Area of Research

The Topicality of Chinese Antiquity

The start of the 20th century marked the end of a several-thousand-years-old Chinese Empire. Following a republican phase, Japanese occupation and a civil war, China has been ruled by the Communist Party since 1947. The economic reforms of the 1980s ushered in a process of radical modernization that made China the world power it is today. The role its traditional, deeply feudally-impacted art and culture plays in this modernization process is still unclear. It is striking that contemporary artists and intellectuals never tire of questioning and interpreting this tradition.