The first retrospective monograph on the artistic experimentations of
the renowned artist, collector, and connoisseur C.C. Wang.
C.C. Wang (1907-2003) is best known as a preeminent twentieth-century
connoisseur and collector of pre-modern Chinese art, a reputation that
often overshadows his own art. C.C. Wang: Lines of Abstraction
recenters Wang's extraordinary career in his own artistic practice to
reveal an original quest for tradition and innovation in the global
twentieth century. Spanning seven decades, the catalog focuses on the
artist's distinctive synthesis of Chinese ink painting and American
postwar abstraction.
Born to a family of scholar-officials at the twilight of the Qing
dynasty, Wang mastered the traditional ink and brush techniques in
Republican Shanghai and immigrated to New York City in 1949. There he
sought to preserve classical Chinese painting through engagement with
new ideas, materials, and forms. Drawing inspiration from past masters
in the history of Chinese painting, as well as New York's artistic
climate in the wake of World War II, Wang advanced breakthrough
transformations in ink painting.
Held twenty years after the artist's death, a 2023 exhibit of Wang's art
was hosted by two venues, one at Hunter College and the second at the
University of Minnesota. This exhibition catalog includes one hundred
color images and features texts by Wen-Shing Chou, Daniel Greenberg, and
Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, with additional contributors.
