The relationship between Chinese modern and contemporary artistic creation and the national sovereignty of China is a worthy subject of debate. Within it, modernism and intellectual/artistic subjectivity are two necessary starting points. However, there is still a good deal of uncertainty around these two points. First, can the modernization process of China be accepted as the general meaning of modernization? Second, are some Chinese modern and contemporary artists actually modern intellectuals? Based on clarification of the above two uncertainties, this thesis is an attempt to argue that the Chinese artists who regard themselves, their artworks and creations, as intellectual, reflect the collision domain between themselves and the political entity of national sovereignty in China: the communist regime controlled by the CCP, Chinese Communist Party中國共産黨.

In this thesis, three chapters discuss the relationship between Chinese modern and contemporary art and the CCP. In my theoretical exposition, I argue that the artistic/intellectual subjectivity of modern Chinese artists gradually developed and changed during the conflict and struggle with the Communist rule.

In the first chapter, I introduce the biography and artistic creation of Chinese literati painters under the communist rule, exemplified by Wu Hufan吳湖帆. I analyze and demonstrate how the subjectivity of the traditional literati gradually lost strength under the pressure of nationalism, the disenchantment with modernization, and communism. In the second chapter, I focus on the Scar Art art movement of the 1970s to the 1980s, as well as representative artists and their works in this direction of art, such as Cheng Conglin程叢林 and Gao Xiaohua高小華. In this chapter, I use feminism and Foucault's political-philosophical theories to explain these visual expressions of the memory of historical trauma in Scar Art during this period. In Chapter 3, by discussing the works of two artists, He Gong何工 and Ai Weiwei艾未未, in the context of Foucault’s political philosophy, I argue that artists how to express their intellectual subjectivity and political resistance through their contributions to Chinese contemporary art.

This thesis is an art-historical inquiry into the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and its controversies in the 1990s. A socio-economic model of instrumentalization of the arts based on Pierre Bourdieu's and David Throsby's conceptualizations of cultural capital is first developed. The model is then used to explore the notion of "congressional aesthetics," or a particular brand of arts-instrumentalization adopted by the U.S. Congress for post-WWII federal projects involving art, and two cases of its implementation. The first case is the successful implementation of congressional aesthetics in the instrumentalization of the arts in Sino-American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. The kind of American art in the 1950s enabled the successful implementation of congressional aesthetics. The opposite case is then investigated: the failed implementation of congressional aesthetics in the operation of the NEA in the 1980s. Specifically, the NEA controversies of the 1990s can be traced to the agency's failure to conform to congressional aesthetics. Failed congressional aesthetics also results largely from the type of American art being produced in the 1980s.

The display methods of the gallery, "Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision," makes the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, unique among modern art institutions in the United States. It is also an anomaly within the Menil Collection itself. The "Witnesses" room is located near the back of the wing that houses the museum's large Surrealism collection. Both objects that the Surrealists owned and objects similar to those they collected are showcased in the gallery by means of an array of eclectically displayed ethnographic objects and other curiosities. Curated by anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, this single-room exhibition seems to recreate a surrealist collection. "Witnesses" is a permanent exhibition within the Menil's Surrealism collection and not an independent wing or gallery. All of the objects contained in "Witnesses" belonged either to the curator Edmund Carpenter or to the de Menils, whose larger collection of ethnographic objects are displayed in separate African, Oceanic, and Pacific Northwest Coast galleries within the museum. The Surrealists often utilized a heterogeneous style of both collecting and display, which the de Menils also took up. They mixed surrealist art freely with ethnographic and other types of found objects. This style of collecting and display contrasts sharply with the modern display methods that are standard to American art museums, and which are dictated by a hierarchy based on the cultural provenance of each object as high art. This thesis examines Carpenter's "Witnesses" exhibition in the Menil Collection to establish its display as a legacy of surrealist collecting--a close connection which is not seen in the permanent collections of any other art museum in the United States. Thus, by noting and annotating the Surrealists' collecting and display methods that can be located in Carpenter's installation of "Witnesses," I argue that Carpenter challenges many of the formal qualities typical of museum institutional practices and radically expands its very definition of what constitutes art, even in our own time.

The Neue Galerie in New York City includes some of the most impressive and culturally-specific artwork from Ronald S. Lauder's private art collection. The Neue's permanent exhibitions showcase pieces from the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) and Wiener Werkstätte (Applied Arts of Vienna) in an environment that also employs replicas and period specific motifs to evoke the interiors of the private homes in which affluent fin-de-siècle Viennese art patrons lived, displayed influential modernist work, and held culturally important salons. Gustav Klimt's celebrated Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) is arguably the museum's most prized artwork. It serves as an icon that immortalizes Ronald Lauder as private collector. The figure of Adele Bloch-Bauer has also become an important emblem, whose story epitomizes the complexities of Jewish identity and its influence upon Viennese modern art. This thesis explores how the Neue Galerie's physical layout represents a specific model of modernism. By focusing on the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, I urge a rethinking of the museum's relationship to modern art as an interpretation of the past. The themes that surround Adele Bloch-Bauer I have shaped Lauder's agenda as the leading private collector of the art of fin-de-siècle Vienna.