Journal of Transnational American Studies

Gordon Chang’s essay, excerpted from East–West Interchanges in American Art: A Long and Tumultuous Relationship, focuses on Zhang Shuqi, a Chinese-born artist who worked in the United States during the period of World War II and acted as a cultural diplomat for China. Zhang strongly influenced American mass culture by bringing methods of Chinese brush painting to a general audience. However, despite the popular “orientalist” association of Zhang’s art with traditional brush painting (and, beyond that, timeless Chinese culture), his work was in fact strikingly modern.