A crusader for modern Chinese art

Tremendous changes in the contemporary Chinese art scene have taken place since Smith came to Beijing 20 years ago.

As one of the few Westerners chronicling the development of Chinese art over the last two decades, she is still here.

In her new book, As Seen 2, the second book of her As Seen project initiated two years ago, Smith quotes at the beginning: "The ancients would take years to mull over the correct answer to a question. Today we have only minutes to respond". It is a quote from Zhang Xiaogang, one of China's leading artists, written in 1985.

Though he wrote those words almost 30 years ago, Smith believes that this quote is relevant today.

"There is barely time for reflection: There is no time to pause," writes Smith in As Seen 2, which was launched at The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a nonprofit art center in Beijing.

Like the first As Seen book, which documented 41 Chinese artists, As Seen 2 records the works of 36 artists and is the sum total of what Smith considered to be the most notable art on show in China in the past year.

In this series, she offers an intimate look at how the artists choose their subjects and the media to express themselves.

UCCA's director Philip Tinari describes Smith's books thus: "In a world where things have changed so quickly and thoroughly, her diaries are probably the most comprehensive firsthand account that remains."

"She is the most important chronicler of the emergence of Chinese art. She has scrupulously attended, processed, recorded and documented the birth and maturation of an entire world," Tinari says.

What has made Smith stay more than 20 years is the constant excitement about art she feels in China. As she puts it, the longer she stayed, the more she realized she did not know.

Smith has seen her share of the unique and unusual.

When artists Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin returned from New York, they had a small exhibition at their home located in the center of Beijing, a courtyard house inside a hutong.