The site at http://www.chinese-art.com (officially titled Chinese Type Contemporary Art Magazine) is a non-profit bimonthly online magazine initiated and managed by Robert Bernell (Luobote Bonaou), an American resident in Beijing. Launched in December 1997, this web portal is subdivided into traditional and contemporary Chinese art and designed to provide collectors, historians, curators, dealers and critics outside of China with English documentation on some of the art making history in China. The site includes a free monthly e-bulletin with over 4,000 subscribers worldwide. Each issue has commissioned a guest editor, among them such notable curators, art historians and art critics as Wu Hung, Hou Hanru, Francesca Dal Lago and Wu Meichun.
In the last five years, the in-depth and highly professional information provided over the Internet by chinese-art.com, with 150 essays, reviews and articles and over 10,000 images related to contemporary Chinese art, has fuelled the growing international interest in the field. Published by New Art Media Limited (founded by Bernell), chinese-art.com is supported by galleries in New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. In 2000, New Art Media Limited began to publish print compilations of articles, essays and other text materials from the website from 1998 to 1999 (John Clark (ed.), Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium) and 2000 (Wu Hong (ed.), Chinese Art at the Crossroads).
In 2002, Bernell started Time Zone 8 Limited, a physical book publishing company and a monthly e-newsletter, What’s On, with a focus on contemporary art, design, photography, architecture and urban culture in Asia. Maintaining an arm’s length approach, Bernell continues to research, compile, commission and translate materials related to contemporary Chinese art for chinese-art.com and various book publications.
ALICE MING WAI JIM