Wang's reputation as a connoisseur of ancient Chinese painting has overshadowed his own artwork, creating a dearth of research on his artistic development. Using public and private sources, this dissertation applied stylistic analysis to track this development. The analysis reveals an artist's lifelong endeavor to establish a style that would lift the Chinese painting tradition into a modern era, an endeavor inspired by modern Western art ideas and a desire to play a role in the larger movement of elevating Chinese painting. The argument is made that these efforts establish Wang as an influential twentieth century Chinese ink painter.
To clarify Wang's role within the broader movement of Chinese diaspora painters, this dissertation employs a comparison study of Wang with such established twentieth century ink painting artists as Zhang Daqian, Liu Guosong, and Yu Chengyao. It is
asserted that the 1949 diaspora forced this cohort of artists to adjust their style and to transcend traditional Chinese painting by integrating newly-salient ideas from Western art, particularly the abstract movement. Meanwhile, the essential Chinese identity in their art collectively became more significant. The solidarity of purpose and identity is a distinctive part of the answer this group of twentieth century Chinese diaspora painters proposed to their generation's inherited challenge of enriching the tradition.
Art historians typically consider Chinese porcelain a decorative art, resulting in scholars spending little time analyzing it as a fine art form. One area that is certainly neglected is porcelain produced during the late 19th and early 20th century during the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911) into the early Republic period (1912–1949). As the Qing dynasty weakened and ultimately fell in 1911, there was a general decline in the quantity of porcelain produced in China. Due to this circumstance, porcelain of this era has not received the detailed analysis, characterization of styles, comprehension of themes, and understanding of patronage evident in other periods of Chinese porcelain production. Ultimately, limited research has been conducted to establish the styles associated with late dynastic porcelain into the early Republic’s establishment.
This dissertation utilizes a new perspective that considers the patronage of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) as a high point of late dynastic porcelain. Concrete documentation establishes that motifs were appropriated from Cixi’s painting, suggesting a direct connection between schools of painting and the imagery selected for porcelain during her reign. The porcelain Cixi influenced directly guided the porcelain produced during the Hongxian era (1915-1916), making Cixi’s patronage the key turning point from dynastic porcelain to early Republic porcelain. Utilizing predominately British collections, this study identifies the styles, symbols, and themes associated with porcelain of the 19th and 20th century, elevating late dynastic and early Republic wares to the status of fine art.
nation. San Franciscan Helen Hyde (1868-1919) joined the throng in 1899. Unlike many
of her predecessors, however, she went as a single woman and was so taken with Japan
she made it her home over the span of fourteen years. While a number of cursory studies
have been written on Helen Hyde and her work, a wide range of questions have been left
unanswered. Issues regarding her specific training, her printmaking techniques and the
marketing of her art have been touched on, but never delved into. This dissertation will
explore those issues. Helen Hyde's success as a printmaker stemmed from her intense
artistic training, experimental techniques, artistic and social connections and diligence in
self-promotion and marketing as well as a Western audience hungry for "Old Japan," and
its imagined quaintness. Hyde's choice to live and work in Japan gave her access to
models and firsthand subject matter which helped her audience feel like they were getting
a slice of Japan, translated for them by a Western artist. This dissertation provides an in
depth bibliography including hundreds of primary newspaper articles about Hyde who
was lauded for her unique style. It also expands and corrects the listing of her printed
works and examines the working style of an American working in a Japanese system with
Japanese subjects for a primarily American audience. It also provides a listing of known
exhibitions of Hyde's works and a listing of stamps and markings she used on her prints.
In this thesis, three chapters discuss the relationship between Chinese modern and contemporary art and the CCP. In my theoretical exposition, I argue that the artistic/intellectual subjectivity of modern Chinese artists gradually developed and changed during the conflict and struggle with the Communist rule.
In the first chapter, I introduce the biography and artistic creation of Chinese literati painters under the communist rule, exemplified by Wu Hufan吳湖帆. I analyze and demonstrate how the subjectivity of the traditional literati gradually lost strength under the pressure of nationalism, the disenchantment with modernization, and communism. In the second chapter, I focus on the Scar Art art movement of the 1970s to the 1980s, as well as representative artists and their works in this direction of art, such as Cheng Conglin程叢林 and Gao Xiaohua高小華. In this chapter, I use feminism and Foucault's political-philosophical theories to explain these visual expressions of the memory of historical trauma in Scar Art during this period. In Chapter 3, by discussing the works of two artists, He Gong何工 and Ai Weiwei艾未未, in the context of Foucault’s political philosophy, I argue that artists how to express their intellectual subjectivity and political resistance through their contributions to Chinese contemporary art.
Phoebus 9: A Journal of Art History - Table of Contents
“Preface” by J. Robert Wills, p. 9-10.
“Collecting Chinese Art” by Roy and Marilyn Papp, p. 13.
“Catalog of the Inaugural Gift from the Roy and Marilyn Papp Collection to Phoenix Art Museum” p. 15-43.
“Exhibitions From the Roy and Marilyn Papp Collection” p. 44-45.
“Additional Publications” p. 47.
“Romanization Note” p. 48.
“The Daoist Symbolism of Immortality in Shen Zhou’s ‘Watching the Mid-Autumn Moon at Bamboo Villa’” by Chun-yi Lee, p. 49-78.
“Wu Shi'en's ‘Liang Hong and Meng Guang’: A Misreading” by Xiaoping Lin, p. 79-99.
“From the Profound to the Mundane: Depictions of Lohans in Late Ming China” by Janet Baker, p. 101-116.
“Glimpses of the Duanwu Festival by Fang Xun (1736-1799): Commemorative Painting or Private Souvenir?” by Anne Kerlan-Stephens, p. 117-141.
“Pleasure and Pain” by Marion S. Lee, p. 143-165.
“From Narrative to Transformed Narrative: Visualizations of the Heavenly Maiden and the Maiden Magu” by Chen Liu, p. 167-182.
“Glossary of Chinese Names and Terms” p. 185-195