The Asian Modern

John Clark’s magisterial The Asian Modern reconstructs the notion of art and its historiography. Writing the history of the Asian modern through the social life of artists, he generates a new paradigm for the narration of art. Both volumes meticulously chart his analysis of art in Asia from the 1850s to the present day, and are an invaluable resource for the scholar and layman alike.

In this expansive study, John Clark draws on decades of his research on modern art cultures across Asia from 1850 to the present day. The Asian Modern uses an artist-centric approach, by way of meticulous case studies, to create a new comparative paradigm for the narration of art.

Affiliations of place, claims John Clark, rather than genealogies of time, is key to clarifying the category of the Asian Modern. The transfer is from an extractive art history obsessed with pedigree and derivations, on the one hand, to a redistributive art history, on the other, that is possible only through the reciprocities and fundamental obligations between persons and things. Absent the latter, there can be no future for art history in Asia. - Patrick D. Flores, Professor of Art Studies, University of the Philippines, introduction to The Asian Modern

John Clark is Emeritus Professor in Art History at the University of Sydney, the author of five books and editor or co-editor of another five. His Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art of the 1980s and 1990s (2010) won the Best Art Book Prize of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand in 2011. His most recent book is Modernities of Japanese Art (2013).