A Modern Miscellany

In A Modern Miscellany: Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 Paul Bevan explores how the cartoon (manhua) emerged from its place in the Chinese modern art world to become a propaganda tool in the hands of left-wing artists. The artists involved in what was largely a transcultural phenomenon were an eclectic group working in the areas of fashion and commercial art and design. The book demonstrates that during the build up to all-out war the cartoon was not only important in the sphere of Shanghai popular culture in the eyes of the publishers and readers of pictorial magazines but that it occupied a central place in the primary discourse of Chinese modern art history.

Paul Bevan, Ph.D (SOAS, 2013), has taught Chinese history and modern Chinese literature at SOAS and the University of Oxford. His wide-ranging research interests include the impact of Western art and literature on China during the Republican period and the study of inscriptions on eighteenth-century art objects.

"The book supports its two arguments through exhaustive engagement with primary sources, drawn mainly from an impressive array of newspapers and pictorial magazines, both English and Chinese, as well as letters and other ephemera from multiple archives. A Modern Miscellany does an excellent job of fact-checking biographical detail on China’s cartoonists and their associates. [...] With its careful scholarship and respect for historical accuracy, A Modern Miscellany helps lay a foundation for many years of manhua research to come."
John A Crespi, Colgate University, MCLC Resource Center, August 2016

"This volume is a major contribution to modern Chinese studies in general. That is because it traces the ideological development
of Shanghai artists and writers, who were the avant-garde of the whole country, from the aestheticism of Shao Xunmei to the leftist activism of Lu Xun. In this respect, Shanghai’s literati, unusual though they were, might be seen as a microcosm of Chinese society at the time. Furthermore, the book is relevant to current cross-cultural studies, since it is mainly about how Chinese artists adapted European sources to their own needs and styles at a time when China was trying to forge a modern identity. Finally, anyone interested in the place and time will appreciate Bevan’s reconstruction of its art scene and the interrelations of the characters in it."
Hal Swindall, Jinan University, China Review International, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2015

"I owe a great debt to academics and Sinologists…now add Paul Bevan to the list…a fantastic new book on old Shanghai”
Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking (2011) and City of Devils (2018).