Nationalism and Painting Societies of the 1930s

Julia F. Andrews

Talk for Urban Cultural Institutions in Early 20^th Century China (Collaborative research with Kuiyi Shen), April 13, 2002

Background

　　　　　 The radical suppression of traditionalist guohua in China during the early and mid-1950s, with the well-intentioned aim of establishing a new socialist culture, was recognized as a mistake as early as 1957. Structural changes, such as establishing Chinese painting institutes in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Xi’an, as well as trying to revive the master-disciple method of training guohua painters in some art academies and institutes, were then made to try to correct the error. Nevertheless, during these embattled years, oversimplified or sometimes severely distorted views of China’s pre-modern and modern history were spread by artisans of opposing artistic or political views. While the battles themselves are now lost in the past, the art historical misconceptions that were spread have not yet been completely erased.

　　　　　 A view widespread among art theorists in the early 1950s was that many traditional painters “seem to be laboring to satisfy the demands of ancient people and do not consider the opinions of living people,” and that much contemporary guohua, because of the practice of copying (linmo), was almost indistinguishable from that of Ming and Qing times. Ai Qing colorfully asserted in 1953, “the times have changed, the people’s lives have changed, but the so-called guohua has not changed; it seems that guohua is an art that tells lies.”^[1] The general tone of such comments, whether stated directly or simply implied, was that guohua was a useless remnant of the worst aspects of China’s imperial past, and that its artists were in general incapable and unwilling to be productive citizens of the modern world.

　　　　　 Publications of the Republican period tell a story that is far more complex, both in terms of the situation for individual guohua artists and for guohua as a whole. One can find, within the traditionalist camp, voices that were every bit as idealistic and patriotic as those to be found among the radical Westernizers. Within the lives of individuals of these generations, passed as they were in what may have been the most complicated times in China’s history, one may observe fascinating transformations of both art and artists’ beliefs about their purpose in twentieth century society.

　　　　　 The Chinese art world was fortunate that Cai Yuanpei considered aesthetic education a key component of his program to replace the defunct civil service examinations with a modern educational system and therefore made resources available for art schools. Based on his appointments of European-trained artists to lead his programs, however, it seems clear that Cai’s preference was that the art education offered in the new schools was to be cosmopolitan, i.e. Western. 　While not necessarily relevant to this point, Cai’s daughter Weilian was a modernist oil painter trained and later employed as a professor by Lin Fengmian, the French-educated artist Cai had appointed to head the Hangzhou academy, which would become China’s premier state-sponsored art school. Cai himself took no stand on the oil painters’ bitter debates about realism versus modernism that broke into the open in the late 1920s, but instead appointed men of various points of view to influential jobs in the new art educational system.^[2] The work of Cai and others in government ensured that throughout the twentieth century, specialists in European-style oil painting were well-employed and well-publicized. No evidence has come to light that their paintings sold very well, but state patronage for their work as teachers obviated any such need.

　　　　　 Traditionalist painters and calligraphers faced a very different situation in the early twentieth century, as the collapse of the imperial system left their talents without an audience. Court artists were castigated as part of the fabric of backward-looking incompetence that led to China’s military humiliations in the nineteenth century.^[3] Literati-artists were similarly considered irrelevant to the national needs. Some writers came close to advocating that China’s entire art history be discarded, and for that polemical end merged the previously quite distinct categories of court and literati art into a single object of contempt, generally referred to as literati art.

　　　　　 The constitutional reformer Kang Youwei wrote one of the most frequently cited attacks on literati painting, his preface to Wanmu caotang canghuamu, in 1917.^[4] In this short essay, Kang argued that Chinese painting had suffered a steady decline since the Song dynasty, which he attributed to the pernicious principles of literati painting and Chan Buddhist thought. By Kang’s own time, he believed, Chinese painting had reached a point of extreme decadence. In a typically radical formulation, Kang Youwei proposed overturning the painting theory of the previous five centuries by declaring the new orthodoxy in painting to be “boundary painting with color,” and “academy painting,” arts he seemed to support largely because they were denigrated by the literati. 　To be replaced, in his scheme, were what he believed the literati praised: xieyi painting, simple sketches in ink, and painting with a scholarly air. In conclusion, Kang Youwei reported in disgust that there were no Chinese artists to be found in the contemporary era, or rather, that the few who were known simply copied the Four Wangs and the Two Stones (Shitao and Kuncan). “How can these compete with European and Japanese art!” he exclaimed. Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione), by contrast, he praised as a great master who merged Chinese and Western art.

　　　　　 Although at several points in his argument Kang Youwei claimed Western validation for his views--Westerners like boundary painting in color, and consider ink-on-paper sketches to be minor--he ultimately stayed within the Chinese tradition. He promoted a reformist fundamentalism compatible with his critiques of Neo-Confucianism, and thus advocated “reviving the antique to spur innovation.” 　For him, rectifying the faults of Chinese painting required return to the standards of an earlier era, when realism was the norm and before the anti-naturalistic views of Su Shih and Mi Fu became fashionable.

　　　　　 The writer Chen Duxiu, who five years later helped found the Chinese Communist Party, took a much more extreme position in 1919. In response to a thoughtful article submitted to the journal with which he was associated, New Youth, he launched a heated attack on literati painting.^[5] Using the same argument he made in such texts as “On Literary Revolution,” where he promoted “realism as part of the iconoclastic assault on traditional literature,”^[6] he wrote that the only way to paint one’s own paintings and not copy the ancients was to adopt the Western realistic spirit. Chinese artists knew how to depict people and things until the Yuan period, when painting began a steady decline from Ni Zan, Huang Gongwang, Wen Zhengming, and Shen Zhou to the bad Chinese painting (Zhongguo ehua) of the Four Wang school. Chen Duxiu demanded realism in order to reform Chinese painting, presumably because he saw painting, like traditional literature as “the very embodiment of oppressive Confucian ethical values.” He identified admiration for Wang Hui as the primary obstacle to his reformist cause in art. He attacked specifically the practices of copying, emulating, or responding to the old masters (lin, mo, fang, and yi) in Chinese painting, the absence of thematic titles (huati) on Chinese paintings, and the lack of individual creativity in Chinese painting. Among masters who did not suffer from these errors was Wu Li, whose paintings Chen believed were Western-influenced because of his Catholicism.

