The Victory of Science:
Modern Art Education, Realism, Debates and Artists
The Basic Background of Art Education – Schools – Associations - The 1929 National Art Exhibition - Xu Beihong - Realist Painters and Sculptors
The Basic Background of Art Education
The Republic of China was founded in Nanjing on 1 January 1912, otherwise known as the ‘inaugural year’ of the Republic, and Sun Yat-sen took office as acting president. On 1 February 1912, Cai Yuanpei, the director of education of the Nanjing Provisional Government issued his ‘Opinions on New Education’, in which he stressed ‘aesthetic education’ as one of five primary aims in educating citizens. With the promulgation of the Republic of China Provisional Code on 11 March, the reformulation of the educational system (10 July), and a series of newly implemented provisos, such as the Department of Education’s ‘Order on Vocational Schools’ of 22 October that named art academies as an important segment of vocational education, new-style fine arts or visual arts schools began to appear in various cities.
Before and after the 1911 Revolution, there were two schools that cannot be overlooked - Nanjing Liangjiang Advanced Normal College and the Zhejiang Provincial Junior and Advanced Normal College. When the Qing government officially abolished the imperial examination system in 1905, Li Ruiqing established the Nanjing Liangjiang Advanced Normal College, and it boasted a department of illustrative craft, offering such concrete subjects as sketching, watercolor, oil painting, technical drawing (yongqihua, which included geometrical drawing, perspective, and painting geometry), design painting, and Chinese-style painting. It can be imagined that there were few teachers in China trained to handle such a curriculum and so the school recruited Japanese teachers and the teaching methods were also adopted from the Japanese education system. According to Jiang Danshu, the school turned out ‘the first generation of qualified art teachers in China’, and the sixty to seventy teachers who made the first and second batches of graduates were later assigned to training art teachers in cities in Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Shanxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Guangdong, and Zhejiang. Like transplanted rice seedlings, they spread art teaching across a wide field. In the winter of 1911 the school was disbanded. Among the graduates who gained eminence in the art education field were Wang Caibai, Li Zhongqian, and Lü Fengzi.
In 1912 the Zhejiang Provincial Junior and Advanced Normal College, which changed its name in 1913 to the Zhejiang First Provincial Normal College, adopted the Japanese system and set up a visual arts and crafts program. This school, which had been founded in 1908, and previously called the Zhejiang Official Junior and Advanced Normal College, was located at the former site of the imperial provincial civil examinations—the Hangzhou Municipal Mingqing Examination Hall. The new visual arts and crafts program introduced in 1912 was the fruit of efforts by Jing Hengyi, from the Tokyo Advanced Normal School, and Jiang Danshu, who had just graduated from Nanjing Liangjiang Normal College. Together they set up the Visual Arts and Crafts Program along lines of the educational model provided by Tokyo Advanced Normal School; they also founded an Advanced Vocational Class for Visual Arts and Crafts. They enrolled over thirty students and set up a three-year curriculum. Before long, competent Chinese instructors like Li Shutong and Zeng Yannian returned from studies in Japan and began teaching classes at this school. The texts adopted by the school were Model Sketches for Pencil Drawing and Model Watercolor Works, published by Commercial Press. Although the Japanese instructor Yoshigae Kyōji was said to have ‘an advanced command of painting technique’, his classroom method did not go beyond having students copy works by masters. The Chinese instructor Li Shutong was the initiator of new teaching methods. Along with classroom instruction, Li Shutong provided materials on Western art history which he compiled himself. Li’s personal charisma had an influence on many students, including Feng Zikai and Pan Tianshou.
It should be added that Zhou Xiang (1871-1934), who was thought by Xu Beihong to have been ‘steeped in knowledge’ from the Tushanwan Arts and Crafts Studio was possibly the first Chinese painter to open a school for new fine arts instruction. On December 28, 1910, Shanghai’s Minli Bao published Zhou Xiang’s ‘Charter of the Shanghai Oil Painting Institute’. The ‘Charter’ told readers that the school ‘provides special instruction in new style pictorial arts and researched knowledge and techniques needed for pictorial arts, to train specialists who can effectively engage in education and applied arts’.[1] The ‘Charter’ listed the following content of its oil painting curriculum: color mixing, light-and-shadow method, depth of field method, life drawing method, landscape painting method and figure painting method. These instructional methods obviously appropriated the instructional methods for painting techniques that Westerners had used in China. The pencil drawing techniques mentioned in the ‘Charter’—texturing and shading method, light and dark method, actual object drawing method, outdoor drawing method—were already quite close to the concept of ‘sketching’ that would later become familiar. From 1909 to 1922, Zhou Xiang founded the Visual Arts Vocational School, Visual Arts Intensive Program, Shanghai Oil Painting Institute, Chinese-Western Visual Arts Correspondence Academy, Backdrop Painting Instruction Center, and China Fine Arts University, which were thought to have given training to over a thousand students.
Schools
In the winter of 1912, a little over a year after the gunshots of revolution had sounded in Wuhan, a group of young people around Liu Haisu, Wu Shiguang, Wang Yachen and Ding Song founded the Shanghai Visual Arts Institute. Liu Haisu, only seventeen years of age at the time, gave expression to their credo:
Firstly, we want to continue developing the received forms of Oriental art, and to study the profound content of Western art.
Secondly, in this cruel, heartless, and blighted society, we intend to fulfill our responsibility to popularize art and to strive for a renaissance of art in China.
Thirdly, what we lack in knowledge we intend to make up for by our earnestness in study and in sharing what we learn.[2]
At that time, Liu Haisu had not yet gone to Japan or Europe, and his understanding of Western art depended on a few printed publications. In the matter of founding a school, the young people were filled with confidence, perhaps because Liu Haisu’s family provided the financial support that made this school a reality. This school, registered at Shanghai’s Municipal Office in 1915, had fewer than twenty students at first. In 1922, when the school celebrated its tenth anniversary, Liu Haisu wrote a piece titled ‘The Past Ten Years at the Shanghai Academy of Art’, in which he recalled the arduous conditions of the school’s ‘founding period’. He wrote that the school’s mission statement met with jeers and invective from many sections of society. Thus, ‘during our founding period, we had no more than sixteen people taking classes every year, with sometimes as few as three or four. You could hardly have called it a thriving enterprise’. Yet Liu Haisu also mentioned the idealistic spirit that motivated the students and teachers: ‘Although only three to four or sometimes ten or so people were gathered here, our emotional ties were especially close, and enthusiasm ran high. This was a group of pure-minded youths who had a true taste for art. Everyone put all their energy into thinking and hammering out new techniques; it seemed that we could not let ourselves rest for a single moment’.[3] In 1915, the school began hiring boys as models, and in 1916, the school began holding classes with fully naked male models. The program in Western painting was expanded to three years, and a year of teacher training was added. The school’s name was changed to Shanghai Private Visual Arts School, which gave it more freedom to set up programs of instruction. In 1917 the Ministry of Education conducted a survey of the school, and the official Shen Pengnian ‘stated that the Ministry had already included the fine arts schools in its six-year-budget’. However, in this same year, the school came under attack for exhibiting student works depicting the human body. In August, Liu Haisu gained new insight after reading Cai Yuanpei’s essay ‘On Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education’. In October of the following year, the school went ahead and founded the journal Fine Arts which ceased publication in 1922. With sections devoted to ‘academics’, ‘intellectual trends in fine art’ and ‘miscellaneous critiques’, the journal kept readers abreast of art activities in China and abroad. In terms of space, preference was given to such aspects of Western art as color studies, perspective and composition, anatomy for artists, drawing from life, and sketching. In the same year, the school began organizing frequent excursions for outdoor painting, and exhibitions became a regular activity.
In 1920 the school was renamed again as Shanghai Fine Arts School, and its journal titled Aesthetic Education began publication. This was the year when the school began admitting female students and using female models for live drawing. In 1921, the school changed its name to Shanghai Art Academy; in 1922, Cai Yuanpei was put forward as board chairman, and Liu Haisu was appointed to the Ministry of Education’s Drafting Committee for Reformed Curriculum Guidelines as a reviewer and drafter of art curriculum guidelines. In that same year, Chen Duxiu was invited to lecture before the Shanghai Academy of Art Alumni Club. In 1925, the school’s teachers and students participated in the anti-imperialist general strike directed against the May 30th Police Brutality Case, and in 1927, the warlord government issued an arrest warrant for Liu Haisu and twelve other well-known figures, including Huang Yanpei. In 1930, the school changed its name to Shanghai Art; in November of the same year, the school’s 19th anniversary was observed with ‘unsurpassed festive excitement’.
