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Yang Wang dissertation.pdf (83.97 MB)

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Regionalizing National Art in Maoist China: The Chang’an School of Ink Painting, 1942–1976

Wang, Yang
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429839382

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
As the Chinese Communist Party sought to redefine socialism in the Chinese context and position itself in shifting international currents during the first decade of the newly founded People’s Republic of China (1949–1959), the country’s art establishment rejected Western modernism in favor of academic styles and selective forms of traditional Chinese practices. State-employed artists, tasked with visualizing party policies, placed themselves at the juncture of historical narratives and social discourses that defined the first decade and a half of the PRC. This dissertation examines a particular group of artists, based in the northwestern provincial capital of Xi’an, who reformulated the traditional practice of ink and color painting (guohua) as a modern artistic medium through their unorthodox brushwork and subject matter. Led by the Yan’an printmaker-turned-painter Shi Lu (1919–1982) and the former Dagongbao sketch journalist Zhao Wangyun (1906–1977), the six ink painters the Chinese Artists Association-Xi’an Branch employed garnered national acclaim for exhibiting their xizuo (“studies”) in a series of well-publicized exhibitions that began in October 1961 in Beijing. Praised for their integration of artistic style with the “character” of the northwestern region based on their firsthand observations, Shi, Zhao and their colleagues — He Haixia (1908–1998), Fang Jizhong (1923–1987), Kang Shiyao (1921–1985) and Li Zisheng (1919–1987) earned a collective name: the Chang’an School (Chang’an huapai). The “success” of the Xi’an ink painters as a modern, regional ink painting “school” was considered not merely a local or personal achievement but a national one. Through five thematic chapters that focus on the school’s structural and theoretical foundations, this study suggests the Xi’an artists gained momentum through their ability to function effectively as a work unit (danwei), as content providers for the mass media and as interpreters of the broad concepts of “life” and “tradition,” which aligned with political discourses of the early Maoist period. This dissertation contends that an emotional confrontation with the nation’s path to sovereignty and modernization constituted the subtext of Chinese modernity in the early PRC, and that without participating directly in global trends that we identify as modernist art, the Xi’an artists visualized an alternative modernity based on the resiliency of Chinese art. By examining the formation and promotion of the Chang’an School, from the perspectives of its benefactors and proponents — the national art leadership, provincial leadership and the artists themselves — this dissertation suggests that “regional” and “traditional” art in the early PRC were negotiable constructs formulated jointly by the state, artists and viewers to assist in visualizing a communist Chinese nation.
Julia Andrews (Advisor)
Myroslava Mudrak (Committee Member)
Kris Paulsen (Committee Member)
Christopher Reed (Committee Member)
418 p.
Art History
Chinese art; ink painting; modern Chinese art; regionalism in art; socialist art; landscape painting; figurative ink painting; neotraditionalism; northwestern China; northern China; Shaanxi

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wang, Y. (2015). Regionalizing National Art in Maoist China: The Chang’an School of Ink Painting, 1942–1976 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429839382

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wang, Yang. Regionalizing National Art in Maoist China: The Chang’an School of Ink Painting, 1942–1976. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429839382.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wang, Yang. "Regionalizing National Art in Maoist China: The Chang’an School of Ink Painting, 1942–1976." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429839382

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.