
The West also tends to take credit for all art that is not brush painting. Today, the Chinese employ visual language that was developed in the West. But paper originally came from Asia, and all works on paper are not deemed Asian. Why should every oil painting be called Western? Why is it that the West feels it owns conceptualism, installation, modernism, and abstraction? The Hong Kong dealer Alice King, who shows work that uses guohua styles in modern ways, asks, “What is a Chinese painting? Is it any painting made by someone from China? Any painting made by someone who is ethnically Chinese? Or is it a stylistic question? Can a Westerner make a Chinese painting if he uses rice paper and a brush?” Westerners sometimes dismiss Chinese work as derivative. “We must as artists solve the problems of China, even if they’re boring for the West,” said the painter Wang Yin, one of the artists of the Yuanmingyuan village.