The National Beiping Art College, founded on 15 April 1918, was China’s first nationally-run art school. From the time that Cai Yuanpei took over the position of superintendant of the Ministry of Education, ‘aesthetic education’ became an important part of China’s enterprise of educating its citizens. In 1918, the Ministry of Education decided to implement vocational fine arts education. Upon recommendation by Cai Yuanpei, Zheng Jin of Xiangshan in Guangzhou, a graduate of Japan’s Advanced Fine Arts Institute, was appointed the school’s first president. At first, according to the Ministry of Education’s requirements, the school’s training was intended to produce teachers for ordinary schools and activity centers, as well as practical art and design specialists. In 1921, the school was officially renamed as Beijing Art Academy. Among the teachers at that time were Chen Shizeng, Deng Yizhe, and Wu Fading, who had just returned from studies in France. In early 1926, the school was again renamed, this time as the National Beijing Academy of Art, and as proposed by Professors Wen Yiduo and Zhao Taimou, the school added departments of music and drama. In that same year, Lin Fengmian returned from France, and upon invitation by Cai Yuanpei, selection by vote, and approval by the Ministry of Education, Lin Fengmian took over duties as president His aim was to ‘hack out a path of blood for Chinese art’. He hoped to use knowledge he had gained in Europe to helping new art emerge. Among the school’s several student clubs and groups was the Form and Art Society organized by students in the Western painting, Chinese painting, and illustration departments. Lin Fengmian joined in the activities of this radical-minded group. On 11 April, 1927, Chen Bao printed the mission statement of an exhibition by the Form and Art Society:
We want to overthrow traditional art in its entirety; we want to overthrow all art which is fabricated for class interests; we want to overthrow art that cannot be appreciated as art in the human realm. We want to create a new kind of art. We want to shape art that will be for all humankind; we want art to speak trenchantly to people’s hopes, instead of being something celestial that does not connect with people. Since each of us has such aims, we have banded together in the Form and Art Society to pool our strengths, to broaden our movement, and to motivate each other in our studies.
Such heated sloganeering conforms to the radical thinking of the May Fourth Movement. Old-style art, which tended to express detachment, had nothing to do with rousing healthy ‘feelings’, so it was something to be overthrown. Lin Fengmian had indeed been influenced deeply by Cai Yuanpei, who had boiled all social problems down to ‘problems of feeling’. By offering consolation in matters of feeling, art would enhance people’s finer qualities. The implication of such logic was that art could function, just as religion does, to comfort people in matters of feeling.
People who did not live through that period find it hard to tease out a clear thread of development. In any case, on 12 April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek initiated a purge in Shanghai, and Nationalist-Communist cooperation broke down thoroughly. On 28 April when the Communist Party member Li Dazhao was sent to the execution ground, he was accompanied by two students of the Beijing Art Academy, Fang Bowu (from the Chinese painting department) and Tan Zuyao (Western painting department). A year before that, when the school’s students had joined in demonstrations at Tiananmen against the government of Duan Qirui, a student of the Western painting department named Yao Zongxian had been fatally shot by guards during the protest. To differing degrees, members of student clubs like the Radiant Art Society, Red Leaf Painting Society, Western Painting Society, Inner Lute Painting Society, and One-Five Painting Society drew a connection between art and society, and students were not easily confined to the study of art. Although the political reality did not yield to easy generalizations, warlord violence apparently did not make the school’s young president shrink from his efforts to make an impact on society through art. On 1 May, Lin Fengmian assembled most of the student groups and organized a large-scale ‘Art Convention’. By staging a large exhibition, music concerts, plays, and performances, he attempted to have an influence on society. The slogans of the Art Convention were radical:
Down with imitative traditional art!
Down with aristocratic art for the enjoyment of the few!
Down with art that sets itself apart from the people!
We advocate creative art that represents our era!
We advocate art that all classes of people can enjoy!
We advocate populist art that expresses life at the crossroads!
May all artists in our nation join together!
May all artists East and West join together!
May advocates of human culture join together with the world’s thinkers and artists![4]
As one might imagine, the authorities clamped down on all such activities. In fall of that year, the school was absorbed, along with seven other institutions, into Peking University. The ‘Art Academy’ became the ‘Art Division’. In 1928, this division regained its name as a ‘fine arts institute’, and the institute’s president that year was Xu Beihong. Later the school went through several changes in name and curriculum. In 1937, with the beginning of the War of Resistance against Japan, the school moved south, and was temporarily consolidated with Hangzhou Academy. In the files of the school’s faculty members, we can find many important names, such as Chen Shizeng, Wang Mengbai, Yao Mangfu, Liu Kaiju, Lei Guiyuan, and Li Kuchan.
The National Art Institute founded in Hangzhou in March 1928 was also a result of Cai Yuanpei’s advocacy of aesthetic and art education. In 1927, Cai Yuanpei was appointed head of the University Board of the Ministry of Education, and the Nationalist government held the first meeting of its ‘Nationwide Art Education Committee’, during which two important proposals were discussed—preparations for the First National Fine Arts Exhibition and the establishment of a national art institute. Lin Fengmian, who had been invited to participate by Cai Yuanpei, admitted certain shortcomings in their work to date. In his ‘Letter to Art Circles Nationwide’ he wrote: ‘If the art movement is to be effective any time soon, it is necessary to have a national institution for art education’. Lin Wenzheng and others were, however, attempting at the time to win the support of the KMT government in promoting a pure and non-political art education that was free of interference from the warlords and outmoded concepts.
Like Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian was also influenced by Cai Yuanpei’s comprehensive and inclusive educational thinking. There were plenty of instructors committed to Western painting, such as Lin Wenzheng, Wu Dayu, Li Jinfa, Cai Weilian, Wang Yuezhi, Liu Jipiao, Fang Ganmin, Li Puyuan, Ye Yun, Li Chaoshi, and the Frenchman André Claudot.[5] At the same time, Lin Fengmian combined instruction in Western and Chinese painting in a single department. As a result, students could pursue their preferences in a synergistic learning environment, epitomized by the slogan: ‘Introduce Western art; bring out the best in Chinese art; harmonize Chinese and Western art, and create art for the times’. In that learning environment, teachers gave up the traditional status of master. They wisely realized that in the process of gaining knowledge, instructors and students were proceeding from a common position. Expounding on principles of instruction, Li Wenzheng wrote, ‘From a standpoint of academic endeavor, we must first of all rouse ourselves, and only then can we rouse others; in the act of teaching we should seek to deepen our own grounding. In sum, an art school does not just exist to foster the next generation: more than that, it is a setting for joint efforts of learning. Instructors should see themselves as old students who will never graduate’.
In August 1928, the Art Movement Society was founded, ‘with the aim of fostering innovative Eastern art’. In the autumn of 1929 the school’s name was changed to National Hangzhou Art College. In 1932 the school added a music section, and in 1933 the school added two student extracurricular organizations: Calligraphy and Ink Painting Study Society and Practical Fine Arts Study Society. Concurrently with the founding of various clubs, there were art periodicals which became intellectual forums in which these youths could voice their boundless idealism: Apollo, Athena, Sacred Lamp, and Academy Tri-monthly News. By operating these journals, students explored and promoted Western art, and in doing so, they also reconsidered China’s traditional art, as can be seen in Pan Tianshou’s An Outline History of Chinese Painting. In 1937 the War of Resistance broke out, and the school relocated first to Zhuji in Zhejiang province and then Guixi in Jiangxi province. In 1938, being in financial straits, the school was consolidated with Beiping Fine Art School. In 1945, National Hangzhou Art College regained its separate identity. In 1946 the school returned to Hangzhou. The list of this famous school’s presidents and faculty members constitutes an important part of art history. Successive presidents were Lin Fengmian, Teng Gu, Lü Fengzi, Chen Zhifo, and Pan Tianshou, and professors included Pan Tianshou, Zheng Wuchang, Li Chaoshi, Fang Ganmin, Guan Liang, Ni Yide, Lü Xiaguang, Hu Shanyu, Lei Guiyuan, and Liu Kaiqu. Those engaged in teaching and theoretical research included Shi Yan and Cai Yi.
For students in a peaceful era, it must be difficult to imagine what it was like for students who had to study art in rudimentary classrooms amidst the rubble of warfare. Yet such was the case for the art department of National Central University after its relocation to Chongqing from 1939 to 1941. This art vocational program was also established by Cai Yuanpei at Central University upon assuming leadership of the Higher Education Directorate in the Nanjing Government.[6] As first head of the Painting Section, Xu Beihong did not believe in the common definition of ‘genius’. He steadfastly sought to inculcate in his students a spirit of ‘reaching perfection through industriousness’. In other words, he believed in the importance of hard work. The Art Division was established in 1927, and after a short period of flux, Xu Beihong returned from Beijing to Nanjing, where he turned his art teaching position into a power base for his personal cause—to establish fine arts in China.[7] Xu Beihong’s thinking as an educator tended towards caution. He issued maxims that became doctrine for students to follow: ‘Honor moral capability; pursue learning; broaden your sensibilities; explore subtle principles; attain the highest awareness while following the doctrine of the mean’. In fact Xu Beihong’s stance of cultural meliorism based on realist painting constituted the core of his artistic thinking. This determined his practice as an artist and his approach as an educator. Due to his advocacy of realist painting, Xu Beihong made drawing skills the foundation for teaching the plastic arts in general. Being familiar with the traditional ‘Six Principles’ or ‘Six Methods’ of painting, he amended the time-honored maxims of traditional calligraphy and painting and incorporated them into his own realist painting. He even formulated his own ‘New Seven Principles’: ‘Proper position; correct proportions; distinctness of light and dark; spontaneous movement; harmony of the light and heavy; revelation of character; arresting impact’. Xu Beihong’s primary goal was to have an effect on society by means of art, so realism was naturally the style of painting he extolled. Beginning in 1929, the program was extended to four years, with four sections offering concentrations in Chinese painting, Western painting, music, and craft techniques. Professors of Western painting included Xu Beihong, Li Yishi, and Pan Yuliang. In 1931, more professors were gradually brought in to teach painting: Wu Zuoren, Lü Sibai, Sun Zongwei, Huang Xianzhi, Li Ruinian, Wang Caibai, Zhang Daqian, and Gao Jianfu. Chen Zhifo and Fu Baoshi were recruited to teach illustration and theory. In 1934, the Art Division was renamed the ‘Art Department’.
