Nine Lives: The Birth of the Avant-Garde in New China - Tapa blanda

The author, British art historian Karen Smith, paints a series of vivid portraits of the lives and careers of nine artists who have come to embody the avant-garde in Chinese art: nine individuals born at the onset of the People's Republic of China, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and yet emerged in the 1980s to become some of the most influential characters shaping modern art within China, and its profile on the international scene. Smith's experience in China and her fluency in Mandarin give an edge to the text and results in a penetrating portrait of the mindset of the generation she describes.