　　　　　 In their context, as parts of the larger cultural debate of the late Qing and early Republican periods, articles such as this may be viewed as hyperbolic prose intended to stir controversy. The Kang Youwei piece was an expression of personal taste that is couched in the most extreme terms, while the writings of Chen Duxiu are the fulminations of a dogmatic activist who knew very little about and certainly did not understand Chinese painting. Most people today would agree with Kang Youwei that literati aesthetic standards do not tell the whole story, but would not accept his suggestion of replacing that orthodoxy with a new school of brightly colored architectural paintings. Similarly, most people now (and perhaps in his own time) would agree with Chen Duxiu that Wang Hui was overrated in late Qing Beijing; but would find virtually everything else in his diatribe suspect. There is little need to point out the qualitative differences between the great works of Yuan masters Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan and the late Qing emulations of Wang Hui with which Chen Duxiu links them; or that his claims for Western influence in Wu Li’s painting are grossly exaggerated, if not faulty; or that mention of an ancient master in an inscription does not necessarily mean that the painting is unoriginal. He could not have foreseen (although some of his better informed contemporaries did) that in the years after his article was written realism would be denigrated as backward in the West, and “Untitled” would become a perfectly respectable name for a painting.

　　　　　 In this unsettled era, Chinese artists faced fundamental questions regarding their own position and the survival of the art of guohua in the modern era. What was to be the role of traditional Chinese painting and the artists who produced it in the modern world? What would be its economic position in modern China, and specifically in China’s modernizing cities? To what extent could or should its ideological underpinnings be incorporated into modern society?

Traditionalist Painting Societies

　　　　　 Of particular interest to us, because of their absence from the public record after 1949, is the proliferation of private groups and societies in late Qing and Republican China that were dedicated to the promotion of traditional Chinese painting. Whereas Western-style institutions, most notably schools, and also to a lesser extent such modern organizations as publishers, promoted primarily Western-style art, traditional art flourished mainly outside state-sponsored institutions. It was supported by a hybrid art market that combined traditional and modern sales methods in a uniquely Chinese manner as well as by some private philanthopy.

　　　　　 A publication from the end of the Republican era, the 1947 China Art Yearbook, which was first brought to my attention by Ellen Johnston Laing, makes clear that throughout the first half of the twentieth century, private art groups were the most important organizations for the preservation, promotion, and development of Chinese painting. In recent years, two scholars in Shanghai, Huang Ke and Xu Zhihao, have elaborated upon the documentation provided in this invaluable source to write histories of modern art groups. ^[7]

　　　　　 Xu Zhihao has explicitly linked painting societies and the periodical press in his pair of reference books. In his 1992 Zhongguo meishu qikan guoyanlu his bibliographic annotations include sketchy outlines of some of the painting societies that published art periodicals. Indeed, almost all major and minor artists of the Republican period may be found on its pages, associated with one or another of these societies and their publications. A companion volume was published two years later, Zhongguo meishu shetuan manlu.

　　　　　 Huang Ke’s 1994 compilation of Shanghai painting societies and private schools argues that the quantity and visibility of art group activity was distinctive in Shanghai, which he attributes to the city’s early status as an international metropolis, to its centrality in the modern Chinese economy, and to the large number of Chinese and Western-style artists, calligraphers, seal carvers, and art organizers (meishu huodongjia) in the city. Coming together voluntarily and self-financed, they located or (less frequently) constructed their own meeting places and headquarters, forming their groups in various different ways and on different scales. He lists 105 societies and private art schools organized in Shanghai between the mid-17 century and 1949, which I have broken down into the following chronological groups:

1. 18^th Century: 1

2. 19^th Century: 6 (2 before 1840; 4 after 1850)

3. 1900-1909: 6

4. 1910-1919: 11

5. 1920-1929: 27

6. 1930-1939: 41

7. 1940-1949: 13 ( 2 in 1940-41; 2 in 1942; 9 after 1945)

It would be foolish to make too much of these numbers, but it seems reasonable to link them to some contemporary events: (2-3). the late Qing crises, development of Shanghai as a treaty port, the end of the civil service examinations; (4). abolition of the Qing dynasty and establishment of the Republic; (5). traditionalist artists’ response to post-May 4^th theory and to warlord government; (6). the Shanghai cultural boom years of the 1930s and increasing concern about Japan; (7). the war years.

　　　　　 Kuiyi Shen and I have argued elsewhere that the continued practice of quasi-traditional Chinese painting in modern China is not natural, but instead was often an active, self-conscious, idealistic, and even modern enterprise.^[8] What I would like to examine in very schematic terms today is a generational shift over the first decades of the twentieth century in what this phenomenon meant.

　　　　　 In the late nineteenth century, when the first of the modern groups was formed, Western military might and industrial power were well-known, but Western painting was not yet a part of the Chinese art world. Art was assumed to be ink painting, and the threats to the Chinese art world were thus primarily economic; how could artists survive in an economy undergoing radical transformation? Those challenges were not fully resolved by the last phase of our study, which began around 1930, but were exacerbated by its competition with Western-style art within China’s own art world. 　A growing cosmopolitanism, furthermore, led to a changing conception of the audience for painting, and brought attempts to move Chinese ink painting onto a world stage. Thus by 1930 cultural nationalism was an explicit part of the agenda for major painting societies.

