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.

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.

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

scholarly journals The Politics of Inscription in Modern Chinese Art

Art History ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-153
Author(s):  
Craig Clunas
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Art ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Modern Chinese Art
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