold, sensitive caricatures of works as Intersection Series in 1998. In the piece, she records the full front side of a mans naked body and spiffed up a young girl holding a rose. The painting is also done in connection with Cezannes colors and narrative story-telling and nervous relationship between female and male. Cui Xiuwen colors the girls dress and dog on green color. Green color symbolizes the protection from fears and anxieties affiliated with the demands of others (men). The rose is represented as girls pure virginity which is inviolate. misss face also reveals innocence.On the contrary, man genitals are bit off by girls dog, blooding through his underwear. His extremely fearful and shocking face shows on his face with opened brim and big eyes. In traditiona l Chinese society, patriarchy dominates the world and power. privates are the symbol of patriarchy. Cui Xiuwen boldly challenges to patriarchic society and tries to reverse the social position between female and male.In traditional Chinese art, art is confined to the men society. Women always played being viewed characters men played viewer roles, but here, the artist breaks traditional art concept and reverses art presentation. The reversal shows Cui Xiuwens stance on the feminism. She makes up fictional story image to express her own challenging patriarchic desire. Intensive and extraordinary(p) color and story throw a huge stone to the eyes of the audience. This also brings new dispute to contemporary Chinese society.Finally, concern about female and social issues, the year 1976 marked a shift in political, economic, and cultural policy, a shift that opened China up to the outside world. Afterward, society is changing rapidly. There are more and more social issues emerged such as teen-age crime and pregnant teen-age girl. Social value shifts to vilify path. Artists see this situation and use observations to bring the problem and question to audience. Yu Hong, she approaches new art presentation on Figure and Ground.The works portrays some young girls practicing gymnastics. Images seem simple, but paintings neatly summarized a sophisticated pass of thought the artist has been developing over the days, and they express that thought in a way that ties the works visually to certain aesthetic principles found in traditional Chinese painting. As a group, paintings represent a fresh vision and a new level in artists oeuvre. Each painting in the series depicts from one to three girls against a blank ground, bent into contorted positions as they practice gymnastics.Yu Hong bases the paintings on photographs she took at her daughters gymnastics class. The girls wear black leotards in addition to some combination of tight black pants, black and white striped shi rt, and black slippers. As the artist has said, the paintings are all about girls doing artistic gymnastics. People, especially girls, have to change themselves to suit society. The images are a simple but highly effective metaphor for the place of young girls in contemporary society.17Erickson, Britta. Figure and Ground Yu Hongs gymnastics series. Yu Hong. Beijing, China Loft.Although the students in Yu Hongs daughters gymnastics class range in age from six to teenage, the age of the girls portrayed in Figure and Ground is narrowed to about nine to twelve. Those are the years when girls move from childhood to puberty and begin to come under the heavy pressure of societys expectations. Teenage is a special period, and it is easy to lead a child to wrong path.Cui Xiuwens strength and matter of course seems to have naturally transformed into a desire of the home, of having a family, and in a wish, difficult to admit but naturally inevitable, of maternity. This is what the images of her work, Angel, inspire. Artist approaches her own sensitive observation to current social issue related to young age girl. This work does not want to strike hard a social and universal situation. It brings up the awareness and the realization of an individual as a singular feeling. Cui Xiuwen wants to express how a young mother, especially teen-age mother in China feels and what fears she has to face. She uses a young model to create strong emotions. Rows of white young girls, ghost like girls, and the same girl reiterate over, and in the same state of pregnancy, but the figures are positioned at divers(a) scales, which express the different types of fear they have.Alone, staring at the horizon, scared and upturned in a procession that goes from the Forbidden City and continues on what can be a highway such as the Beijing ring road o the expressway to the airport. This represents the time when society is changing, and girls are unavailing to go back to the prior time and have no pickax but to go forwardt. They look at the front but only darkness is surrounding them.No longer wishing to see the outside world, reality, nor to be confronted by it or to have to deal with it, is the artists explanation. Falling pregnant has distinctly different meanings and implications at different ages of woman. two for the woman and it terms of how the external world judges the fact. Do they extol or condemn. Cui Xiuwen asks Can a woman choose to have a baby alone, single, because she bows to maternal instinct, and does not feel the need to be conjoin?18Smith, Karen. Photo series Angel of 2006 and One day in 2004. Catalog of DF2 Gallery. Los AngelesDF2 GalleryCui Xiuwen brings the question to make the audience aware about the young pregnant girls problem rather than criticize her . She uses retrospective manner to represent the image on her works. Her works do not strike us, nor are they extraordinarily critical, but rather farewell significant questions in our minds .ConclusionYu Hong, Cui Xiuwen, and Hung Liu though are being in different generation groups they all aim to represent female qualities and voice for women through their works. Yu Hong was brought into the world at the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, during which almost every aspect of Chinese life was being re-evaluated. When re-examining the historical evidence and cultural production of the period, it becomes difficult to imagine life being brought into the world during such a period of upheaval. In many cultural products that are marketed as personal memories, the political economic situation is placed directly into the foreground of the narrative, and personal details become a way of contextualizing the nations story.Yu Hongs method of storytelling makes the personal much more central. Her generation, is a group existing between old (artists were trained as Russian realists) and young (artists were influence by emancipation movement) generations. Yu Hongs works always present old tradition concept (family as central start point) and new social concept which is related to social issues. Cui Xiuwen has been called many things-avant-garde, transgressive, feminist, controversial, and even over-the-top-buts never creatively stagnant. She is born a new kind of human, who grew up in a relatively open social milieu and came of age in the increasingly more globoseised information age. Her paintings and later photographs are always with frank depictions of human sexuality and controversial issues, which present her ideas and feelings about the new modern society.But Hung Liu, she was born in 1948 in China. During the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to the