In 1931 Yan Wenliang returned from travels in Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union, bringing nearly 500 plaster busts and over 10,000 books. Such teaching resources were the envy of teachers and students at all other art schools. As far back as 1919, Yan Wenliang together with Yang Zuotao had organized the Fine Arts Painting Competition in Suzhou; they had also held the earliest fine arts exhibitions in conjunction with the Peking University Society for the Study of Painting Methods. In autumn of 1922 Yan Wenliang founded the private Suzhou Art Institute, beginning with fewer than twenty students. At first Yan taught only the basics, suited to the intensive program he had set up at the beginning. Joining him as founders of the school were Hu Cuizhong and Zhu Shijie. The former served as acting president while Yan Wenliang was studying overseas. 1n 1924, the school set up a three-year-program of required courses, with majors in Chinese painting and Western painting. The school developed rapidly. In keeping with historical precedent, the cultivated gentry and merchants of the Lower Yangzi region were not only fond of calligraphy and painting, but were also glad to provide support for art. In 1927, to accommodate growing numbers of students, Yan Wenliang raised funds from civil society to rebuild Canglang Pavilion. He obtained support from Yang Shouqi, Wu Zishen, and others to improve classrooms and dormitories at Canglang Pavilion, giving the school a brand-new look. Instructional facilities were also added, ‘at a cost of over 10,000 silver yuan’. In January 1928, an opening was held for the first government-approved educationally relevant fine art museum. In the ensuing period, the Fine Arts Museum was integrated with instruction at the Suzhou Art Institute. Various groups held their exhibitions at the Museum, and it became quite influential. In September 1928, Yan Wenliang went to study in France, and when he returned in 1931 he was appointed school president. In 1932, Wu Zishen provided more funds for the school’s upgrading and expansion. During the 1920s and 1930s, sponsorship of schools by gentry and merchants in many areas not only indicated traditional Confucian mores and character, it also showed their approval and acceptance of knowledge from the West. In October 1932, the Ministry of Education approved the School’s charter, and it was formally renamed the Suzhou Art Academy. In autumn, it set up an applied arts division and by the summer of 1933, the academy already had equipment needed for applied arts instruction, with workshops for linotyping, typesetting, printing, and photo-developing. The spread of instruction in applied arts showed people’s strong interest in and respect for handicrafts, craft techniques, and experimentation. With respect to systems of knowledge, they were breaking free from traditional education’s tendency to neglect and even avoid practical activity. In July 1937, the War of Resistance broke out, and in October, the school relocated, while the few teachers and students who remained during wartime continued holding classes in an elementary school in Shanghai in the spring of 1938. In autumn, the Suzhou Art Academy changed its name to Suzhou Fine Art Institute in Shanghai (Suzhou Meizhuan Huxiao) and continued operations on the seventh floor of the Enterprise Building at no. 37 Sichuan Road. By this time the school had over forty students, but there was no one to support the school financially. In 1944 the teacher Chu Yuanxun received permission to set up a branch of Suzhou Fine Art Academy in Yixing. When the war ended in 1945, due to efforts by the School Reopening Committee, the Yixing branch was reabsorbed back into the alma mater, and teaching was resumed at the old location in Suzhou From 1922 to 1949, Suzhou Art Academy passed through almost thirty years of adversity. In a time of social turmoil, when material conditions seemed to preclude any imaginable kind of art school, a number of idealistic youths, through their resilience and industriousness, gradually established an innovative precedent for modern art education. The school’s monthly journal Beauty of the Waves, founded in 1928 and renamed Art Wave in 1933, is an important resource for studying the Suzhou Art Academy.
Of more than one hundred institutions of higher learning, seventy-seven were relocated to the hinterland after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 7 July 1937, and most of these schools’ original facilities, equipment, books, and instruments were lost. Fine arts schools were no exception: ‘Faculty and students are have been uprooted and disrupted, with no residences to call their own; equipment is lacking and books have been lost; the obstacles to teaching and research, along with the damage to morale, are incalculable. Such an academic and cultural holocaust is without precedent, whether in China or in the West’.[8]
In 1937, as the Japanese army closed in on Nanjing, the Central University’s art department moved to Chongqing along with the university as a whole. The school’s painstakingly acquired equipment and supplies, being too bulky to transport, were abandoned. There was such a shortage of teaching supplies and painting materials that Xu Beihong, along with faculty and students in Central University’s art department, made brushes out of pig bristles for oil painting. Xu Beihong was a rallying force in the art world. The instructors under him included Huang Junbi, Lü Fengzi, Chen Zhifo, Xu Shiqi, Pang Xunqin, Li Ruinian, Qin Xuanfu, Xie Zhiliu, Fei Chengwu, and Ai Zhongxin. Watching their remaining students file into bare, ramshackle classrooms built in bombed-out ruins, instructors were terribly sad. In fact, the task of raising funds to restore art education induced Xu Beihong to make more than one trip to Southeast Asia. In 1939, owing to Xu Beihong’s absence during a trip abroad, Lü Sibai was appointed chairman of the art department, in which important instructors at that time included Li Ruinian, Xie Zhiliu, Fu Baoshi, Xu Shiqi, Chen Zhifo, and Ai Zhongxin. In 1943, the art department received new teaching equipment, the music section was reinstated after a six-year hiatus, and student enrolment increased to over one hundred. After the War of Resistance ended, the art department followed the University from Sichuan back to Nanjing.
When Shanghai fell to the enemy on 12 November 1937, Lin Fengmian led students and faculty of Hangzhou Art College in a southward move to Wushu in Zhuji county, after which they moved westward. Meanwhile, after war broke out on 7 July, some students and faculty from Beiping Art Academy left Beiping for a short stay at Guling. After Nanjing fell to the enemy, they went upriver to Yuanling in Hunan province. In 1938, with a view to effective concentration of faculty and material resources, the Republican government decided to consolidate the two schools in Yuanling, under the name of the National Art Academy, but the consolidation led to interpersonal clashes and student demonstrations. The disorderly conditions caused some teachers and students to leave the school and head off to Yan’an.[9] At the same time, Yuanling offered no refuge due to Japanese bombing raids, so the newly named National Art Academy continued its journey westward. At the end of 1938 it passed through Guiyang and arrived in Kunming. In the fall of 1940, National Art Academy pulled back again to Bishan county in Sichuan, and from there to Songlin Ridge at Chongqing’s Qingmu Pass. In the summer of 1942, the school relocated to Guojiayuan in Panxi, located in Chongqing’s Shapingba district. In the official history of Zhejiang Art Academy, we can read the following record: ‘After taking leave of the West Lake in November 1937, we wandered like the dispossessed through six provinces: Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Yunnan and Sichuan. We shifted location ten times and travelled 6,000 kilometers over a period of nine years, spending a total of three and a half billion yuan and losing more than half of our books and teaching materials. Students and faculty experienced all sorts of hardships and miseries, and many died of accidents and illness along the way. Seldom has a college in our country undergone such a disaster’.[10] After the War of Resistance ended, the two schools were re-divided, to return respectively to Beiping and Hangzhou.
