Institut für Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens Women Artists in Twentieth-Century China: A Prehistory of the Contemporary

This lecture will reflect on two intersecting themes: the rise of women as artists and as subjects for art, in the context of the evolving status of women in twentieth-century China. Against the backdrop of the nascent modern education for women and the emergence of feminism between 1910 and 1940, the presentation interrogates, in light of contemporary art world patterns and current definitions of feminism, the slowing and even regression in recognition of women as artists in the second half of the twentieth century.