　　　　　 One of the earliest of the modern societies in Shanghai was the Shanghai Tijinguan Epigraphy, Calligraphy, and Painting Society (Haishang tijinguan jinshi shuhuahui), which operated from the mid 1890s until 1926. It was said to have been funded by the Shanghai entrepreneur Sheng Xuanhuai. The membership reached about a hundred artists, and included Shanghai’s best known painters and calligraphers. 　This group was founded with many of the aspirations of a traditional literati society, with even its name referring to the admiration between true friends (“tijin” refers to the practice among Shanghai antiquarians of inscribing laudatory poems on the lapels of their friends’ robes). However, despite this elevated and genuinely scholarly focus, the organization had a very practical side. It served as an agent to sell paintings and calligraphy by its members, and its senior members took upon themselves the responsibility of establishing price lists for migrants to Shanghai who sought their help. 　

　　　　　 The practice of elders establishing prices for younger artists became widespread in Shanghai in the Republican period and seems to have established a new market mechanism. The Tijinguan thus involved itself in solving problems caused by the dislocation of artists who moved from elsewhere to treaty port Shanghai. These included both professional artists from the hinterland (mainly from the lower Yangzi valley) and also, after 1911, ex-Qing officials who turned to selling their calligraphic or painting skills in the new social structure. The new group served to smooth transactions on both sides: artists would have an easier time selling paintings if their prices had been validated by a respected person and the new commercial patrons, who may not have known the proper conventions for transacting the purchase of a painting, could be confident of getting a legitimate object at the proper market price. 　There is no indication that Shanghai artists, then or now, were willing to agree to exclusive representation by one shop or organization. Presumably, however, the published price list kept the market reasonably stable despite multiple agents involved in selling paintings.

　　　　　 The club was first located in Zhabei and soon after moved to the home of member Yu Yushuang on Shantou Road, where it flourished until his death in 1922. The first director was the 1892 jinshi Wang Xun, who made a living selling his calligraphy in Shanghai. Membership boomed after 1911, when unemployed literati flocked to Shanghai. After Wang Xun died in 1915, vice-director Wu Changshi assumed the directorship, assisted by vice-directors Wang Yiting and Ha Shaofu. Although the club was open in the daytime, it was reported to have been liveliest at night, when collectors and artists came together to discuss both the creation of and the appreciation of art. Many artists also collected antiques, and favorite pieces would be brought to the group for discussion and authentication. Old art as well as new seems to have changed hands on the premises, with friends assisting one another in various kinds of art collecting transactions.

　　　　　 The Shanghai Tijinguan was a hybrid sort of organization that developed on a traditional basis, but in an at least partially non-traditional social and economic setting. As Kuiyi Shen has written previously, it thus served as a kind of artist’s professional guild, or professional society, while at the same time retaining many of the intellectual and social functions of a traditional literati painting society. ^[9] 　Notable members who remained important in later societies included Wang Yiting, Huang Binhong, He Tianjian, and Qian Shoutie.

　　　　　 The charter of a second key group, the Yuyuan Calligraphy and Painting Charitable Association, founded in 1909, describes its goals as preserving the national essence and alleviating suffering. This was to be accomplished in a unique manner. All work, except calligraphy, would be collaborative. Half the price of work sold would be returned to the artists; the other half would be invested in a Chinese-style bank (qianzhuang), with the interest used for charitable purposes. Furthermore, paintings were to be collaborative. If one were to be completed by a single hand, the inscription should be provided by a colleague. 　An unusually large number of collaborative works by artists of this group exist; although the charitable purpose is never stipulated in the inscription it is likely that they may have been society products.

　　　　　 The founders of the Yuyuan Charitable Society included artists of a variety of styles and approaches, including Gao Yong, seen in a collaborative portrait by his friends Ren Yi and Hu Yuan of several decades earlier, Qian Hui’an, Wu Changshi, Shen Xinhai, Zhang Shanzi, Wang Yiting, Yang Yi, and others, along with several artists who were from Jiang-Zhe families but worked in Beijing, such as Jin Cheng and Cheng Zhang. 　The group first met at the Deyuelou in the Yu Garden, thus its name. It is believed to be the first painting society dedicated to raising money for charity. Although its work was interrupted by the war, some reports, which we have not yet been able to confirm, refer to continuation of its activities into the late 1940s. Yang Yi’s final supplement to his Haishang molin, a compilation of biographies of Shanghai artists, was published under the auspices of the society. Yang himself died the following year, in 1929. Many members of this group were influential in other societies.

　　　　　 A less innovative society, perhaps closer in purpose to the Shanghai Tijinguan Epigraphy, Calligraphy, and Painting Society, was established in 1910. Called the Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Research Society (Shanghai shuhua yanjiuhui), Wang Xun served as its director and the collector Li Pingshu (1854-1927) as manager. Other significant officers included Ni Tian and Ha Shaofu. The society’s charter laments the fate of Chinese painting and calligraphy, which despite its high value in the eyes of people of East and West, suffered great losses and destruction because of wars and disorders.^[10] It was thus considered difficult for students to see the work of masters, even of the current dynasty, and “if work appears on the market, it will have a high price, and often will be bought by someone overseas. ...Because Shanghai is a transportation hub, and a place where scholars live and congregate, there are many who have expertise in painting and calligraphy. ..This society thus promotes research, assists in collecting, and brings like-minded people together.. for the purpose of helping preserve the national essence..” The charter described the group’s financial procedures in some detail. Costs would initially be donated by the twenty person board of directors. The premises would be open daily from two to ten. and aper, ink, and color would be provided for members’s creative activity. The cost of supplies would be deducted, however, along with a commission, should the resulting works be left for sale. Antiquities might also be be sold on the premises, with a commission deducted from proceeds. This association thus had some of the same functions as Tijingguan, but its charter is notable for its reference to preserving the national essence.