The Wuchang Fine Arts School, founded in April 1920 at Zhima Ridge in Wuchang, was initiated as a correspondence program. None of its founders—Tang Yijing, Jiang Lanpu, and Xu Zihang—had a specialized background in painting. Ruan Pu, who attended the school, recalled: ‘Tang Yijing studied at a normal school, and Jiang Lanpu was even more of an amateur. The latter had a military background, and had been a junior officer under Wu Peifu. Over the years he became something of a cultural figure in Wuhan. Apparently, he was deliberately brought in to fill a secondary role, so that dealings with the warlord government would go more smoothly. Xu Zihang did not paint at all, and he was one who ran errands and did routine tasks, acting as a middleman between Jiang and Tang. His function was to mediate between the two’.[11] However, most school operations fell on the shoulders of Tang Yijing. In August 1923, the school was renamed Wuchang College of Art. In the following spring, the school began promoting excursions for painting from life, and it also arranged graded end of term exhibitions. By August 1925, the school’s scattered venues were brought together in a new campus which had classrooms, dormitories, auditorium, offices, and a library. Even so, not until July 1930 did the Ministry of Education empower the Hubei Education Office to grant the school formal status. In January 1930, the school was formally named Wuchang Art Academy, by which time its instructional system included an art education program, a preparatory program, and a painting program, along with the original Western painting program. The school also set up an affiliated middle school, with an upper middle school program for art teachers, a general upper-middle school program, and a lower middle school division. Increasing numbers of students, along with monthly subsidies from the Education Office, gradually enabled Wuchang Academy of Art to approach an optimum state. Later Tang Yijing’s younger brother Tang Yihe also taught at the school.[12]
Beginning in the first year of the Republic, more than a hundred private and public art schools of various types appeared. Most of them were founded by young people filled with idealism and aspiration. These stirring yet tragic historical facts enable us to better understand the idealistic spiritual outlook of Chinese intellectuals during that era of turmoil.
Associations
According to available documentation, the Eastern Art Association, which was founded in 1915, can be seen as a short-lived attempt by young people to engage in collective art activity. Chen Baoyi, who was one of the members, later recalled: ‘As I remember, in the summer of that year, we organized a sketching trip to Putuo Island. We stayed there for something like ten days. There were six or seven of us, including Shiguang, Yachen. and Jifan. Each of us felt intense excitement as we ranged about the island searching for landscapes to paint from life. This is the most vivid memory that comes to me when I think of the Eastern Art Association’.[13] By this time the Shanghai Visual Arts Institute was in its fourth year of operation. Its instructors of Western painting—Wu Shiguang, Wang Yachen, Chen Baoyi, Liu Haisu, Shen Bochen, Ding Song, and Yu Jifan—hoped to ‘study together as a painting association’ and disseminate Western painting. However, within a few months, members went off to Japan one by one, and the Association’s activities ceased. According to records, the artistic taste of these youths who had never been to the West came from available art books and printed materials, and what they called the ‘impressionist painting style’ was largely a term borrowed for its novelty. They had little knowledge of paintings by the French Impressionists, yet even art reproductions of dubious quality were sufficient to rouse their curiosity and passion, and their crudely handled canvases were full of vitality.[14]
In February 1918, Cai Yuanpei initiated the founding of the Peking University Society for the Study of Painting Methods. In 1921 this was changed to the Peking University Center for the Study of Painting Methods. As instructors at Peking University, Li Yishi, Bei Jimei, Qian Daosun, and Feng Hanshu were the Society’s lecturers, and the Society hired Chen Shizeng, Xu Beihong, Wu Fading, Wei Tianlin, and He Lüzhi as advisors. As we can understand from Cai Yuanpei’s ‘Aims of the Society for the Study of Painting Methods’, this university president was attempting, through the study of Western painting, to achieve results unlike any produced by traditional education. He hoped that members would grasp the Western scientific spirit of observing nature and valuing perceptual experience. He even called for students of Chinese painting to ‘adopt Western painting’s strong point of realistic composition, as well as sketching plaster busts and painting landscapes outdoors’. However, as dictated by his pluralistic educational program, it was not his agenda to substitute Eastern art for Western art, but rather to let the two kinds of art achieve a synthesis. The roster of instructors he hired included many who were proficient in traditional painting. Before March 1919, Xu Beihong had not yet studied abroad, and most of his time was devoted to traditional calligraphy and painting. Thus, with the exception of Li Yishi, the atmosphere in this group was unlike that of more radical Western painting societies. In the spring of 1919, the Society hired the Belgian painter Mr. Kets as instructor, setting a precedent in the 20th century for Chinese art institutions engaging teachers from the West to teach oil painting. In January 1920 the Society recruited around thirty students, offering separate instructional programs in Western and traditional painting. In April they held an exhibition of paintings to educate members and art lovers. After Cai Yuanpei resigned the presidency of Peking University in 1923, the Society ceased operations immediately. Unquestionably, up until the time that Xu Beihong left Peking University for France in 1919, this organization’s effect on the study of art was moderate.
On New Year’s day in 1919, Gu Jiegang, as a representative of the Society for Study of Painting Methods, took eight works provided by the Society to exhibit in Suzhou Art Academy’s Painting Competition, an event held in the old Suzhou Imperial Palace and organized by Yan Wenliang, Yang Zuotao, John W. Cline, Pan Zhenxiao, and Jin Songcen.[15] These young people from Suzhou intended to promote the development of new art through this large and comprehensive exhibition. Thus their mission statement was: ‘Let us work together to promote painting skills, by non-judgmentally providing works for viewers’ enjoyment’. They issued a nationwide call for artworks, and as a result their exhibition, which included more than a thousand pieces, met with success. On the basis of this exhibition, these young people later organized the Suzhou Fine Arts Association. By 1922 there were seventy members, who at around time created Fine Arts Fortnightly as an organ for connecting members and exchanging ideas. The members most active in organizing the Association were instructors at Suzhou Art Academy. For example, in 1924 Hu Cuizhong, a professor at the Academy, was responsible for the organizational work of the Association with hundreds of members under his leadership. During the first half of the 20th century, with the possible exception of the Heavenly Horse Society and the Storm Society, no other association was as active in staging exhibitions over such a long period as the Suzhou Fine Arts Association in staging the Suzhou Painting Competition. From 1919 to 1933 the exhibition was held fourteen times in all, exhibiting ancient and modern works from East and West.
On 26 August 1919, Liu Haisu, Wang Yachen, Wang Jiyuan, Jiang Xiaojian, and Ding Song held an exhibition at the Global Students Association on Jing’an Road in Shanghai. Because it included paintings of the naked human form, the exhibition was closed down by authorities. This unpleasant incident convinced these young people that they needed a means to strengthen themselves so they could withstand coercion by the authorities or conservative forces. This was one of the reasons that many art associations came into existence. So in the fall of that year, Liu Haisu, Jiang Xiaojian, Ding Song, Wang Jiyuan, Zhang Chenbo, Liu Yanong, Chen Xiaojiang, and Yang Qingqing set up the Heavenly Horse Society. This group had a strong influence because the purity of works it exhibited.[16] As Liu Haisu put it, their exhibition was to be a national state-of-the-art event, like the Spring Salon and Autumn Salon in Paris, or the Imperial Exhibition in Japan. Although this idea embodied a touch of wishful thinking, it helped them get used to organizing their exhibitions in more westernized ways. At the time of its founding, the Heavenly Horse Society held the First Heavenly Horse Society Exhibition at the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association, with over two hundred pieces on exhibit. In the eight exhibitions held by the Heavenly Horse Society, painters publicized their artworks and ideas through newspapers to reach a wider audience, and dispensed with the atmosphere of a literati gathering so that their exhibition could have mass appeal and even have a direct influence on society.[17]
The Heavenly Horse Society eschewed minor genres and focused almost entirely on Western painting and guohua, recruiting influential masters of guohua such as Wu Changshuo and Wang Yiting. Although the Heavenly Horse artists did not propose any compelling artistic slogans, their works taken as a whole gave clear expression to distinct stylistic tendencies. The Heavenly Horse members put out an art magazine (Yishu) as a vehicle for their ideas. Even in their radical statements of position, right from the beginning they kept a sense of proportion, as in the following points made in an essay by Yang Qingqing and Zhang Chenbo: ‘The members of Heavenly Horse are definitely not purveying Western art and our art does not result from infatuation with Europeanization. At the same time, we are neither stuck in rigid patterns nor satisfied with existing relics from China’s past, so we do not go in for conservative banalities. Our passion lies in expressing the mysteries of the universe, in searching for blessings in life, and in playing our part for world peace’.[18] In that harsh and chaotic era, the group’s key members—Wang Yachen, Liu Haisu, and Wang Jiyuan—went overseas, one by one, and by 1927 the society had ceased operations.
