Between Two Cultures: Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fong, Wen C. (2001)

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Between Two Cultures, by Wen C. Fong, based on a selection of modern Chinese paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores the crucial period from the 1860s to about 1980, when Chinese painting was transformed into a modern expression of its classical heritage. Unlike classical Chinese painting dating from before 1860, which has commanded in-depth study from a learned and sophisticated audience in the West, modern Chinese painting has been little explored. The first comprehensive assemblage in the West of paintings on this subject, the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection comprises works in the classical Chinese medium of ink on paper and in the traditional formats of scrolls, album leaves, and fans.

The volume deals with both traditionalist and modernizing Chinese masters from the comparative perspectives of East and West, traditional and modern. Dr. Fong begins his exploration with the last revival of traditional Chinese art, that of the epigraphic school of painting, and the rise of a populist art in the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth century in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. His discussion continues with painters who absorbed the lessons of Western realism, which they viewed as part of Western science and technology. Special attention is devoted to Xu Beihong (1895–1953) and Fu Baoshi (1904–1965), who followed the teachings, respectively, of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Japanese Nihonga style. The work of three great traditionalist masters, Qi Baishi (1863–1957), Huang Binhong (1865–1955), and Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), is also analyzed, with emphasis placed on Qi and Zhang as professional populist painters. This is followed by a discussion of painting in mainland China from about 1950 to the 1980s by the second generation of artists and teachers in the national academies. These painters, having been trained by traditionalist and Western-style teachers, developed their own schools of influence in their search for a new synthesis of Chinese and Western methods.

One of the central questions posed in the book is, What is "modern" in twentieth-century Chinese painting? Some view modernity as the Westernization of Chinese art; others search for elements of modernity in Chinese painting history. The book closes with the author's own reflections on realism, expression, and modernity and, more specifically, the question of creativity in both traditional and modern Chinese painting.

Table of contents

Director's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Map of China

Introduction: East Meets West

1. Painters in Shanghai and Guangdong

2. The Westernizers

3. Three Great Traditionalists

4. Mainland Chinese Painting, 1950s–1980s

Epilogue: Reflections on Chinese Art and History

List of Artists
List of Plates
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Wen C. Fong is Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Previous publications include Images of the Mind (Princeton, 1984), Beyond Representation (MMA, 1992) and, with James C. Y. Watt, Possessing the Past (MMA, 1996).

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"Superior illustrations ... Highly recommended for its sympathetic and comparative view of Chinese and Western painting."

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Exhibition

Between Two Cultures: Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This selection from the Ellsworth Collection at the Metropolitan Museum focuses on Chinese painting created during the period of clashing social visions and dramatic political change that marked China's entry into the modern world. In the arts, it was a time when the tensions between tradition and innovation, native and foreign styles reached an unprecedented level of intensity. The Ellsworth Collection encompasses nearly all of the traditional masters working during this period, including major examples by the Shanghai School masters Wu Changshuo (1844–1927) and Wang Zhen (1867–1938), the Western-influenced reformer Zu Beihong (1895–1953), and the advocates of a new traditionalism: Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) and Zhang Daqian (Chang Dai-chien, 1899–1983). Of particular note are fourteen works by Qi Baishi (1864–1957), one of the best-known Chinese painters of all time.

Chinese culture underwent profound changes in response to the social, political, and economic upheavals that accompanied the collapse of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and the rise of the modern Chinese nation-state. The Ellsworth Collection traces one strand of this history: the art of painting in ink and mineral or water-soluble pigments on paper or silk in such traditional formats as the hanging scroll, handscroll, folding fan, and album. Through most of the nineteenth century this strand of pictorial art constituted the only form of painting recognized in China as high art. But the growing impact of foreign cultures led to the rise of a new term, "national painting" (guohua), to distinguish this form of picture making from "Western-style painting" (yanghua). The Ellsworth Collection does not include works made using Western media—drawings in charcoal or pencil, woodblock or lithographic prints, or oil paintings. Nevertheless, the paintings featured in the exhibition vividly reflect both the clash and confluence of foreign ideas with indigenous traditions that occurred during this tumultuous era.

Among the highlights of the exhibition are: Spring Offering (1919), presenting popular emblems of long life and renewal in an abstract arrangement, by Wu Changshuo; Grazing Horse (1932), wedding the conventional Chinese medium of brush and ink with a drawing technique that was purely Western, by the most influential champion of Western-style academic realism Xu Beihong; Buddha's Manifestation of Joyfulness (1946), by leading connoisseur and collector as well as notorious forger Zhang Daqian; Seated Woman, in which economy of line, decorative use of pattern, and vibrant color reflect a Fauvist source of inspiration, by Lin Fengmian (1900–1991); and Seascape at Beidaihe (1977), translating actual scenery into a composition that verges on total abstraction, by Wu Guanzhong (born 1919).

Arranged chronologically, the exhibition opens with two galleries devoted to the leading artists working in Shanghai from the 1860s to the 1930s, including Zhao Zhiqian (1829–1884), Xugu (1823–1896), Ren Yi (Ren Bonian, 1840–1895), Wu Changshuo (1844–1927), and Wang Zhen (1867–1938). A group of artists who advocated the reform of Chinese art through the adoption of foreign media and techniques was introduced in the third gallery. They are the Cantonese brothers Gao Jianfu (1878–1951) and Gao Qifeng (1889–1933), Feng Zikai (1898–1975), and Fu Baoshi (1904–1965)—all of whom studied in Japan—and the European-trained Xu Beihong (18951953), who championed a form of realism derived from French academic art.

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