December 20, 2000
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I got sidetracked in my quest for sites to access images - my love is contemporary East and Southeast-asian art and I found cool sites which I am going to review first - apologies to LucienSarkis. I personally find the synthesis of Western art techniques and ideas with Asian ideas and traditional Asian methods fascinating. Trouble with contemporary art is that you often have to be in the region where it is happening to keep abreast of things. People used to western art may initially deem contemporary asian art to be nothing new. Indeed, the methods employed are very often 100% western, but the ideas expressed are not. Although I regard this sort of art to be Asian, I am far more impressed when the artist manages to assimilate Western means of artistic expression with asian ones. Two of my favorite contemporary Chinese artists right now are Wei Dong and Xu Bing. Both had training in classical Chinese art and have used their backgrounds to develop a visual vocabulary that is uniquely theirs. More power to artists like them!
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