Description
The chart is an interactive lineage map. Cynical realism sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.
For Cynical realism (1989 – Present), it traces one movement that shaped it, a well-established link: Pop art.
Cynical realism (simplified Chinese: 玩世现实主义; traditional Chinese: 玩世現實主義; pinyin: wánshì xiànshí zhǔyì) is a contemporary movement in Chinese art, especially in the form of painting, that began in the 1990s. Beginning in Beijing, it has become one of the most popular Chinese contemporary art movements in mainland China. It arose throughout the pursuit of individual expression by Chinese artists who broke away from the collective mindset that existed since the Cultural Revolution. The major themes tend to focus on socio-political issues and events since Revolutionary China (1911) to the present. These include having a usually humorous and post-ironic take on a realist perspective and interpretation of the transition that Chinese society has been through, from the advent of communism to today's industrialization and modernization. Read more ↗