　　　　　 Beginning in the 1920s, societies devoted to some aspect of protecting the national essence proliferated. One can only assume that these movements were a response to the May Fourth polemics, some of which tended to attack Chinese painting by misrepresenting it. Despite the steadily increasing importance of Western painting in the educational system, it would be safe to say that in the 1920s, and probably in the 1930s as well, most Chinese preferred Chinese painting to Western painting. 　A booming market for Chinese painting existed in China’s major cities, and its enthusiasts organized to support its continued development. Chen Hengque, who, as the son and grandson of influential reformist officials, friend of Lu Xun, and official in his own right, had unquestionably progressive credentials, published in 1921 two defenses of Chinese painting entitled “The Value of Literati Painting.”^[11] 　Chen Hengque avoids the screaming prose of Chen Duxiu, but instead presents nuanced and carefully wrought arguments. The two versions are very similar, although the colloquial (baihua) essay published in Peking University’s Huihua zazhi reads somewhat like a translation from the classical, and is less complex in content as well as in language. 　In both versions, Chen begins with a definition of literati painting:

What is literati painting? It is painting that embodies the character and taste of the literatus, that concerns itself with the artistic skill of the painting, and that must have many literati ideas that are beyond the painting itself. When you see this kind of painting, it will give you a restful feeling; you will know that the person who painted it was without doubt a scholar.... painting is spiritual, is thoughtful, is lively, is not mechanical, and is not simple (danqun)...literati paintings must have...something other people cannot copy...

To be a literati painter thus requires knowledge of art, and is not based on social status.

...not all literati can paint, and not all literati know how to look at paintings; one must examine paintings, and be familiar with the ideas, before one can understand..

Perhaps most relevant to the issue of reform, Chen is one of the most articulate defenders of aesthetic standards for modern painting that did not require realism.

Ni Yunlin [Zan] may not concern himself with formal likeness, but don’t his trees look like trees, and his rocks look like rocks? What is meant by not seeking formal likeness is that the spirit has no need to focus on seeking formal likeness. [Ni’s] brushwork has another meaning; his painting is another kind of expression...Moreover, the fact that literati do not seek formal likeness is progressive for painting (hua de jinbu). How so?”

Chen then proceeds to explain that a painter will seek accuracy of form when first learning to paint, but gradually, after mastering representation, and memorizing the forms of objects, no longer needs to concentrate on likeness--resemblance will come intuitively. The experience of the individual, for Chen, exemplifies the historical development of Chinese painting. Thus, in Chen’s view, literati painting, which describes the spirit, not the form, is possible only after having passed through the stage of seeking formal likeness; it is not the lack of resemblance found in paintings by beginners. Chen challenges the realists directly by pointing out that realism is outdated in Europe:

If we say that the paintings of Westerners are very concerned with formal likeness, what about the current schools of “new painting,” which completely destroy the conventions of the past? How do the paintings of the so-called futurist or cubist schools resemble actual forms? If one doesn’t understand these paintings, one will think them ridiculous.

In the classical Chinese version, Chen further elaborates.

While nineteenth century Europeans sought likeness in painting, in concert with their scientific pursuit of light and color, the post-impressionists have overturned this approach in pursuit of subjectivity. The advent of cubism, futurism, and expressionism makes clear that formal resemblance is inadequate to express the transformations in their thinking. The strength of art is that it must constantly follow new pursuits.

Chen suggests that literati painting is progressive or advanced both in terms of the internal dynamics of Chinese painting and in terms of its intellectual and spiritual parallels with the most advanced of contemporary European artistic thought.

　　　　　 Many of the attacks on literati painting during the first part of the century took as their basis a class consciousness that would eventually find its most extreme form in the late years of Mao Zedong, when true art was sought only among the uneducated masses. Chen Hengque confronts this issue directly and positively, if idealistically.

There are those who say that literati painting is subtle and mysterious, which makes it difficult for ordinary people to understand, and that we should lower the standards so that it can become popular...if one seeks to popularize literati painting one must first steep the people in its thought and character, and thus raise the comprehension of the ordinary people, to bring them closer to the tastes of the literati; then they will naturally understand and enjoy literati painting...

While one might, based on this text, criticize Chen for a “let them eat cake” obliviousness to the true state of the lower classes, he was, in effect, arguing something that was critical to all Chinese reformers, the need to improve the education available to the people.^[12] 　In the end, after attempting to situate literati painting in the context of contemporary Chinese art and society, he reiterates its principles: “the four basic requirements of literati painting are personal character; erudition; talent, and feeling.”

　　　　　 To what extent his contemporaries agreed with Chen Hengque, who died only two years after this publication, may never be known, but there were a large number of new Chinese painting societies established in the years immediately following 1919. Beijing saw establishment of the Chinese Painting Research Society (Zhongguo huaxue yanjiuhui), led by the British- educated lawyer Jin Cheng, a man who was influential in attempting to open the palace collections to public viewing. Like most Chinese painting societies of the period, it sought preservation of the national essence. Before Jin Cheng died the group held four major exhibitions: in 1920 at the Euro-American Alumnae Club in Beijing; in 1921 in Tokyo; in 1924 in Beijing and Shanghai; and in 1926 in Tokyo and Osaka. In 1926 the group, now numbering about 200 and led by Jin Cheng’s son, changed its name to Hushe, in respect to the founder, whose informal name included the character hu. 　Between 1927 and 1936 the group published an ambitious journal, first called Hushe yuekan and later Yilin xunkan.

　　　　　 In Shanghai, a traditionalist painting club formed in 1921 soon came to be called the “Third Leg of the Tripod,” 　along with the Yuyuan Charitable Society and the Shanghai Tijinguan. It was called the Tingyun shuhuashe and attained a membership of more than 200 artists. Although founded by Yu 　Yuan, the group had no director, but decided all matters by consensus. Its membership included the stars of Shanghai’s ink painting world, including Wu Changshi, the female painter Wu Shujuan, the calligrapher Zeng Xi, Yu Youren, Wang Yiting, He Tianjian, Wu Zhongxiong, Zhang Yuguang, Qian Huafo, Ren Jin, and so forth. Qian Shoutie ran the club for four years after Yu Yuan’s death in 1923. 　Wu Changshi’s 80^th birthday celebration was organized by this group in1923, to great media attention.

　　　　　 A short-lived group called the Qingnian shuhua she with similar interest in painting and calligraphy was organized by a group of men who included some future GMD politicians, among them Ding Nianxian and Jiang Huaisu. The latter, at this time allied with warlord Sun Chuanfang, was instrumental in conservative attacks on Liu Haisu and the nude model classes at Shanghai Art School in 1925.^[13] Their painting club ran classes and even a correspondance school in direct competition to the Shanghai Art School, but closed in 1924.

