HUALANG

Hualang: translation

[Art Gallery Magazine, Guangzhou, 1980–]

Art journal

When launched in the 1980s as a bimonthly by the Lingnan Fine Art Publishing in Guangzhou, Hualang would become one of the three most comprehensive art periodicals in China along with Meishu [Art] in Beijing and Jiangsu huakan [Jiangsu Pictorial] in Nanjing. In 1994, following the appointment of the renowned critic and curator Huang Zhuan as senior editor, Hualang underwent the first drastic change in its editorial line. Beginning with the September-October issue (no. 46), it begun to focus solely on contemporary art with an eye on current trends in and outside China.

Great emphasis was given to avant-garde artists who were internationally acclaimed yet little known in China, as well as to emerging young Chinese artists in its ‘Reports from Artists’ Studios’. Extensive coverage was provided on exhibitions and new art practices such as installation, video and performance and on important issues concerning cultural identity and the postmodernist constructs of art making. Sensing the market influences that had begun to affect the production of Chinese art, Hualang introduced a column on art sponsorship, investment and collection. After the resignation of Huang Zhuan at the end of 1996, Hualang tried to maintain its cutting-edge quality, but with the reshuffling of its editorial board and the release of other more radical and better-designed art periodicals in the late 1990s, it switched its editorial orientation for the second time in October 2001. Now Hualang specializes in art collection and connoisseurship.