Even so, the situation of art in the south was invigorated by the political atmosphere. In May 1921 Guangzhou staged an Emergency Parliament and elected Sun Yat-sen as President. In October the Crimson Society Fine Arts Research Association, founded by Hu Gentian, Chen Qiushan, Liang Luan, and other returnees from America and Japan, held an exhibition of Western painting featuring over 160 works at a venue in Yonghan Road in Guangzhou. The Crimson Society members hoped to ‘gather painters who went abroad earliest to study Western art, and then recruit youths with an interest in Western painting to study art and exchange experiences’.[19] Brief History of the Crimson Society[20] records the following: ‘Before the Crimson Society was founded, there were a few fine arts groups of any size in Guangzhou and their scope was limited to studying national essence paintings or what was called the Eclectic School of painting. They did not get involved with Western painting, yet there was quite a fad for charcoal portraits, drawings from photographs, and hand-drawn versions of printed pictures. Opportunists scurried about opening studios and holding classes for students and, as their type of illustration did not fit the categories of national essence or Eclectic School paintings, they billed their work as “Western painting”. Because of this, what was popularly known as “Western art” was really a laughable attempt to give a palatable name to shoddy merchandise’.[21] Most of those who eventually joined the Crimson Society were artists who had studied abroad. Among the returnees from America were Feng Gangbai, Huang Chaokuan, Zhu Bingguang, Mei Yun, and Li Tiefu. Those returned from Japan included Guan Liang and Ren Ruiyao. There was also Zhao Yating who had been to Mexico and Guan Jin’ao who had been to France. The basic aim of the Crimson Society was to study and introduce knowledge of Western art. The Crimson Exhibition Catalogue notes, ‘In 1921, seven or eight like-minded persons, including Chen Qiushan, Hu Gentian, Rong Youji, Xu Shouyi, and Mei Yutian, met in Guangzhou. We met firstly because we were aware of how little people in society knew about Western art and, secondly, so that we could get together with like-minded persons. Whether the point was to save ourselves or save others, there is always a need for group strategy and group effort. Thus the Crimson Society set about getting organized’. The variety of backgrounds was expressed in artistic experiments with touches of Japanese, French, or American taste and style. On 1 November 1921, a month after its founding, the Crimson Society held its First Crimson Society Western Painting Exhibition in Guangzhou, and in the following year, the Club held its second exhibition and leased two connected three-storey buildings to house its activities. In these buildings it set up studios, offices, and dormitory rooms where painters could study, hold classes, and exhibit their works. The First Guangdong Province Fine Arts Exhibition in December 1921 was the first major exhibition in which Crimson Society members took part, and artists exhibiting oil paintings included Hu Gentian, Chen Qiushan, Lei Yuxiang, Xu Dungu, Feng Gangbai, Li Tiefu, Chen Baoyi, and Guan Liang. Members of this club also took part in the First National Exhibition in April 1929.
As early as late 1919 Cai Yuanpei published an article entitled ‘Do Not Let Aesthetic Education Be Forgotten by the Cultural Movement’, in which he noted that the earth-shaking movement to promote Western culture had brought many noticeable changes, but that fine arts were proving to be a very weak component. Following the Art Movement Assembly, Lin Fengmian wrote a long essay which was distributed everywhere, ‘To Art Circles Nationwide’. The title revealed the writer’s far-reaching concerns. He viewed the young artists who had returned from studies in Europe as the main force for China’s ‘renaissance’ and he felt fully confident in issuing a manifesto addressed to the entire nation. Yet in his manifesto he voiced strong dissatisfaction with intellectuals and their cultural movement for neglecting art:
Rally together, all you comrades in the art field throughout the nation! During the Italian Renaissance, art sat at the head of the table. We should also accord art the seat of honor in the Chinese Renaissance![22]
As one might expect, the artists who had returned from France quickly turned into an interest group for the revival of art. In order to exhibit new art in a focused way and to further the study of art theory, Western painting professors at the Hangzhou National Art Academy initiated the Art Movement Society in the summer of 1928. These professors were Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng, Wu Dayu, Li Jinfa, Li Puyuan, Li Shuhua, Liu Jipiao, Li Chaoshi, Cai Weilian, Wang Jingyuan, and Sun Fuxi. Actually, in this list we see signs of a Chinese art group which existed as early as 1924 in France, the Overseas Art Movement Society, the members of which included Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng, Liu Jipiao, Li Jinfa, and Wu Dayu. The Art Movement Society, founded in Hangzhou, was by most accounts a continuation in China of a group named after Phoebus—the Greek sun god—which had existed in France three years before. Lin Fengmian had been using the term ‘movement’ for some time, to indicate the affinity between young artists and intellectuals in the literary and theoretical fields, and the hope was to confront society and reality with a revolutionary stance. The aim of the Overseas Art Movement Society was ‘to devote our efforts to cooperation in Western art and to an exchange of ideas with Chinese art’. In February 1924, The Overseas Art Movement Society and the Association of Fine Arts Workers and Students set up a planning committee for an art exhibition by Chinese émigrés in Europe. They engaged Cai Yuanpei, who was then in France, as an honorary director, and in May, Cai penned a rational and open-hearted preface for the exhibition.[23]
Before long, almost all instructors at the school joined the Art Movement Society, whose members prepared exhibitions and put out the fortnightly magazine Apollo. They held widely influential exhibitions in 1929 (Shanghai), 1930 (Japan), 1931 (Nanjing), and 1934 (Shanghai).
The art groups which began to appear from early in the century are hard to enumerate. If we insist on making a numerical survey of the social organizations during this period, the profusion of groups at the Suzhou Art Academy alone—Meteor, Ten Two Painting Club, Canglang Beauty, Transcendence Society, Spring Wind Painting Group, and Yisheng Fine Arts Society—give us some idea of the scene during that highly idealistic period. Such an unforgettable flourishing was not to be seen again until the 1980s. Actually, after 1927, groups such as the Morning Flower Society (1928) and the One Eight Society (1929) were already turning into politically-oriented organizations. With the appearance in July 1930 of the China Left-Wing Fine Arts League, which was in fact under Communist Party influence, complex social and political realities were already having an effect on all young people. This was especially true in the 1930s, when the character of societies began to undergo rapid changes along with the political situation.
The 1929 National Art Exhibition
In 1929 the relationship between intellectuals employed by the Nationalist Government and celebrities was becoming increasingly complicated. Now it was the government apparatus rather than autonomous societies which determined the direction of exhibitions. What after all were the elements that enabled exhibitions to take place? And what forms were the exhibitions to take? It was no longer a simple combination of artistic taste and ideas, but the result of a chess game involving power, taste, and interest groups. Among the names on the list of the Honorary Evaluation Commissioners of the First National Art Exhibition, five figures from the political and military arena could be found: Chairman of Nationalist Government and Standing Committee Member of Executive Commission Jiang Zhongzheng, Legislative Speaker and Standing Committee Member of Executive Commission Hu Hanmin, Standing Committee Member of Executive Commission Dai Chuanxian (Dai Jitao), and so on. According to the newly established system, the University Board’s Art Education Committee, once headed by Cai Yuanpei and presided over by Lin Fengmian, was specifically in charge of creating plans for national art education and affairs related to public art projects. Motions approved in the ‘Minutes of the Third Conference of the University Board’s Art Education Committee’, issued in February 1928, covered art exhibitions, art education, art communication, and art propaganda. The First National Education Conference held by the University Board in Nanjing in May produced documents dealing with national exhibitions such as Liu Haisu’s ‘Proposal for Holding Conferences for National Art Exhibitions’. On July14th, the University Board publicized the ‘University Board’s Organizational Outline for Art Exhibitions’, ‘Prospectus for Soliciting Entries for Art Exhibitions by the University Board’ and ‘Prospectus for Art Exhibition Prizes by the University Board’.
On April the 10th, the Nationalist Government’s Ministry of Education held the First National Art Exhibition in Shanghai. The standing committee members were Xu Beihong, Wang Yiting, Li Yishi, Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu, Jiang Xiaojian, and Xu Zhimo. The exhibition committee also published a catalogue edited by Xu Zhimo, Chen Xiaodie, Yang Qingqing, and others. Obviously, this government-hosted art exhibition represented the cultural aspect of learning from Western institutions after the Revolution of 1911. Among pieces in the exhibition, 354 belonged to Western categories, including Realism, Mannerism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Futurism. The works of Feng Gangbai, Li Chaoshi, Wang Yachen, Wang Jiyuan, Situ Qiao, Ding Yanyong, Lin Fengmian, Zhu Qizhan, Pan Yuliang, Zhang Xian and Wu Dayu stimulated the Chinese audience in their different ways. As we have seen, Chinese-style paintings were still in the majority. In Chen Xiaodie's ‘Schools of Modern Guohua Painting as Seen from the Art Exhibition’, Chen categorized the Chinese paintings exhibited into six schools: 1) Revivalist School (Fugu Pai): Gu Heyi, Feng Chaoran, Wu Daiqiu, Huang Xiaoting; 2) Progressive School (Xinjin Pai): Qian Shoutie, Zheng Wuchang, Zhang Daqian, Xu Huibai; 3) Eclectic School (Zhezhong Pai): Gao Jianfu, Chen Shuren, He Xiangning, Tang Jianyou, Fang Rending; 4) Art Academy School (Meizhuan Pai): Liu Haisu, Lü Fengzi, Wang Xianzhao; 5) Southern School (Nanhua Pai): Jin Cheng, Xiao Qianzhong, Qi Baishi and 6) Literati School (Wenren Pai): Wu Hufan, Wu Zhongxiong, Chen Ziqing, Zheng Manqing and Di Pingzi. Chen Xiaodie, who was later to pen the pronouncement that ‘throughout the three hundred years of the Qing, there were never any paintings’, used the phrases ‘coarse branches, big trunks, dark red, and moody green’ to denote the Art Academy School represented by Liu Haisu, highlighting a new trend in the exhibition.[24] In this exhibition, fifty pieces of sculpture expressing human figures and animals were also on display, and the sculptures resembling real human images astonished the media.