　　　　　 Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Society (Shanghai Shuhuahui), established in 1922, was headed by Qian Binghe, better known as a pioneering cartoonist. Qian also belonged to the Tijinguan, Yuyuan, and Shanghai shuhua yanjiuhui. He recruited a number of important colleagues from those groups, including Wu Changshi, Wang Yiting, Zhang Yuguang, Wu Hufan, and others. Under Qian’s editorship, the group published at least six issues of their journal Shenzhou jiguang ji. The club took as its mission saving the national essence.^[14]

　　　　　 In the same year, 1922, was formed the Society to Preserve Chinese Calligraphy and Painting (Zhongguo shuhua baocunhui), which at its peak attained a membership of about 300 artists. Explicitly aimed at preserving the national artistic heritage, it began publishing a journal in 1929 entitled National Essence Monthly (Guocui yuekan). Its founders were Wang Yiting, Zhang Yishan, Zhang Boying, Chen Hengque, Gu Qingyao, Huang Binhong, Wu Daiqiu, Chen Hongbo, and Yang Yongshang.

　　　　　 The Chinese Epigraphy, Calligraphy, and Painting Study Society (Zhongguo jinshi shuhua yiguan xuehui), founded in late 1925 by Huang Binhong and others and based at Youzheng Book Company on Weihaiwei Road. ^[15] This group met once every season, and one of its primary purposes seems to have been publication of its scholarly journal. The manifesto for the group, possibly composed by Huang Binhong, makes clear the culturally nationalistic goals of the society:

With the communication of all nations in recent times, all civilized countries wish to actively cherish their nation’s native products, and thus those scholars who investigate the past are increasingly numerous. The powerful countries of Europe and America have museums and exhibitions everywhere, and thus can further expand their [people’s] learning, create elegant arts and crafts, firmly maintain their ambition and moral fortitude, and cultivate lofty dispositions. Now, any gentlemen or ladies of our nationality may be members of our society. The goal of the society is to collect epigraphy, calligraphy, or painting; research the arts of calligraphy, painting, and seal carving; create opportunities for people to meet to pool their collective wisdom and absorb useful ideas; promote Chinese art to a perfect realm; and attract more artists with the same ideas.^[16]

The mission statement of the society further states that it will “preserve the national essence and develop national glory; research art to inspire in people loftiness of mind.”

　　　　　 While it would be tedious to list all the new traditionalist societies to be formed in the mid to late 1920s, suffice it to say that the era was remarkable for activity of this sort. At the height of the warlord period, with little in the way of a nationally organized institutional structure for art, the artists were extremely active in forming their own structures.

　　　　　 Appendix: Some traditionalist groups of the 1920s

Shanghai shuhuahui 1922

Zhongguoshuhua baocunhui 1922

Hongye shuhua she 1923 (Founded by Qian Shoutie). Membership about 20. Aim to investigate art, promote the national essence, encourage innovation. (Huang Ke, 29)

Suyue huashe 1925 (Founded by Yang Yi). Membership included Yang’s disciples, along with many artists associated with the honorary director, Wang Yiting, numbering about 30. Yang Xueyao, Qian Shoutie, Wu Dongmai, Xiong Songquan, etc.

Haishang shuhua lianhe hui (Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Federation) 1925 (Zhao Yangu founder). Members Yu Youren, Wang Yiting, Wu Changshi, Zhou Lianxia, Ma Qizhou, Zhang Shanzi, Zhang Daqian, Liu Haisu, Qian Huafo, Tao Lengyue, Xie Gongzhan, Huang Binhong, and many others. Mission was to promote Chinese painting and calligraphy. Published three issues of a journal beginning in 1930, held large exhibitions of members works in 1929 and 1930.

Shanghai Sunshe, 1925. Founded by Li Huan (Wang Xiu) who also edited their periodical, from 1925 to 1927.

Guhuan jinyushe 1926 28 members, including Qian Shoutie, Tang Jisheng, Zhao Shuru, Ding Nianxian, Ding Fuzhi. A spin-off from the Haishang Tijinguan, founded after the Tijinguan collapsed due to internal conflicts. It welcomed new members to the old Tijinguan group, like the Tijinguan all expenses were paid by a private individual, Wu Youqian of the Xiling Seal Society, and membership dues were not required. The group met nightly from six to ten, and held additional dinners, usually monthly, which were hosted in rotation by its members. Some members, including Qian Shoutie, Ding Nianxian, Wang Yiting, Ma Qizhou, Shang Shengbo, Zheng Yue, Wang Geyi, Ma Mengrong, and Fang Jiekan went on to form the Chinese Painting Society. The group disbanded in 1930.

Yiguan xuehui. Huang Binhong, founder. Operated from Youzheng Book Co. at 309 Weihaiwei Rd. Devoted to bronze, seals, calligraphy, and painting, preserving the national essence, promoting national glory (guoguang). Published ten issues of Yiguan, edited by Huang Binhong, 1926-1929.

　　　　　　 The men and women involved in these societies were sufficiently influential that their efforts to keep Chinese painting alive and in the public eye were successful in these years. Although Chen Hengque’s early death in 1923 silenced his moderating voice, the artistic debates continued in a reasonably well-balanced manner.^[17] Under Cai Yuanpei’s direction, for example, the 1929 National Art Exhibition displayed a range of oil paintings and guohua paintings. The Western painting section included Liu Haisu’s oil landscape, a female nude by Pan Yuliang, and modernist figures by Lin Fengmian and Cai Weilian, among others. In the Chinese painting section, the exhibited work included many artists we have mentioned, ranging from paintings by well-known classicists Gu Linshi, Feng Chaoran, and Wu Hufan to those of Western-influenced reformists such as Gao Jianfu and Chen Shuren. The impact of painting groups of the twenties on selection for the national exhibition of 1929 seems clear.^[18] A great many artists, for example, sign with a name ending in “hu” in homage to Jin Cheng and the Hushe in Beijing.

