Liu Haisu [劉海粟] (1896–1994)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Chinese Media ◽  
Art Educator ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Vincent Van Gogh ◽  
Paul Cezanne ◽  
Modern Chinese Art ◽  
Art Schools

Liu Haisu was a painter, art educator, exhibition organizer, and key figure in introducing Western art to China in the 20th century. As the founder of art schools in Shanghai and Nanjing—including the Shanghai Academy, the first art college in modern China—he advocated for a Western style of art education. He encouraged individual students’ creative expression, and attracted much scandalous attention when he introduced nude model drawing into his school in 1920. As an exhibition organizer, he helped introduce modern Chinese art to Europe and Asia. He was involved with many artists’ groups, including co-founding the Heavenly Horse Society, a group that promoted French salon-style exhibitions. Born into a family of distinguished literati, Liu was trained in classical Chinese painting when he was young. After briefly studying art in Shanghai, he traveled to Japan and later Europe to view and learn about Western art. His early works reflected much of what he saw: paintings by Post-Impressionists like Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Returning to China, he became an active promoter of that particular type of European modernism. His later works were mostly in traditional Chinese media and techniques, but they were clearly indebted to the Post-Impressionists in the use of bold colors and expressive brushstrokes.

Introducing the art of modern China: trends in exhibiting modern Chinese painting in Britain, c.1930–1980

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-401
Author(s):  
Michelle Ying-Ling Huang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Modern Chinese Art ◽  
Modern Chinese Painting

Abstract By 1930, the British public took a stronger interest in early Chinese art than in works produced in the pre-modern and modern periods. However, China’s cultural diplomacy in Britain during war-time, as well as the interactions between collectors, scholars and artists of both countries, helped refresh Occidental understanding of the tradition and recent achievements of Chinese art. This article examines the ways in which modern Chinese painting was perceived, collected and displayed in Britain from 1930 to 1980 – the formative period for the collecting and connoisseurship of modern Chinese art in the West. It analyses exhibitions of twentieth-century Chinese painting held in museums and galleries in order to map trends and identify the major parties who introduced the British public to a new aspect of Chinese pictorial art. It also discusses prominent Chinese painters’ connections with British curators, scholars and dealers, who helped establish their reputation in Britain.

Art and Society in Modern China—A Review Article

1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 587-602
Author(s):  
Ralph Croizier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
Modern Chinese Art

Until recently, modern Chinese art attracted little scholarly attention, either in China or in the West. Western art historians might occasionally glance at the more traditional kinds of painting in the twentieth century, but their serious publications were on the great periods of Chinese art, Ming or before. The contemporary China-watchers—social scientists and modern period historians—trained their gaze on the harder stuff of politics and economics, ideology and organization. In the United States and the West in general, art seemed to slip through the crack between ACLS- and SSRC-funded research projects. In China, anything on the twentieth century, even art, was too sensitive politically for safe handling. The result was that throughout the Maoist years modern Chinese art could occasionally pique the interest of collectors or dealers outside China or draw carefully calculated praise from critics and publicists within, but it was not a promising area for critical scholarship. Michael Sullivan's pioneering survey, Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century, London and Berkeley, 1959—strong on developments in the later Guomindang period when he was in China, but understandably rather out of touch with the main currents in the People's Republic—remained for almost thirty years the sole monument in a neglected field.

Xu Beihong [徐悲鴻] (1895–1953)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Academic Training ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Dynamic Movement ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Departments ◽  
Modern Chinese Art ◽  
Traditional Chinese Painting

Xu Beihong was a key figure in modern Chinese art who used his Western academic training to remake Chinese art in the 20th century. He began his career in Shanghai as an illustrator and commercial painter. After briefly studying in Japan, he took another opportunity to study in France in 1919 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts under Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929). He was an avid defender of French academic style and an opponent of European modernism in the modernization of Chinese art; for this he was sometimes criticized for obstructing artistic progress in China. Returning to China, he served as the head of various university art departments and academies. As one of the first Chinese artists to achieve international fame, he met with many renowned cultural figures, including Rabindranath Tagore, in the interest of creating a unified Asian style of modernism. Addressing the social and political needs of modern Chinese art, his monumental works combined French academic composition and the aesthetics of Realism with traditional Chinese painting techniques and subjects. He is mostly known today for his later monochromatic paintings of horses, done with precisely controlled Chinese brushwork, yet at the same time able to convey a sense of expressive dynamic movement.