Nevertheless, when Xu Beihong found excessively modernist tendencies among the Western-style paintings in the exhibition as a whole, he refused to submit his own works. Xu Beihong, who apparently felt that modernism was a pernicious element in the overall importation of Western art, was not satisfied with only a verbal exchange with Xu Zhimo. Therefore, on the 22nd, he proceeded to write up his points of argument in an article entitled ‘Confusion: An Open Letter to Xu Zhimo’, published in Art Exhibition no.5. The beginning of this article was surprising: ‘It is a blissful event that China is staging this unprecedented national art exhibition, and it is worthy of congratulation. What is even more worth congratulating is that it contains no shameless works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Bonnard’. [25] Xu Beihong emphasized that China at the time only needed realism. We have seen in ‘Fine Arts Revolution’ that, at a time when old fences had to be toppled, the instruments that intellectuals insisted on grasping were scientific ‘ideas’ and the corresponding ‘realism’.
Xu Beihong
Xu Beihong (1895-1953) was born in Yixing county, Jiangsu province. In 1915, Xu Beihong virtually despaired of finding a job in Shanghai until he was asked to draw a set of gymnastic wall charts titled Tan tui tushuo published by Zhonghua Library. Sponsored by friends, Xu Beihong was enrolled at the French Catholic Aurora University. He once painted a portrait of the legendary Cang Jie for the garden of the rich Jewish merchant Silas Aaron Hardoon and his Chinese wife R. Liza. At that time, he also made the acquaintance of Kang Youwei and other celebrated figures, and we can imagine what an impact this reformist full of praise for Raphael had on him. In early 1918, Xu Beihong was invited by the president of Peking University Cai Yuanpei to work as a lecturer in the University’s Society for the Study of Painting Methods. He lectured on ‘Methods of Improving Chinese Painting’ to the Society in May, and told his students and colleagues at the outset of his talk: ‘The degeneration of Chinese painting has by now gone to an extreme! In principle the achievements of civilization do not degenerate, yet today’s Chinese painting is an exception, having regressed fifty steps over the past twenty years, five hundred steps over the last three hundred years, four hundred steps over the last five hundred years, thousand steps back over seven hundred years, and eight hundred steps over a millennium. How deplorable has been the decline of this nation!’ [26]
Xu Beihong even made so bold as to doubt the effectiveness of traditional brushwork that was supposedly derived from the nature. ‘In Chinese paintings, trees cannot be identified by species, except for a few types like pines, willows, and phoenix tress. Even if some painters follow the technical rules for painting trees, point by point, it would ultimately be better than sketching real trees’.[27] However, why did one have to depict a real tree? Literati artists had long ago declined to answer this question; the ancients insisted that painting was valued for its ‘force of intention’, and it was precisely this untrammeled force or unutterable ‘resonant force’ that eliminated the demand for verisimilitude or authenticity.
Xu Beihong also used old-style architectural painting (jiehua) to exemplify his issue with the ancients, pointing out that Song people put effort in the architectural painting, an effort that seemingly bore similarities to realistic painting, but architecture paintings ‘have only two planes, and if an inclined plane is added, then near and far are on the same scale, which departs from principle’.[28] The principle Xu Beihong speaks of here is not the ‘principle’ (li) of Neo-Confucian thought, but of perspective. As early as the Song dynasty, the scientist Shen Kuo criticized the ‘principle’ utilized in Li Cheng's works, basing his argument on the overall ‘principle’ ascribed to in the thinking of China’s literati. Even in the early 20th century, ‘principles’ of visual experience had not yet become a basis of art criticism.
In his discussion of portraiture in Chinese painting, Xu Beihong put forward criticisms of body proportion, facial features, gestures, and expressions, stating that in commonly seen figural paintings, ‘arms and legs appear to be at right angles, bodies cannot turn around, heads cannot face upward or look aside, and hands cannot reach forwards from the surface of the paper. Even little children appear old when smiling, and young girls turn ugly when frowning. Both eye corners can be seen in profile, and a dancing beauty’s feet must remain hidden’.[29] Xu Beihong was obviously directing such remarks at the lack of anatomical knowledge and normal proportion in traditional Chinese painting.
In March 1919, Xu Beihong, recommended and supported by Cai Yuanpei, went abroad to study with Jiang Biwei. Xu enrolled at Julian Academy in the autumn to study sketching and applied to École Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the winter of 1920, Xu Beihong made acquaintance with the realist painter Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929), who remained Xu’s teacher until his return to China in 1927. In early February 1926, Xu Beihong had briefly returned to China to take part in the Plum Blossom Gathering held by Tian Han in Shanghai, presenting more than forty oil paintings that attracted the attention of Cai Yuanpei, Yu Dafu, Guo Moruo, Ye Shengtao and Zheng Zhenduo, but before long went back to Paris. After touring Switzerland and the Italian cities of Milan, Florence, and Rome, Xu Beihong completed his overseas study in August 1927 and returned to Shanghai.
In 1928, Xu Beihong was invited by Tian Han to be the chairman of the painting faculty at Nanguo Art Academy. For personal reasons, Xu Beihong left Nanguo Art Academy before long and went to teach at Beiping University’s Art Institute and Central University’s School of Art, respectively. In the summer of 1928, Xu Beihong was invited to Fuzhou by the director of the Fujian Province Department of Education, Huang Menggui, to paint the historical work Slaughter of Cai Gongshi for the department.
Xu Beihong had won wide acclaim even before going to study abroad, and he became an important leader in the art world when he returned to China. Thus when he saw many works with modernist tendencies in the First National Art Exhibition, neither his preferences nor the power he held would let him approve of those works lacking in traditional ‘sublime’ (gaomiao), ‘aristocratic’ (huagui), ‘commanding’ (zhuangli), ‘magnificent’ (weida), or ‘free and resonant’ (yiyun) virtues. On the contrary, Xu Beihong used such words as ‘commonplace’, ‘vulgar’, ‘flamboyant’, ‘inferior’, and ‘pernicious’ to characterize the art of Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse. He believed that such modernist art was only able to succeed as a result of manipulation and propaganda by art dealers, and that such art had already been severely compromised by money.
Xu Beihong's adherence to realism was, in fact, based upon the basic realist approach of academics, but he was perhaps more concerned with the heroic and epic qualities of certain works to be seen in museums and albums. To a great extent, Xu Beihong's realist stance in painting was derived from European academism, which was an idealistic kind of realist painting requiring narrative, decoration, and spiritual elevation. This constituted one of the reasons for his aversion to early modernist paintings.
As editor of the Exhibition Catalogue, Xu Zhimo's article, entitled ‘I Am Also Confused: Letter to Xu Beihong’ was published at the same time in the fifth issue of the journal Art Exhibition, hoping by reference to Ruskin's flawed criticism of James Whistler to remind Xu Beihong not to make the mistake of prejudicial taste.
From 1928 onwards, Xu Beihong began to work on The Five Hundred Retainers of Tian Heng, his foremost and most typical work. He hoped to narrate the story recorded in historical documents using the knowledge of historical paintings he had acquired in Paris. Xu Beihong was indeed touched by the moral fiber of the historical figures in this work and believed that these spiritual qualities could be easily rendered ‘sublime’ as in Western historical paintings. It was probably because the ancient historian Sima Qian had wondered why nobody had rendered this moving story in pictorial form that Xu Beihong was inspired to illustrate this historical subject in a painting. Regardless, Xu Beihong did possibly believe that realistic historical painting was authentic art, without examining the particular circumstances which led to the emergence of historical genre paintings in Europe. He generally maintained that realist painting was always associated with history, reality, or even science. When Xu Beihong submitted his work to be shown at the Central Art Society’s Painting Exhibition in 1930, he began work on Jiufang Gao, a painting inspired by the story in Liezi about Bo Le’s recommendation of talented men. This large-scale painting was one of Xu Beihong well known projects for the reform of Chinese painting, his attempt to represent inner qualities such as ‘loftiness’ (gaoshang) and ‘the realm of attainment’ (jingjie) through traditional Chinese painting, and at the same time attempt to present images that would be understood by the audience without the aid of literature and poetry.
In January 1933, Xu Beihong departed for Europe to hold a touring exhibition of Chinese paintings. In April 1934, an Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Paintings was held in Russia, and according to records, the exhibition was a great success. After returning to China, Xu Beihong reported in detail on the situation of exhibition activities in Russia, at a time when Chinese intellectuals were taking a reasonable degree of notice of Russia.