　　　　　 The groups that flourished in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly the Haishang tinjinguan jinshi shuhuahui , Yuyuan shuhua shanhui and the Tingyun shuhuashe, had particular importance socially, economically and artistically. By promoting traditional painting, and involving themselves in managing prices and ways of marketing art, they helped artists survive the difficult transition from empire to republic.^[19]

　　　　　 By the end of the 1920s, a generational, political, and social shift had begun taking place in the self-definition of traditionalist painting groups. By this time, Wu Changshi, Jin Cheng, Chen Hegnque, and Yu Yuan had died. Perhaps in response to Cai Yuanpei’s disappointment at the continued dominance of Chinese painting in the 1929 National Exhibition, or the bitter debate on the pages of Meizhan tekan between Xu Beihong and Xu Zhimo over realism versus modernism in oil painting, leading ink painters sought to further unify their ranks by forming a truly national society, which was called the Chinese Painting Society. They explicitly sought to break down divisions between different schools, approaches, and lineages and form a common identity as guohua painters.

　　　　　　We find in the writings of its leaders, as well as in its manifestos, now an ever sharper sense of cultural competition with foreign countries, particularly the West and Japan, as well as an assumed competition with practitioners of Western-style art in China itself. Establishment of the Chinese Painting Society in 1931 seems to demarcate the shift in mission and emphasis of traditionalist painting societies in the two decades between the 1910s to the 1930s.

　　　　　 The immediate progenitor of the Chinese Painting Society, according to the Yearbook of Chinese Art, was the Bee Society, founded in 1929 by Zheng Wuchang, Wang Shizi, Zhang Shanzi, Xie Gongzhan, He Tianjian, Lu Danlin, Sun Xueni, and other painting friends.^[20] 　Qian Shoutie, Li Zuhan, and Ma Mengrong are listed as additional founders, and other administrators include Xu Zhengbai and Zheng Yue. ^[21] 　The membership reached over a hundred before the group transformed itself two years later into the Chinese Painting Society.

　　　　　 The group sponsored lectures on guohua, published a journal called Bee Pictorial and other occasional publications, including titles such as Mifeng huaji and Dangdai mingjia huahai. It had a written charter, a published member’s list, and held formal monthly meetings and an annual exhibition. At its clubhouse, where members could gather at their leisure, were to be stored antique paintings and calligraphy for study. Among other notable members, most of whose names are by now familiar were Xie Yucen (older brother of Xie Zhiliu), Qian Shoutie, Yu Jianhua, Wang Geyi, Xiong Songquan, Xie Zhiguang, Wang Yiting, Ying Yeping, and Zhang Daqian, as well as some of the subsequent founders of the Women’s Calligraphy and Painting Society, including Wu Qingxia and Li Qiujun.

　　　　　 The Bee Society structure, with exhibitions and publications, seems modern, but it was not until 1930, when, according to the published history, Ye Gongchuo enlisted the ideologically sharper writers Huang Binhong and Lu Danlin to assist in organizing a new group, that the society attained its national and modern character. The opening statement of the new group, “Guohua Artists Must Unite (Guohuajia jiying lianhe)," was drafted by Lu Danlin in the last issue of Bee Pictorial.^[22] The group’s manifesto was far more ideological than any that preceded it:

Origins of the Chinese Painting Society, 1930

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In the current situation of comparison between the cultures of the world, there is nothing that fails to give us a feeling of indignation and shame. Particularly, the decrepit state of our art world makes us feel that our responsibility toward the future is even greater, and we cannot shirk it by shifting this burden to others. Regardless of which country in Europe or America, there is not one that does not promote and develop its traditional culture for the purpose of displaying its national character. Painting is certainly the most valuable way of displaying culture. By its basic nature, it is the site where the most elevated aspects of human morality may be lodged. Because of this, in most civilized nations, which are driven by their heaven-bestowed characters, there is no one who doesn’t know to seriously promote their tradition of painting, so as to develop in the people harmonious sentiments.

Japan is the descendent of our nation’s culture, although because of differences of natural character, it never fundamentally resembles us. It, however, always presents itself to the world as the patriarch of Oriental art. This should be enough to arouse us to reproach ourselves. Originally our nation’s art, such as painting and sculpture, was by the Six Dynasties era acknowledged as reaching greatness. And this greatness expressed the genius and subjective feelings of its makers; this resembles in some ways the symbolist art that is current today. But there is lack of concrete systematic research, and to this point it has never been made clear and promoted. 　People today advocate a new culture that absorbs foreign thought, but have not established any goals, and without any selection follow, in a daily increasing flood, trends such as “mechanization (chanye zhuyi)” and “materialism (lizhi zhuyi).” Our nation’s people suffer the constraints of mechanization, and lose their inherent human freedom; this blind following of foreign thought is one reason for the decline of our nation’s painting. In recent decades, we have suffered continuous civil war and constant political coups, those in power were always concerned with solving these problems and never paid attention to art. This is the influence of politics on our nation’s art, and why it has not been actively promoted. Another reason, from the point of view of society, is that today, when material power surpasses all else, the life of the masses gradually has lost the stabile bonds that tied it together; the taste and appreciation for art cannot correspondingly increase, and the situation of art, with its subjective expression, cannot avoid suffering direct setbacks. From the point of view of the painters themselves, most suffer the constraints of their surroundings, and thus divine genius and human effort cannot come to fruition. Add to this another reason, that there is no permanent organization to unify the artists, the survival of [Chinese art] has already lost its basis. If we thus know the harmful causes, but do not try to put them right, we have failed in our responsibilities.

