[2] Lü was Editor in Chief of the journal Theatre and Film from 1982–85 and subsequently served as Vice-Secretary of the Sichuan Dramatists Society from 1986–90.

His curatorial work includes: “A Gift to Marco Polo” (an event for the Venice Biennale, 2009), which showcased eight of China’s most prominent contemporary artists; “Reshaping History” (Beijing, 2010), a large-scale exposition presenting more than one thousand works by nearly two hundred of the most innovative Chinese artists of the first decade of the 21st century; and “Pure Views: New Painting from China” (Louise Blouin Foundation, Frieze, London, 2010), “Pure Views: New Painting from China” (Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2011); and the 2011 Chengdu Biennale.

In the preface, he confessed that he was influenced by many Western art history books and methodologies, while viewing and writing about Chinese art especially modern Chinese art in the age of globalisation, a set of localised theories was necessary: In the course of China’s reform and opening, I read Herbert Read’s Concise History of Western Painting (Frederick A. Praeger, New York 1959).

But when confronting China’s ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ art, I felt the need to adopt a different method more suited to the subject.

In view of the uniqueness of Chinese art and its context, I established a method of historical judgment based on a special background of politics, economics, culture and clashing civilizations.