Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sullivan Collection

(from 24th Jul 2012 until 27th Jan 2013)

Explore this important collection of Chinese contemporary art formed by scholar Michael Sullivan.

See all 33 related objects

Detail of Red, yellow, and black abstraction, Taiwan, 1995, by Chen Zhengxiong (Museum no. LI1486.8)

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Introduction

The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection is one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary Chinese art in the West. Professor Sullivan began collecting with his wife Khoan (Wu Baohuan) in China in the 1940s. ‘Khoan in her own special way began to build bridges and open doors for me’, he writes, ‘who would otherwise always have been looked on as a foreigner’. Many artists became their personal friends, and the works of art were presented to them as symbols of their friendship.

Professor Sullivan has published many books on contemporary Chinese art since the 1950s and has worked at the Universities of London, Malaya, Stanford and Oxford. Through his writings, he established a new field of modern Chinese art history and criticism, and befriended Chinese artists of all generations, especially those working overseas.

The works in this exhibition are mostly by living artists and have been acquired in the last ten years. A companion exhibition of earlier acquisitions will be displayed this autumn in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Eastern Art Online presents an online version of Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sullivan Collection, currently on display in the Ashmolean's Chinese Paintings Gallery, to celebrate the opening of the Beijing exhibition. It enables visitors to browse and search all exhibition objects and their high-quality zoomable images online.

In celebration of these exhibitions, the Ashmolean has published a Festshcrift in honour of Michael Sullivan, which is available to purchase from the Ashmolean shop. A fully illustrated catalogue of the collection, Modern Chinese Art: The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection, is also available to purchase from the Ashmolean shop, or online here. A catalogue of the Beijing exhibition is also available to purchase through the National Art Museum of China (email: gzlx@namoc.org).