We have heard that there is not a single country in Europe, to say nothing of our eastern neighbor, Japan, that does not have painting organizations; among them there are groups of different natures, some public some private, some organized by painters with supplemental assistance from the government, some organized at governmental behest by painters, or in some the painters are given the opportunity to unite by society’s power, or some in which the painters simply take action to organize themselves. Therefore, they are able to solve appropriately questions of international status and specialized professional problems. Reflecting on the situation of our painters, although there are a few organizations, their characters and goals are little different from clubs or entertainment centers; as for “the whole organization” or “united development,” as in countries east and west, this has not yet been seen. How can we not feel shame? 　We thus feel, based on this observation, that in order to respond to this practical need of today, organizing the Chinese Painting Society cannot be delayed. The mission of the society is: 1. To develop the age-old art of our nation; 2. To publicize it abroad and raise our international artistic stature; 3. With a spirit of mutual assistance on the part of the artists, to plan for a [financially] secure living. Our capabilities are limited, but with human help and the grace of heaven, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished. To do this with people of like mind and to promote the development of our nation’s art, this is our common aspiration.”^[23]

　　　　　 The society’s primary administrators were, in succession, Qian Shoutie, He Tianjian, and Wang Yachen. Others listed as important organizers were Zhang Yuguang, Zheng Wuchang, Sun Xueni, Lu Danli, Ma Gongyu, Zhang Daqian, Ding Nianxian, Wang Shizi, Chen Dingshan, Li Zuhan, Xie Gongzhan, Wang Yachen, Chen Shuren, Jing Hengyi, Zhang Shanzi, Wang Yiting, Xiong Songquan, Wu Hufan, and Huang Binhong. Beyond its idealistic, culturally nationalistic, and practical aims, the group was, in the absence of other institutions, asked to fulfill some quasi-governmental functions, such as to organize the Shanghai section of the 1935 Hankow Exhibition. 　　

　　　　　 Among the activities for which the Chinese Painting Society sought to be remembered are their publications. Guohua yuekan, published in 1934 and 1935 under the editorship of Huang Binhong, He Tianjian, Lu Danlin, Wang Yachen, Zheng Wuchang, and Xie Haiyan, was a professional journal that was often quite ideological, especially in its cultural nationalism. Other publications included reproduction albums, including Xiandai zhongguo huaji. They also held exhibitions, both domestically and abroad, and facilitated what we would today describe as networking among artists. The group had about 300 members, reaching as far north as Beijing and as far south as Hong Kong.

　　　　　 A key factor in giving the society its importance was the number of first rate artists who belonged to it. You may observe in the slides that most reached their maturity as artists a decade or more after the development of the theoretical positions to which we refer to here. Huang Binhong (1864-1955), who has been well-studied elsewhere, was an extremely important figure because of his intensive involvement with writing and editing traditionalist art theory and in organizing traditionalist art societies. Among his editorial contributions may be listed the monumental Guocui xuebao, Shenzhou guoguang ji (1908-1918), Yiguan (1926-1928), Meishu congshu, Guocui yuekan (National Essence Monthly,1929) and Huaxue yuekan (Studies in Painting, 1932) to say nothing of his work on publications directly connected to the Chinese Painting Society , such as GHYK and Guohua (1936) .^[24] He reflected in the inaugural issue of Chinese Painting Monthly that Chinese scholars needed to reexamine themselves rather than focus on the strengths of others, and that they could not maintain the honor of their tradition without studying it earnestly. For this reason, his calling in life was to conduct research on “the national essence” and to popularize traditional Chinese culture.^[25]

　　　　　 He Tianjian (1891-1977), who served as editor-in-chief of Chinese Painting Monthly beginning with the fourth issue, is justifiably well-known as a painter. During his tenure at Chinese Painting Monthly He Tianjian published in its pages a number of pointed articles, including “Calligraphy and Painting Societies: Their Right and Wrong Ways of Operating,” and “The Morbid State of Chinese Landscape Painting Today and the Way to Heal It.”^[26] He wrote similar ideas for popular magazines, such as Arts and Life and in the theoretical journal Studies in Painting.^[27]

　　　　　 Qian Shoutie (1897-1967) was active in earlier Shanghai societies such as Haishang Tijinguan, and went on to be involved in establishing the Bee Society in 1929. ^[28] He was a key figure in both the administrative and social life of the Chinese Painting Society and went on to have substantial influence as an editor of the mass media Arts and Life.

　　　　　 One of the key figures in establishing the Chinese Painting Society, Zheng Wuchang (1894-1952), remained extremely active in publishing and theoretical circles until shortly before his 1952 death. He worked as art director of China Book Company (Zhonghua shuju) in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 he was instrumental to establishment of the Bee Society, and went on to edit its journal. A founder of the Chinese Painting Society, he was an editor and contributor to Chinese Painting Monthly, writing such essays as “The Responsibility that Today’s Chinese Painters Should Assume.”^[29] In 1936 he began editing the Chinese Painting Society’s second theoretical journal, Chinese Painting.^[30] He published a number of books about Chinese art history, including Research on the History of Chinese Mural Painting, and A General History of Chinese Painting Theory, some of which were still in print as late as the 1960s.^[31]

　　　　　 We believe that during the period between 1931 and the fall of Shanghai to the Japanese, the administrative structures of the Chinese Painting Society allowed it to function in a very modern way. In order to do this, it brought together various disparate modern trends developed by earlier Shanghai art groups. The economic and social functions of the Yuyuan Calligraphy and Painting Charitable Society and Haishang Tijinguan^[32] were combined with the increasingly sharp ideological stances promoted by Huang Binhong, He Tianjian, and Lu Danlin, thus leading to a complex multiplicity of promotional activities.

　　　　　 The diversity of their activity can be considered if one looks at their publications alone. Chinese Painting Monthly was devoted to scholarly debates, and in some cases, as in the series devoted to Eastern and Western views of the landscape, published the views of radical modernist oil painters, 　alongside those of strident traditionalists.^[33]

　　　　　 Chinese Painting Monthly also published a newsletter-like section in which the readership learns news of interest to the art community as:

Wang Yiting is ill; Wang Yiting has recovered and is resting at home; Wang Yiting is painting and praying to the Buddha on a daily basis.

Xu Beihong has returned from Europe and resumed his professorship at Central University.