In August 1934, Xu Beihong continued to serve as professor and dean of the Art School of Central University after his return from Russia, and promoted exhibitions of Russian prints in Nanjing and Shanghai in 1935. Nevertheless, conflicts between the KMT and Communist Party became increasingly intense. Xu Beihong was surrounded by friends involved in political activities, and his daily life and art were close to political realities. In 1935, Xu Beihong and the eminent future aesthetician Zong Baihua were active in trying to secure the release from prison of the dramatist Tian Han, a Communist Party member. Xu could see that the art of drama had begun to engage directly with political reality. In 1936, for personal reasons, Xu Beihong went to Guilin in Guangxi Province, where the landscapes he painted were filled with fresh sensibilities. In 1937, he returned to Nanjing from Guilin, and after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, he supervised the move of the faculty and students of the art school to Chongqing. In April 1938, although Xu Beihong was invited by Guo Moruo and Tian Han to serve as the Director for Arts in the Third Department of the Political Office, he declined to take the post for personal reasons and went to Hong Kong at the end of the year, then to Singapore in the early part of the following year where he began to raise funds for the resistance from the sale of his paintings. In Singapore, Xu Beihong also saw the celebrated actress Wang Ying performing Tian Han's Put Down Your Whip, a one-act play with an anti-Japanese resistance message. Xu was inspired to execute the oil painting of the same title, Put Down Your Whip in 1939. To some extent, this painting by Xu Beihong is the closest he came to realism, even though the composition still bore dramatic features.[30] Xu Beihong spent only ten days completing this work with its stance of resistance to the Japanese. By contrast, other works on which he expended greater time and energy were also completed in Singapore, such as his heroic realist Chinese painting Yu Gong Moves the Mountain (1940).
The introduction of realist painting into China and the transformation of traditional literati painting and its timeworn conservative approach was Xu Beihong’s foremost achievement in the 20th century art revolution. A number of artists with meticulous scholarship, influenced by Xu Beihong’s teaching and thinking, constituted an important part of art history in 20th century China. Although Xu’s willful adherence to realistic techniques and sketching fundamentals meant that his ideas and painting methods had a somewhat autocratic academic impact upon his students, we see that the majority of his students willingly immersed themselves in this brand new realm of Chinese painting and inscribed their teacher's instructions in their mind. Xu Beihong had a legion of accomplished students, and we can readily name some of the more important: Lü Sibai, Wu Zuoren, Zhang Anzhi,[31] Lü Xiaguang, Sun Duoci, Gu Liaoran, Wen Jinyang, Wen Zhongxin, Zhang Qianying, Sun Zongwei, Chen Xiaonan, and Feng Fasi. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Xu Beihong also deeply influenced a group of young painters such as Huang Xianzhi, Dong Xiwen, Li Ruinian, and Li Zongjin.
Realist Painters and Sculptors
Among all of Xu Beihong’s students, the relationship between him and Lü Sibai (1905-1973) was particularly special. This native of Jiangyin in Jiangsu, along with Wu Zuoren, was an important assistant of Xu Beihong, and he was under Xu’s strict guidance in artistic matters. When Lü Sibai began taking an interest in Cézanne, he was severely criticized by Xu. Lü Sibai was recommended by Xu to enter the Advanced Fine Arts Academy in Lyons on a public scholarship in 1928. It was said that Lü’s copies of Paradis by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes reached the point of being mistakable for the original. Lü’s taste for such things led to his affinity for rural, pastoral scenes. In 1934, Lü Sibai’s Wild Flavor (1931) and Fruit (1931), works which reflected the influence of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Cherdin and Cézanne respectively, were accepted for the Paris Spring Salon. In this same year Lü Sibai returned to China and became Xu Beihong’s instructional assistant. Like Xu Beihong, he insisted on teaching the solidly defined shapes of realist technique, stressed training in sketching from plaster busts, and paid considerable attention to solidity and texture. Lü Sibai’s painterly language was pared down and unadorned and even his subject matter was limited to ordinary people, ordinary landscapes, and common still-life objects, yet one could see the rich grounding behind his colors and brush technique. In the 1930s and 1940s, Lü Sibai completed a fair number of pieces expressing his own personal taste.
Seen historically, realism was a response to the science and democracy movement of that period. Putting aside Xu Beihong’s imperious stance, the importance of realism in China was much like the necessity of practical enterprises and military industries that Zhang Zhidong and Li Hongzhang had worked for. As a branch of science, according to the Renaissance classification, the realist method was undoubtedly a technique that Chinese artists needed to master. In fact, realist methods were useful for these artists, whose art was a means of practical engagement. Situ Qiao (1902-1958), who learned Western art by copying works in the museums of France, made a deep impression with his work Put Down Your Whip (1940). In its concern for society, humanist sympathy, and visual drama, this work succeeded as a concrete embodiment of Xu Beihong’s thinking about realism. Situ Qiao was born into a poverty-stricken family in Guangzhou. His arduous and tragic early life laid the foundation for Situ Qiao’s lifelong empathy for ordinary people. He began his education in a missionary school, and then he studied in the school of humanities at Lingnan University for four years. In 1924 he transferred to Yanjing University in Beijing, where he was influenced by Lu Xun. Situ Qiao’s woodcuts express his intellectually penetrating stance.
Tang Yihe (1905-1944) was another painter whose works provide interesting contrasts, as intriguingly demonstrated by his Victory and Peace, completed in 1942, and Bugle of July 7th of 1940, although never completed. Although the themes are similar, Victory and Peace is in a completely European classical style, an unfamiliar style to Chinese viewers and remote from their reality—the goddess of victory in the work does not seem to be in harmony with the idealized Chinese man. However, for the painter, the important thing was not style but message, namely the idea that victory will surely belong to the Chinese people. In the earlier incomplete Bugle of July 7th, the painter turned his gaze to everyday life and used unexaggerated technique to convey the awakening of people from different strata. This was quite consistent with the realism advocated by Xu Beihong.
Realist painting has the potential to convey social reality, and at times it is utilized by party politics. Adulatory subject matter is by no means lacking in Western classicism. In emulation of classicism, Liang Dingming (1895-1959) and his brothers Liang Youming (1905-1984) and Liang Zhongming (1906-1994) depicted military subjects to convey Kuomintang party ideology and political propaganda; this too was an achievement of realist painting. Liang Dingming was a KMT member, and he was a historical and portrait painter of whom Chiang Kaishek approved. Liang Dingming, who had done monthly calendar paintings for Shanghai’s Yingmei Tobacco Company in his early years, took a post as director of the art office in the political department of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Army Headquarters. Thus his creation of works on subjects such as Northern Expedition was not only an opportunity to implement his artistic ideals but also a timely expression of his political stance. According to the concept of art based on the Three People’s Principles, as Liang understood it, his painting was a necessary fusion of artistic and political aims, and the so-called ‘party-national stance’ was unshakable. His works definitely show his aspiration to become a Chinese version of Jacques-Louis David, and had he been asked about the function of art, he would surely have used the classic portrait of Napoleon by David, a painter he worshipped, as the solid basis for claiming the epic qualities of classic painting. Liang Dingming and his two brothers were the first painters to put art directly in the service of party politics and ideology.
The realist movement was also gradually embodied in works by sculptors of the 1930s.
In the late-Qing and early Republican era, Chinese people were familiar with Buddhist statues in temples and caves, and with stereotyped sculptures of traditional figures in myths. They were accustomed to the term ‘Bodhisattva images’ used to describe traditional and religious sculpture. Although China has a long history of sculpture, and people marvelled at the sculptures of Dunhuang and Yungang, one can safely say that sculpture rarely presented real life directly.
Among artists who studied in Japan and Europe, there are a number of sculptors: Jiang Xiaojian, Chen Xiaogang, Yue Hua, Jin Xuecheng, Chen Xijun, Zheng Ke, Wang Jingyuan, Wu Fading, and subsequently Liu Kaiqu, Zhou Qingding, Sun Fuxi, Hua Tianyou, Wang Ziyun, Wang Linyi, Zhang Chongren, Cheng Manshu, and Wang Rujiu. After returning to China, they transmitted basic Western techniques and ideas through education. After a sculpture section was established at the Shanghai Art Academy in 1920, college majors in sculpture were successively set up at the National Art Institute, Canton Municipal Fine Arts School, National Art Academy, and Southwest Art Academy. Chinese sculptors of the 1930s took human figures, especially figures in reality, as their main subject. In fact, Xu Beihong's ideas were carried out in sculpture more effectively than in painting during the period of the Republic. In other words, art was to be applied to shaping figures of actual people, as Xu subsequently proposed to the new Chinese Communist regime. In 1934, the Nanjing Government established the Sun Yatsen Bronze Statue Committee, hoping that sculptors would take real-life leaders as their models. Quite a few artists familiar with European classical sculpture invested their efforts competing for the first prize. Fifteen sculptors participated, including Li Jinfa, Chen Xijun, Mei Yutian, Huang Langping, Teng Baiye, Lang Luxun, Jiang Xiaojian, Wang Linyi, Ran Zhuting, and Liu Kaiqu. Sculptors of this period believed, as if by instinct, that decisive progress n modern Chinese art lay in shaping real figures, especially eminent persons.