country to work in the fields and be reeducated. Hung Liu study the acceptable artistic style of Socialist Realism while in China. After immigrating to San Diego, she learned that it is important for an artist to think and that art is intertwined with, not separate from life. Her works depict the cu ltural mixing that takes place when an individual moves to a new country and also reality of hidden history in China. She much focuses on historical sources to present the image of reality. Three generation group of artists have their own unique presentations through their works and also are influenced on their own social backgrounds.But, female are the most important image and concepts of their commonality of works. By focusing on a female rather than on a male, three artists challenge a tradition of patriarchy. In the art pieces, the narrator (three female artists) and the protagonists (female image in works) are all women. As such, they present the viewer with a distinctively female view of the world. In historical constructions, womens lives were in the main touched only indirectly in contrast to their fathers, husbands, or brothers. Yu Hong, Cui Xiuwen, and Hung Liu show the womens lives being immediately influenced by the external world and also their existence and importance in our society.History, society, and family have been great influences upon the development of female art in China. Because of the oppression that Chinese women have faced from a patriarchal society, female art exhibit intense emotions of sadness, pain, and revolution against the male dominated Chinese social stratification. There are many paintings, and photographs that depict the detrimental state that Chinese women were in during the more rigid periods of Chinese history. Various works of art from photos to paintings show female opposition against non-homogeneous Chinese traditions that have oppressed their gender for generations.Many female artists who impelled by extreme emotion focused on work that reflect their sense of retribution against male dominance. Art work that feature females go the tables on men are common among more liberal female artists. There is also a lot of work that defy traditional Chinese art that is also patriarchal. Such works make use of non-convent ional materials and subjects as a way to challenge the male dominated norms. This shows an image of the Chinese female artist as someone who wants to break free from an oppressive condition through the use of personal expression.The qualities linked with the use of the expression in art for them taking account of use of words importantly as the innermost artistic element, simplification, appropriation, authority of user or popular culture as well as art itself. The artists entrust that art makes people realize the truth-at least the truth that is given to all to understand, and brings back eliminated women state in Chinese tradition.Chinese female artists have become more motivated to do art not only because of talent, but they convey reality and truth through art. In soon modern world, the majority is focusing on economic flourishing, globalization, and new technology. Most people have forgotten the essence of life and the simple things that make us live along with the many trou bles of humanity and theses contemporary Chinese female artists, through exploring modern art are still preserving the real essence of making art and what art means to them, and the female artists also discover their own experience and find an appropriate way of expression in Chinese art.In relation to this, the female artist thus gives superior importance to the role of women in Chinese society. Many brazen works aim to recognize female contribution to the family, government, and society which goes largely undistinguished in past generations. Here the Chinese female artists aim to open viewers hearts and minds to the true worth of the Chinese woman. works of art that show how important Chinese women are also tend to show how much they are taken for granted.The Chinese woman artist was also found to be sensitive with the changing times. As society evolved over years of political, economic, and social change, so did female artistry change with it. In fact, female art can be conclu ded to be much more versatile than Chinese male art which is considered more traditional and unyielding to time. Another difference duly noted between male and female works of art in China was that females tend to express more depth and daringness in terms of depicting sensual subjects. Years of yearning for equality with their male partners have also implied years of dissatisfaction with how males see copulation rituals. The outlet of this repression can be observed with how substantive and rich Chinese female works of sensual art are.The female artist takes her time to craft the intricate details that add tonicity to a romantic scene. The female artist is able to bring out the humanity of a sensitive scene and does not confine the subject to feral lust. Instead, the focus is upon the intimateness of interaction that is not meant to sexually arouse but rather to emotionally move viewers. Lastly, the image of the Chinese female artist is one that is deeply devoted to the value of family. Influences from childhood memories can be seen in the works of many female artists and is regarded as a sense of personal beauty added to general themes.Those are the themes that provide the overall picture in which female art is framed. Chinese female art can be compared to a strong, demanding voice that echoes the grievances of an oppressed gender and outwardly shows how important it is and why people should take notice. It is forceful and bold, more than willing to pass the norms in order to convey its meaning to an internal society that it deems as largely unsympathetic to their concerns. At the same time, female art is delicate and sweet, showing not intent to please but a true expression of beauty.Lastly, it can be concluded that female art is greatly influenced by changing times and each generation of female artists have their own issues to face which are reflected in the works that they produce. Despite female art showing the capability of female artists, it is also a representation of quality artistic work. These qualities contents highly essence of female touch and voice, and also produce with strong female expression through the artworks. Female art is not only made by female artist, on contrary, it is an art with enthusiastic female quality.These five categories of female quality present the sense of female beauty and expression, artists sensitivity of women, and extraordinary and skillful discourse of paint. Observe the female art movement in the western society and Chinese society, there is no gap between them. In the west or China, the essence of quality of female art has maintained the same content and concept.In recently decade, female consciousness emerges and brings new concept to women. Women begin to understand themselves more and express their feelings to others. With a modern course of awareness in Chinese contemporary art in the global market, Chinese female artist are expectant that they will stretching their ultimate object ive Chinese female artist must have a say. They will continue to explore and find a new way to express their art and voice for women, and the quality of female art will also get more abundant themes.