The Modernization of Chinese Art: The Shanghai Art College, 1913-1937

摘要

In the waning days of the Qing Dynasty and the early Republican period, new educational reforms dramatically reshaped systems of art education and led to fundamental changes in the purpose, meaning and social function of art. These transformations were particularly visible in Shanghai, where the growth of art schools and societies was facilitated by internationally oriented forms of commercial art and an attendant expansion of the publishing industries. One of the largest and most influential institutions to emerge from this confluence of cultural factors was the Shanghai Art College (Shanghai meishu zhuanke xuexiao or Shanghai meizhuan) the subject of Jane Zheng's extensive new study. Providing a comprehensive chronological overview of the first 25 years of the College's history, she traces its evolution in the 1910s from a private tutorial school offering training in calendar poster painting techniques to a paragon of Western-style art instruction in the 1920s, and finally to an accredited institution that sought to fulfil Cai Yuanpei's mandate on "aesthetic education" in the 1930s. In the process, she delineates how the College successfully weathered the vicissitudes of Shanghai's changing socio-economic and cultural climate, navigating both market demands and the city's burgeoning commercial sphere to emerge as a "pragmatic market player in Shanghai's free market environment" (p. 327).