Wu Hufan, Zhang Shanzi, Zhang Daqian, and Peng Gongfu held a four-man show in Beijing.

Feng Wenfeng has returned from Hong Kong and plans a solo show in Shanghai next year.

Nine artists, including Zhang Shanzi, Zheng Wuchang, and Zhang Daqian, have established the Society of Nine.

Huang Binhong is holding classes at his home three times a week..^[34]

The journal also began publishing members’ price lists, including those of Huang Binhong, He Tianjian, Yu Jianhua, and lesser painters, both male and female. This activity, namely advertising and blatent self-promotion, codifies an ethical change in which the moral necessity for an intermediary or middle man between artist and buyer, although often bypassed in Shanghai practice, is completely cast off as a social fiction. Self-promotion may have reached its height in the careers of two Chinese Painting Society members, Zhang Daqian and his older brother Zhang Shanzi. The personas they established included, with great publicity, renting as their residence the famous scholar’s villa in Suzhou, Wangshiyuan, and installing their pet tiger in the courtyard garden.

　　　　　 This cult of celebrity was facilitated by domination of the editorial board of the mass media Arts and Life Magazine by Chinese Painting Society members. In addition to the aestheticist or family-oriented features, the magazine publicized, through feature articles and pictures, exhibitions of the Chinese Painting Society as well as those of related groups such as Chinese Women’s Calligraphy and Painting Society. The inaugural issue of April, 1934, included an editorial statement written by Qian Shoutie and a feature about the Chinese Painting Society’s Exhibition, with reproductions of works by its members. A notice to recruit new members was printed on the same page, along with a statement of goals and a specification that no gender distinctions were made for membership. An active modern exhibition schedule and modern publishing was used to promote various aspects of the group’s goals. Along with functions familiar from early twentieth century groups, such as study of classical paintings, classical painting theory, promotion of the status of guohua, and promotion of the professional careers and economic status of individual guohua artists, they also pushed Chinese painting into an international arena.^[35]

Conclusion

　　　　　 What it meant to be an artist in China was radically transformed, like most aspects of Chinese cultural life, by the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the classical norms of education that had supported the imperial system. Moreover, the rapidly changing economic situation between about 1900 and 1937, especially in urban China, required each artist to chart a career that had no prototype in China's imperial past. Voluntary, self-financed traditionalist painting groups filled the institutional gap created by the comparative neglect of guohua in the new educational system. However, as the larger context for painting shifted over the first two decades of the Republic, the articulated purpose of traditionalist societies also evolved. All took as a fundamental raison d’etre their roles as intellectual, artistic, and social centers for artists and collectors, and throughout this period had a strong secondary focus on assisting its members to market their art. However, by the 1930s, the crisis they addressed was perceived in more acute terms.

　　　　　 Evidence from the Chinese Painting Society of 1930s Shanghai leads us to believe present the hypothesis that traditionalism was, to some important artists, an active and modern theoretical position. A crucial aspect of this modernity was an acceptance of a contemporary cosmopolitan space, a space in which Chinese culture merited a position equal to those of European cultures. Modernizing Chinese art was necessary, but in full awareness of a cosmopolitan world, must proceed on the basis of its own history, standards, and internal dynamics.

　　　　　 The Chinese Painting Society’s theoretical statement by He Tianjian, published in the first issue of Chinese Painting Monthly, 1934, brings up many of these concerns:

...if you look at what has happened in the world in recent decades... you can see that when countries and societies are in transition, there will be a trend toward competition between nations. A nation with a long cultural history will never discard it because of social change. The Judaic and Indic nations, for example, although their political systems have been usurped by other nations, have not extinguished the manifestations of their national spirits... We have five thousand years of historical evolution, and if we use painting alone as an example, our ancestors left us a great treasure. How can we let it decline?...From this people know that the Chinese Painting Society differs from other organizations: it satisfies the needs of the times.^[36]

　　　　　 The conceptual space of the Chinese Painting Society was multi-dimensional, with contemporary cosmopolitanism intersecting with a self-conscious Chinese culturalism. 　He Tianjian, in a popular article published in June of 1934 in Arts and Life, argued explicitly for two kinds of time, the vertical time of Chinese cultural history and a horizontal time of contemporary art. He believed that Chinese artists had a particular obligation toward their own history, but at the same time, had a responsibility to make clear to the world the contributions Chinese art theory and practice might make in a global setting. ^[37]

　　　　　 From a practical point of view, the group used modern (and quasi-Western) organizational structures, most notably the painting society, and along with it exhibitions, public relations, advertising, sales, and periodical distribution networks to pursue goals that included raising China’s position in the international art world. 　Many of these techniques and ideas were widespread in the Chinese art world of the time, and stimulated many different trends in art, from French modernist painting, to German expressionist prints, to Japanese-influenced realism. What is unique, and superficially contradictory, about the artists in the Chinese Painting Society, however, is that the vehicle for their modernizing project was a purposefully traditional kind of Chinese painting.

Next Step [in progress]

　　　　　 As an art historian, a question to which we must eventually return is whether all this theorizing and organizing had a practical impact on painting. As I hope you may have absorbed, at least subliminally, from the slides I’ve shown but not discussed today, we believe there was a similar generational shift in ink painting beginning around the 1930s that developed in tandem with the new theoretical concerns. An as yet incomplete stage of this project is to look at the results of these institutional structures on painting styles. We know that prominent representatives of art societies were involved with organizing exhibitions, presumably having some influence on selections for such events as the 1936 London Exhibition of Chinese Art and the 1937 Second National Exhibition; these public showings of classical art, in turn, had a great impact on practice of art. From an artistic point of view, first hand exposure to great masterpieces in the Shanghai exhibitions, along with the validation of positive response in Europe, many local reviews and articles, were soon followed by stylistic breakthroughs for some artists. If historical circumstances of a much larger nature had not intervened, the forties, fifties, and sixties might have seen even more remarkable innovations on the part of individuals active in the ink painting groups.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Notes (Unedited/ incomplete)