The Sight Of The Other

After 30 years of development, where does Chinese contemporary art stand in the global art world? Chinese artists and critics have been discussing and practicing during this process of germination, collision, going out and reflection. However, the positioning of Chinese contemporary art in the global scene does not only depend on our own definition. In a still somewhat Americentric art world, how do western journals interpret Chinese contemporary art and what kind of China’s image is shaped?To answer this question,This article took 4 important US publications ARTFORUM international, Art Journal, ARTnews, The Art Bulletin as sample, and counted the quantity and frequency of the appearance of art criticism articles involving China between 2005 and 2014. We also selected 129 articles referring to China and Chinese contemporary art from ARTFORUM international and Art Journal, and quantitively analyzed their frequency length, authors, content and tendency. Furthermore, based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework, we analyzed the selected articles from three aspects:linguistic practice, discursive practice and social practice. Our analysis illustrates the the styles of observation and writing in western world and the image of Chinese art in western narratives as well.Western art criticism articles embody the notion of post-colonial gaze in Orientalism(1980) by Edward Said, and the Power/Knowledge theory proposed by Michel Foucault. In the sample texts, this kind of writing has become a cycle. Nevertheless, western exploration of Chinese art has made new attempts through the deep excavations of Chinese traditional culture. The analysis of western discourse referring to Chinese contemporary art allows us to obtain a new perception of our culture and art.