The Lingnan School

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Guangdong Province ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Atmospheric Effects ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Modern Chinese Art ◽  
Southern City ◽  
Traditional Chinese Painting

The Lingnan School was a school of modern Chinese painting, originating in and around the southern city of Guangzhou (known in the West as Canton) from the mid-1900s to the early 1950s, which used the traditional Chinese ink and brush medium. The term "Lingnan," or "south of the ridges," refers to the region corresponding to Guangdong Province today, with the capital at Guangzhou. The area was the home to many reformist thinkers and revolutionaries who eventually overthrew the last imperial dynasty, and among them were the three founders of the School: Chen Shuren (1884–1948) and the brothers Gao Jianfu (1879–1951) and Gao Qifeng (1889–1933). Unlike other modern Chinese art movements, the traditional medium was not abandoned but rather updated to serve Chinese modernism. While the techniques remained grounded in traditional Chinese painting, many of the subjects and visual effects were wholly new. New subjects such as spiders, airplanes, and ruins were included, and old subjects were reinvented to symbolize strong nationalist and political messages. A new sense of romanticism was achieved through the extensive use of atmospheric effects in the paintings.

Realistic Painting of the 20th Century China in the Context of Cultural Visualization

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-43
Author(s):  
Galina S. Gultyaeva
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
Modern Chinese Art

This article examines the phenomenon of Chinese realism, as well as the prerequisites and factors that influenced the processes of reception in modern Chinese art. At the beginning of the 20th century, under the influence of Western academic realism and the artistic system of social realism, a new direction and artistic method was formed — realism, which became mainstream in the art of China of the mid-20th century. According to its aesthetic and ideological motifs, Chinese realism is an object of social realism reception, which was determined by cultural and historical factors, and the development of political, economic and cultural ties with the USSR. Studying the realistic painting, which reflects the atmosphere of the era, the worldview, and the dialogue of cultures, is relevant for both Chinese and Russian contemporary art studies. The article examines the role of realism in the development of Chinese art culture of the 20th century, including its socio-political components, as well as the dynamics of artistic and expressive means and the iconographic system in the context of the historical and cultural situation. In the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the liberalization of economic and political life, the artistic consciousness formed new concepts of realistic painting — neorealism and cynical realism, associated with a critical rethinking of the historical heritage. The neorealism and cynical realism, which would significantly enrich realistic painting with new forms and content, adopted Western postmodern concepts of pop art, and debunked, in a grotesque and satirical form, the political stereotypes of the past. The analysis of realistic painting of the 1990s demonstrates how the transformation of past painting canons reflects the desire of society to free itself from the pressure of totalitarian ideology and to rethink the value orientations of the previous era.The novelty of this study lies in the fact that it applies a systematic and holistic approach to the analysis of realism in Chinese painting, reveals the diversity of its forms and directions, and gives ground for the specifics of its evolution in the context of the artistic culture of the 20th century China. There are almost no comprehensive studies of this issue in modern art history, so this work is an attempt to create a scientific approach to the study of this artistic phenomenon and the formation of ideas about how the artistic consciousness of an entire epoch was changing.

scholarly journals ARTISTIC TRADITIONS OF THE EAST AND WEST IN CONTEMPORARY KAZAKH DESIGN

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 762-766
Author(s):  
Larisa Ivanovna Nekhvyadovich ◽  
Shakhizada Sainbekovna Turganbayeva ◽  
Lyazzat Tuleuvna Nurkusheva ◽  
Irina Valeryevna Chernyaeva ◽  
Erkezhan Omirhanovna Omarova
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Creative Development ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
East And West ◽  
Color Scheme ◽  
Fundamental Unity ◽  
Art Schools ◽  
Distinguishing Features

Purpose of the study: The purpose of the article is to determine the degree of interaction of the eastern and western art schools in the practice of Kazakh design and to identify their role in the formation and development of design in Kazakhstan. Methodology: The study is based on a complex methodology determined by an interdisciplinary approach involving the use of the methods of historicism, systematization, stylistic analysis, and comparative analysis. The methodology was based on research concepts of T. Stepanskaya, R. Yergaliyeva, E. Balabekov, B. Amanov, A. Mukhambetova. Main Findings: Based on the studied sources, the authors can draw the following conclusions: 1) The interaction of artistic traditions of the East and West is due to the fundamental unity of the human race, ensuring the permeability of cultural boundaries; 2) The diversity of creative individuality, originality of modern approaches combined with the achievements of traditional culture are the distinguishing features of the professional values of contemporary Kazakh design. Applications of this study: Thus, the scientific and practical significance of the study consists in the fact that: - the results can be the basis for the development of lecture courses in the framework of educational programs of higher education institutions for the specialty “Design”; - the conclusions can serve as an impulse for creative development in the modern practice of transmitting national traditions in design. Novelty/Originality of this study: The originality of the research is associated with the identification of trends and prospects for the development of fashion, advertising, interior, and environmental design in the modern cultural environment of Kazakhstan, as well as the establishment of the importance of spiritual and aesthetic foundations of color scheme in the disclosure of the figurative components of design projects. The novelty of the research consists in determining the influence of the traditional color scheme of Kazakh decorative and applied arts on the shaping and color scheme in the products of modern design, many of which are the main bearers of the regional ethno-semantics.

