WHAT A PERFORMANCE ; the Genius of Chinese Artist Zhang Huan Is Better Represented by a Fascinating New Book Than by the Two Live Pigs in His New Show EXHIBITION OF THE WEEK

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ZHANG HUAN White Cube, SW1

WHAT little I have so far seen of contemporary Chinese art compels me to condemn almost all of it as bathetic mimicry of Western trends and artists known only indirectly from reports in magazines. Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 and the cultural impoverishment that was its immediate consequence are now sufficiently distant to have been almost forgotten, but it must be argued that with so much destruction of visual arts that were the ancestral Chinese inheritance - a thousand regional cultures developed over several thousand years - it was inevitable that any new manifestation of painting and sculpture would be grafted onto the lively and …