Until the late 1940s, whatever ambitions sculptors may have held, the harsh reality did not provide them with much space for creation. Liao Xinxue (1902-1958) was an artist gifted both in painting and sculpture whose paintings were lost in warfare and strife, and only survive today in print. Liao Xinxue was born into a poor peasant family of Yunnan and worked as a herd-boy in his early days. He entered the Whooping Crane Studio in Kunming as an apprentice at the age of eighteen. In 1933 he passed the entrance examination to study in France with public sponsorship and enroll at École Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. Hua Tianyou was his schoolmate, and they studied art under impoverished living conditions. The models Liao copied were Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s A Lice-Hunting Boy and Millet’s The Gleaners, and he also copied the works of Rubens, Ingres, and Délacroix in museums. Before returning to China in 1948, he had won numerous prizes at the Spring, Autumn, and Independent Salons. His herd-boys and similar subjects showed to the West that a Chinese artist’s understanding of Western art could be quite precise and exquisite.
NOTES:
[1] Zhou Xiang, ‘Charter of the Shanghai Oil Painting Institute’ (Shanghai Youhua Yuan Zhangcheng), Minli Bao, 28 December 1910.
[2] See: Shanghai Fine Arts Vocational Tenth Graduation Memorial Volume (Shanghai Meizhuan xinzhi di shiyijie biye zhuankan), 1932.
[3] Originally published July 20, 1922 in Sino-Japanese Fine Arts (Zhong-Ri meishu), vol.1, no.3; quoted from Zhu Jinlou (1913), Yuan Zhihuang ed., Liu Haisu’s Selected Writings on Art (Liu Haisu yishu wenxuan), Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1987.
[4] See Zhu Baoxiong, Chen Ruilin, Fifty Years of Western Painting in China: 1898-1949 (Zhongguo xihua wushi nian: 1898-1949), People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1989, p.68.
[5] Originally, this French painter accepted a position at Beijing Art Vocational School, but later took up employment at West Lake National Art Institute. After coming to China in 1926, he taught western painting at these two schools respectively. In the two years that Claudot served as advisor in the oil painting graduate program at Hangzhou National Art Institute, he was considered to have made significant contributions. In the history of art education in 20th century China, he was one of the few important painters of foreign nationality.
[6] The precursor of Central University was Nanjing National Advanced Normal School, founded in 1913. The site was where Liangjiang Normal had been located in the early years of the Republic. In 1915-1916 there had been a visual arts and crafts program. Later the school went through successive name changes—Southeast University, Zhongshan University, and finally in 1927, Central University. As for the Art Department, in 1923 it was changed to the Southeast University Arts and Crafts Special Program; in 1924 it was changed to Jiangsu Art Academy; in 1927 it was absorbed into Zhongshan University as the ‘Art Education Special Division’; in 1928 it was changed to the Special Art Division of Zhongshan University’s School of Education.
[7] Xu Beihong returned from Europe in fall of 1927; in January 1928 he devised plans for Nanguo Art School upon invitation by Tian Han (1898-1968) served as chairman of the Art Departmen; in March he was hired as a professor by Central University’s Art Program; in April, he received an appointment from Hangzhou National Art Institute, but at the end of the month he returned from Hangzhou to Nanguo Art School; in September, he was hired as head of the Beiping University Art School; on January 23, 1929, due to student demonstrations and factional struggles, Xu resigned his position and returned to resume his professorship in the Art Department at Central University in Nanjing.
[8] Educational Statistics (Jiaoyu tongji), published in Education Newsletter (Jiaoyu tongxun), vol.2, no.5, p.20.
[9] In his memoirs, Pang Xunqin gives a detailed account of that seemingly unpleasant period: ‘The season turned to fall, and on Mid-Autumn Festival day some of us went to the sandy bank of the Wanjiang, to view the moon and celebrate the festival. In fact, this was a farewell get-together. A few days later Wang Manshuo (1905-1985) came to my house and without any preliminaries said to me, ‘I’m going to leave. I’m going to Yan’an’. At that time a number of students, both from Beiping Art Vocational and Hangzhou Art Vocational left school, most of them to Yan’an’. Ref: Pang Xunqin, The Road I Travelled (Jiushi zheyang zou guolai de), Sanlian Bookstore, 2005, p.158.
[10] Song Zhongyuan ed., The Cradle of Art (Yishu yaolan), Zhejiang Fine Arts Publishing House, 1988, p.18.
[11] Quoted from: A Sampling of People and Events from Wuchang Vocational Art School. (Wuchang Zhuanke yishu xuexiao bufen ren he shi).
[12] In 1949, the Arts and Literature College of Zhongyuan University came south and took over the school, but shortly afterwards was reconstituted as Zhongnan Arts and Literature Institute.
[13] Chen Baoyi, ‘A brief record of the foreign painting movement’ (Yanghua yundong guocheng lüeji), quoted from Chen Ruilin, Chen Baoyi: Modern Fine Arts Master (Chen Baoyi: Xiandai meishujia Chen Baoyi), People’s Literature Publishing House, 1988.
[14] In his ‘A brief record of the foreign painting movement’ (Yanghua yundong guocheng lüeji), Chen Baoyi recalls that before 1911 ‘the word impressionism had come to our attention from who knows where, although we did not know exactly what sort of painting the Impressionist School did’. However, in around 1918 a number of people returned from Europe, so more people understood something about Impressionist style. As a result, painters emerged whose works had an impressionist coloring, such as Qiu Daiming, Chen Hong, Pan Yuliang, and Liu Hang (1911-2004). See Lang Shaojun, Shui Tianzhong eds., Selected Papers on 20th Century Chinese Fine Arts (Ershi shiji Zhongguo meishu wenxuan), vol.1, Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, 1999.
[15] In this period people did not yet use the term ‘exhibition’ (zhanlanhui).
[16] Jiang Xiaojian (1894-1939) was thought to be one of the earliest sculptors. With him begins the making of sculptures based on actual human subjects, such as ‘Li Shuping’, ‘Tan Yankai,’ and ‘Chen Jiageng’, though the technique he adopted was only ordinary realism. His ‘Bronze Memorial Image for the Martyr Chen Yingshi’ (Chen Yingshi lieshi jinianbei tongxiang) was thought to have set an exemplary pattern hero-images in the Republican period, but the hero Chen’s bold equestrian pose was actually a reproduction of European classical sculpture.
[17] See Liu Haisu, ‘What Exactly Is the Heavenly Horse Club?’ (Tianma Hui jiujing shi shenmo), originally published in Art weekly (Yishu), vol.13. Quoted from Liu Haisu’s Selected Writings on Art (Liu Haisu yishu wenxuan), Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1987.
[18] Quoted from Zhu Boxiong, Chen Ruilin: Fifty Years of Western Painting in China: 1898-1949 (Zhongguo xihua wushi nian: 1898-1949), People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1989, p.211.
[19] Xu Zhihao, Leisurely Notes on Chinese Fine Arts Societies (Zhongguo meishu shetuan manlu), Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, 1994, p.45.
[20] In November 1927, after Ye Ting, Ye Jianjing and others started the failed Guangzhou Uprising, the word ‘Crimson’ (Chi) came under suspicion of being connected with dangerous political positions and organizations. Artists had chosen the word ‘crimson’ for its geographical, cultural associations with the South—radiance, intensity, sincerity, and warmth—but political implications were read into it. The suspicions of the authorities were aroused, causing many members to resign. Later, effort to preserve the research society succeeded, but the name Crimson Society was changed to its homophone Measure Society (Chi She).
[21] According to the ‘Brief history of the Measure Society’ (Chizhan mulu) printed in the Measure Exhibition Catalogue for the Society’s ninth exhibition.
[22] Liu Gu, Peng Fei, Lin Fengmian’s Talks on Art (Lin Fengmian tanyi lu), Henan Fine Arts Publishing House, 1999, p.65.
[23] See the section on Lin Fengmian in this book.
[24] Chen Xiaodie, ‘Schools of modern national painting as seen from the exhibition’ (Cong meizhan zuopin ganjue dao xiandai guohua huapai), Exhibition Register (Meizhan Huikan), 19 April 1929, no.4.
[25] Cézanne, Matisse and Bonnard are represented by non-standard transliterations in the original Chinese text.
[26] Wang Zhen and Xu Boyang, ed., Xu Beihong’s Collected Art Writings (Xu Beihong yishu wenji), Ningxia People’s Publishing House, 1994, p.11.
[27] Ibid., p.14.
[28] Ibid., p.14
[29] Ibid., p. 15.
[30] Put Down Your Whip (Fangxia nide bianzi) was a one-act play adapted by playwright Tian Han, based upon a story by Goethe, and adapted into an Anti-Japanese War street-play by Chen Liting. Other artists also represented the same subject matter, for instance, Situ Qiao.
[31] Zhang Anzhi (1911-1990) graduated from Art School of Central University in 1933, became an assistant to Xu Beihong in 1935 and transferred to Chinese painting in 1940s. His scholarly work mainly covered art theories and history studies.