The Discourse of Guohua in Wartime Shanghai

Pedith Pui Chan

doi:10.1163/15700615-01902010

Abstract

Abstract This article looks at artists’ engagement with artistic activities carried out in wartime Shanghai, with a particular focus on guohua (lit., ‘national painting’). Drawing on primary sources such as archival materials, diaries, paintings, magazines and newspapers, it explores the layered meanings attached to and social functions of guohua and the institutional structure of the Shanghai art world from the gudao (solitary island) period to the advent of full occupation from December 1941 onwards. As a symbol of Chinese elite culture, guohua continued to dominate the Shanghai art world with support from Wang Jingwei’s regime and the occupying Japanese, and was deemed the root of East Asian art and one of the crucial pillars of the East Asian renaissance in the discourse of the new order of East Asian art. Through closely examining the discourse of guohua in occupied Shanghai, this article advances our understanding of the production and consumption of art in wartime Shanghai by going beyond the paradigmatic binary of ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’.

Highlights

China’s Nationalist government relocated its capital from Nanjing to the city of Chongqing in the southwest of the country as a result of the Second SinoJapanese War (1937–1945)
Building on the foundation of such scholarship, this paper examines the discourse of guohua in occupied Shanghai by going beyond the paradigmatic binary of ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’
This paper looks at artists’ engagement with artistic activities carried out in wartime Shanghai, with a particular focus on guohua

Summary

Introduction

China’s Nationalist government relocated its capital from Nanjing to the city of Chongqing in the southwest of the country as a result of the Second SinoJapanese War (1937–1945). As the most prominent guohua societies in the pre-war period, the membership of cwpca and the Painting Association of China included almost all the reputable female and male guohua artists in Shanghai. The information collected from the newspapers and magazines suggests that the cwpca and the Painting Association of China did organise annual exhibitions and their core members continued to engage actively with exhibition culture during the full occupation. Liu Haisu was a crucial figure in the Shanghai art world: he was the founder of the prestigious Shanghai Academy of Arts (Shanghai Meizhuan) and had organised several overseas exhibitions of contemporary Chinese painting on behalf of the Nationalist government It is undoubtedly these prominent artists who were targeted by the Wang Jingwei regime as the potential leaders of the Shanghai art world during the full occupation

The Sino-Japanese Cultural Association

Findings

Conclusion