Schapiro, Meyer (1904–1996)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Persinger
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
New School ◽  
Vincent Van Gogh ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
Paul Cezanne

Art historian Meyer Schapiro was born in Šiauliai [Shavley], Lithuania, on September 23, 1904, but soon immigrated to the United States with his family in 1907. Schapiro grew up in the working-class, left wing, Jewish immigrant neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn. He graduated from Columbia University with a Ph.D. in fine arts and archaeology in 1935 (having completed his dissertation in 1929). He spent his career at Columbia, though he also taught regularly at the New School for Social Research from 1936 until 1952. While trained as a medievalist, Schapiro was an early proponent of modern art, and over the course of his career he taught courses, lectured, and published on both fields. Through his lectures and publications, Schapiro’s ideas shaped several generations of artists and art historians. Though he published several books including those on Post-Impressionist artists Paul Cézanne (1950) and Vincent van Gogh (1952), his most respected ideas on both medieval and modern topics were published in articles. Schapiro is known for his innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to art history; he explored new art historical methodologies through the use of Marxism, psychoanalysis, and semiotics. He is also known for his essay "Style" (1953), a systematic consideration of past and current theories of style.

Cheong, Soo Pieng (1917–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelvin Chuah
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Tropical Landscape ◽  
Art Techniques

Cheong Soo Pieng was a Chinese-born artist who became well known for his contributions to Singapore’s modern art. In Nanyang, Cheong’s Chinese art training was integrated with the lush tropical landscape and the arresting allure of local communal practices. Cheong was part of a group of artists who visited Bali, Indonesia, in 1952 in search of the Nanyang Style, which involved Southeast Asian themes visualized with Western art techniques. The resulting imagery in the works created by the artists was exhibited back in Singapore the following year in the hugely lauded exhibition Four Artists to Bali. This provided the stimulus for these artists to develop further this particular genre of art. For Cheong, his artistic excursions were not confined to Singapore. He also traveled to Sarawak, Borneo, in 1959 and resided in Europe from 1961 to 1963, where he held solo and group shows, and where he also dabbled with abstraction in his works. Cheong is recognized for his development of distinctive figural types known as "elongated figures": female bodies with elongated limbs. The figural types he developed in the 1950s were reassessed and reworked in the 1970s. These later works reflect a matured handling and refinement, reinforcing his personal stylization of the subject matter.

The Cult of Happiness: Nianhua, Art and History in Rural North China. By James A. Flath. [Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. 195 pp. $60.00. ISBN 0-7748-1034-3.]

2005 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 446-447
Author(s):  
Felicity Lufkin
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
English Language ◽  
North China ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
University Of British Columbia ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Modern Chinese Art ◽  
The 19Th Century

James Flath's The Cult of Happiness is a stimulating and accessible book that contributes to more than one area of current concern in Chinese studies. The author effectively situates his work in relation to developing debates about print culture, alternative conceptions or experiences of modernity, and the relationship of popular culture to markets and to state power. It should also appeal to readers interested more generally in modern Chinese art, history and visual culture.In this general vein, the book would be valuable simply as one of only a very few English-language works that deal with woodcut-printed nianhua or New Year's Pictures. These pictures, which depict a range of subjects from gods to auspiciously fat babies to scenes from legend and history, were a ubiquitous part of Chinese household ritual and decoration well into the 20th century, and are still evoked in a variety of contexts in contemporary Chinese visual culture. For various reasons, they have not received as much scholarly attention as they should, especially in comparison to other popular print traditions, such as their distant Japanese cousins, ukiyo-e prints. As a genre, nianhua are believed to have quite a long history (Chinese sources, for example, often identify a print found in a 12th-century tomb as one of the earliest extent nianhua), and they were certainly made and circulated throughout China. Flath, however, wisely limits his study both temporally and geographically by focusing on the last decades of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, when the vast majority of nianhua now extant were made, and on north China, which encompasses several of the most influential and best-documented centres of nianhua production.

Shaping the “Red Classics” of Chinese Art in Early Socialist China

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuiyi Shen
Keyword(s):  
Communist Regime ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Traditional Chinese Painting ◽  
The Way

Traditional Chinese art was tied closely to the ruling elites of imperial China and therefore presented a particular challenge to the new communist regime seeking to establish a new proletarian culture in the 1950s. This chapter throws light on the way established traditional painters and artists were managed and their art reshaped through the application of principles set down in the Yan’an Talks and a deliberate “modernization” of traditional Chinese painting. It argues that in the case of guohua the tension between old forms and new content was not just resolved but led to invigoration and innovation in the field and produced some of the greatest public artworks of the Maoist period

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