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Black Marks, Red Seals: Contextualizing the Ink Paintings of Fu Baoshi

Eden, Jeffrey Everett
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168793272140609

Abstract Details

2023, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Art/Art History.
This thesis investigates the intersectionality of ink painting and revolutionary politics in modern China with the work of Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) as an analytical lens. Through a critical sociopolitical contextualization of Fu’s paintings at crucial junctures in his career, I will analyze the ways in which his paintings have changed to reflect their respective eras. Along with negotiating his artistic identity and practice, these same junctures have provided a means by which I will critically examine Fu’s negotiations of national identity. Born in 1904 when China’s final imperial dynasty—Qing (1636-1912)—was in a terminal decline, he grew up during the tumultuous era of warlordism and the shaky beginnings of the Republican Era (1912-1949). Fu was an artist and political activist during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). He was an artist in service of the entire Chinese state as a propagandist (1926-27, 1929-30 for the Kuomintang, and 1950-66 for the People’s Republic of China). Though he died one year before the Maoist-led Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Fu’s work was posthumously affected. In addition to the abovementioned events, I examine Fu’s negotiations of national identity evident in his art historical writing, his time as a propagandist, as well as his formative studies in Japan from 1932 to 1935. His studies proved fruitful as he developed a novel trajectory of modern “guohua” (Chinese national painting) and his signature style that elevated his work to a position of paramount importance. The goal of my project is to provide, a succinct yet satisfactory historiography of modern China while interrogating the ways in which Fu Baoshi not only captured the essence of his natural subjects through novel landscape painting, but the ways in which his career embodies the search for a quintessential “Chinese-ness” within the fine arts and in the realm of national character.
Andrew Hershberger, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Michael Brooks, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Rebecca Skinner Green, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
117 p.
Art History; Asian Studies; Biographies; Fine Arts; History; Political Science
Fu Baoshi; Chinese painting; guohua; Modern China; Chinese history; art history; ink painting; Chinese political history; sumi-e; shuimo; revolutionary art; modern Chinese art; modern art; contextualizing art; East Asian art; East Asian painting

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Eden, J. E. (2023). Black Marks, Red Seals: Contextualizing the Ink Paintings of Fu Baoshi [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168793272140609

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Eden, Jeffrey. Black Marks, Red Seals: Contextualizing the Ink Paintings of Fu Baoshi. 2023. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168793272140609.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Eden, Jeffrey. "Black Marks, Red Seals: Contextualizing the Ink Paintings of Fu Baoshi." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168793272140609

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.