Organizer: Kuiyi Shen, State University of New York, Buffalo
Chair: Ju-hsi Chou, Cleveland Museum of Art
Discussant: Ginger Cheng-chi Hsu, University of California, Riverside
There is no question that the nature of the Chinese art world today is radically different from that of the imperial age. This difference is evident not only in the nature of the art itself, but also in the art world institutions, including magazines, museums, schools, dealers, and auction houses that serve the artists and their patrons. It is often assumed that these institutions are part of China’s post-Cultural Revolution opening to the outside world, but this panel will argue, from different viewpoints, that modernity, in its various guises, should be recognized in Chinese cultural institutions of the nineteenth century.
The papers will approach the problem of modernity from the vantage point of patronage, or the economic and ideological structures entwined with the production of consumable culture. Research on two aspects of Shanghai’s urban patronage network, that for painting and calligraphy, and that related to its newly established publishing industry, will be juxtaposed with research on the novel elements appearing in imperial patronage for painting in the same period. In what guises should we identify modernity in the production and consumption of late Qing culture? What is new? What is Western? Should one define a particularly Chinese modernity, that does not take Western forms? Which elements have remained a part of the cultural structures of modern China? The discussant will raise further questions by relating her seminal research on patronage of books and paintings in eighteenth century Yangzhou with the nineteenth century phenomena to be observed in Shanghai and Beijing.
Modernity Without Reform: Painting at the Chinese Court, 1796–1911
Claudia Brown, Phoenix Art Museum
The empress dowager Cixi ruled China for half a century through manipulation of three boy-emperors from 1861 until 1908. She is noted for resistance to reform, and yet displayed an openness to certain Western artistic practices, reflecting a curious modernity about her cultural interests. She practiced painting herself and in later years gave her paintings to Western dignitaries in a dubious foreign policy. She also commissioned works, including some by Western portraitists and photographers. The roots of this modernity stretch back into the eighteenth century when the Qianlong emperor commissioned documentary paintings and battle scenes from European artists and their Chinese followers.
The early Qing dynasty reigns, Kanxi (1661–1722), Yongzheng (1723–1735) and Qianlong (1736–1795), have long been noted for patronage of the arts. Painting, ceramic, lacquer, enameling, and glassmaking flourished at court in the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century. Catalogs of the imperial collections were commissioned and included contemporary works by court painters and officials alongside ancient paintings. Less recognized is that court patronage of the arts continued in the nineteenth century. A reorganization of palace workshops slowed activity in the 1760s but did not spell the end of significant patronage. The Jiaqing emperor (reigned 1796–1820) maintained frugality but was nonetheless a significant patron of painters at court. The Daoguang emperor (reigned 1821–50) maintained the tradition. This paper explores the motivations of these monarchs as they offered commissions to painters inside and outside their courts and considers the question of whether concepts of reform or modernism influenced their practices or those of the Empress Dowager.
Patronage and the Beginning of a Modern Art World in Late Qing Shanghai
Kuiyi Shen, State University of New York, Buffalo
Along with rapid development in the economy, particularly in port cities, the patronage of art changed greatly during the Qing dynasty. Especially in Shanghai as it was transformed into a new modern metropolis and the hub of southern China’s cultural and artistic activities, art patronage of a new kind emerged from a new class of art buyers, and was associated with a dramatic increase in the number of painting and fan shops, the emergence of new types of artists’ associations, and the establishment of a thriving art market of contemporary art. These features, which appeared in a rapidly commercialized society, directly resulted in the changes of the subject matter and styles of Shanghai painting of the period.
By examining the market of art, especially ways of selling and buying art works, and changes in painting style and subject matter in the nineteenth century, this paper will suggest that the changed nature of art patronage represents a key feature of modernity in the context of painting and culture in late Qing Shanghai.
The Ambiguous Origins of Modern Consumer Patronage: Publishers and Readers in Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century China
Christopher Reed, The Ohio State University
Under the impact of works by scholars as diverse as L. Febvre, B. Anderson, E. Eisenstein, J. Judge, and J. Huffman, relations between the print media and its consumers are now a crucial aspect of what we recognize as modern societies, regardless of whether we are discussing European or East Asian ones. In early modern China, as suggested by the work of B. Elman and R. K. Guy, book learning, book trades, and book connoisseurship were often closely associated, both intellectually and spatially, with political authority.
Even in commercial Shanghai, from the 19th century through the 1930s, this relationship between culture and politics was an arrangement sought by publishers, intellectuals, and readers. Once achieved, however, it could be accepted only with a certain degree of ambivalence. In this period, which saw the modern emergence of warlord politics and crass materialism, publishers and booksellers worked hard to promote one of the few forms of commercial activity acceptable to traditionalists or culturally conservative intellectuals, namely, the buying and selling of books. As representatives of an ancient traditional and scholarly fraternity, they were nonetheless deeply involved in politics, trade, and in what is now called consumerism.
From the 19th century to the 1930s, Shanghai book producers promoted major changes in forms of production, exchange, and consumption, often well in advance of other reforms in society. Often lacking traditional forms of support and patronage, this group of commercially-oriented intellectuals had to occupy a transitional middle ground. Socially ambiguous, and even sometimes personally ambivalent about their profession, these cultural merchants managed, and profited from, an important commercially-oriented conduit of cultural and social change. My paper examines the evolution of their priorities from seeking predominantly elite and political patronage to seeking more modern forms of patronage from the mass-oriented marketplace.