Art & Trousers: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Asian Art

A collection of more than 30 essays, fully illustrated with more than 640 color images, Art & Trousers moves deftly between regional analysis, portraits of individual artists, and a metaphorical history of trousers, presenting a panoramic view of modern and contemporary Asian art, and focusing on the various impacts of invention, tradition, exchange, colonization, politics, social development, and gender.

Curator and scholar David Elliott, who was in at the birth pangs of “global contemporary art” over forty years ago, here uses his unparalleled knowledge of the field to produce a brilliantly original, provocative, and readable account. Polemically autobiographical and sanely sceptical, this is an essential read for those who want to know what the fuss is about, written with insight and humour by one of the first makers of the fuss.

- Craig Clunas, FBA Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, University of Oxford