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China—Art—Modernity
This chapter is in the book China—Art—Modernity
NotesIntroduction1. Guohua may be translated as ‘national painting’, but also (if treated as an abbreviation of Zhongguohua) as ‘Chinese painting’. The terms guohua and xihua (also xiyanghua) derive from earlier Japanese terms of the Meiji era which distinguish between ‘Japanese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ painting, respectively: nihonga and yo ̄ga. Gao Jianfu preferred the term xinguohua (‘new Chinese painting’), which perhaps better distinguishes his reform-ist art from earlier approaches to painting in China. In the modern period, the distinction between Chinese and Western approaches (which I am here offering a caveat about) became the primary one in the painting of China, whereas before, the distinctions which mattered were those between the culturally valorized ‘literati’ painting of the amateur elite and work produced by professional artists (another questionable pair of categories), as well as the distinctions of genre (landscape, figure, or bird and flower). The term ‘literati painting’ (wenrenhua) continued to be used on occasion into the twentieth century to describe painting using inherited media and idioms, despite the disappearance in the post-dynastic era of the social class which gives the term its meaning, and the rise of middle-class patronage mediated by the market. On the use of the term guohua, see Julia F. Andrews, ‘Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign’, JournalofAsianStudies 49, no. 3 (August 1990): 555–77 (especially 556–59).2. More systematic English-language surveys of twentieth-century Chinese art aimed primar-ily at specialists (and requiring a certain stamina from their readers because of their length) are Lü Peng, AHistoryofArtin20th-CenturyChina (Milan: Charta, 2010), and Michael Sullivan, ArtandArtistsofTwentiethCenturyChina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Sullivan’s book is a pioneering study of the field and is written in an acces-sible style, but it is inevitably less useful as a guide to contemporary art because of its date of publication. My own previous study (David Clarke, ModernChineseArt [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]) has the same limitation, and is in any case superseded by the present volume. The only potential advantage it retains is its relative brevity. Julia Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, TheArtofModernChina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), is a valuable recent study of more manageable proportions than Lü’s or Sullivan’s volumes but contains much information which is addressed primarily to China specialists rather than those with a broader interest in modern art. It largely supersedes an earlier and less systematic exhibition catalogue by the same authors, ACenturyinCrisis:ModernityandTraditionintheArtofTwentiethCenturyChina (New York: Guggenheim Museum and Abrams, 1998). Among books which address the art of this period as a whole but without any attempt to provide a systematic survey (either because they are collections of essays or because they treat a single medium), are John Clark, ModernitiesofChineseArt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010) (which mostly concentrates on the second half of the century); Kao Mayching, ed., Twentieth-CenturyChinesePainting (Hong Kong: Oxford University
© 2019 Hong Kong University Press

NotesIntroduction1. Guohua may be translated as ‘national painting’, but also (if treated as an abbreviation of Zhongguohua) as ‘Chinese painting’. The terms guohua and xihua (also xiyanghua) derive from earlier Japanese terms of the Meiji era which distinguish between ‘Japanese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ painting, respectively: nihonga and yo ̄ga. Gao Jianfu preferred the term xinguohua (‘new Chinese painting’), which perhaps better distinguishes his reform-ist art from earlier approaches to painting in China. In the modern period, the distinction between Chinese and Western approaches (which I am here offering a caveat about) became the primary one in the painting of China, whereas before, the distinctions which mattered were those between the culturally valorized ‘literati’ painting of the amateur elite and work produced by professional artists (another questionable pair of categories), as well as the distinctions of genre (landscape, figure, or bird and flower). The term ‘literati painting’ (wenrenhua) continued to be used on occasion into the twentieth century to describe painting using inherited media and idioms, despite the disappearance in the post-dynastic era of the social class which gives the term its meaning, and the rise of middle-class patronage mediated by the market. On the use of the term guohua, see Julia F. Andrews, ‘Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign’, JournalofAsianStudies 49, no. 3 (August 1990): 555–77 (especially 556–59).2. More systematic English-language surveys of twentieth-century Chinese art aimed primar-ily at specialists (and requiring a certain stamina from their readers because of their length) are Lü Peng, AHistoryofArtin20th-CenturyChina (Milan: Charta, 2010), and Michael Sullivan, ArtandArtistsofTwentiethCenturyChina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Sullivan’s book is a pioneering study of the field and is written in an acces-sible style, but it is inevitably less useful as a guide to contemporary art because of its date of publication. My own previous study (David Clarke, ModernChineseArt [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]) has the same limitation, and is in any case superseded by the present volume. The only potential advantage it retains is its relative brevity. Julia Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, TheArtofModernChina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), is a valuable recent study of more manageable proportions than Lü’s or Sullivan’s volumes but contains much information which is addressed primarily to China specialists rather than those with a broader interest in modern art. It largely supersedes an earlier and less systematic exhibition catalogue by the same authors, ACenturyinCrisis:ModernityandTraditionintheArtofTwentiethCenturyChina (New York: Guggenheim Museum and Abrams, 1998). Among books which address the art of this period as a whole but without any attempt to provide a systematic survey (either because they are collections of essays or because they treat a single medium), are John Clark, ModernitiesofChineseArt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010) (which mostly concentrates on the second half of the century); Kao Mayching, ed., Twentieth-CenturyChinesePainting (Hong Kong: Oxford University
© 2019 Hong Kong University Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Introduction 1
  4. 1. Ink Painting and the Modern World 17
  5. 2. Looking West 33
  6. 3. Art and Politics 55
  7. 4. The New Internationalism: Chinese Art outside the People’s Republic 83
  8. 5. Art after Mao 103
  9. 6. Chinese Art on the Global Stage 127
  10. Epilogue: Chinese Art Now 179
  11. Notes 189
  12. Acknowledgements 229
  13. Index 237
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9789888455584-009

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Introduction 1
  4. 1. Ink Painting and the Modern World 17
  5. 2. Looking West 33
  6. 3. Art and Politics 55
  7. 4. The New Internationalism: Chinese Art outside the People’s Republic 83
  8. 5. Art after Mao 103
  9. 6. Chinese Art on the Global Stage 127
  10. Epilogue: Chinese Art Now 179
  11. Notes 189
  12. Acknowledgements 229
  13. Index 237
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