Abstract
The nude is a long-established category in western art, but in pre-modern China, images of the naked body were not art and carried the stigma of obscenity. This article uses the paradigm of artification to examine the transplantation of the nude into the Chinese art field during the Republican period (1912–1937). By analysing the discourses of key players and historical materials of Republican art institutions, the article discusses the production, dissemination, intellectualisation and legitimation of the nude, as well as its criticism and appropriation, in the institutionalising and modernising art field. The intense challenges faced by proponents of the nude suggest that conflict and struggle are crucial components of the artification process of a foreign cultural form. The artistic transformation of the nude was intertwined with the process of modernisation in China, and its effects extended beyond art and its field. This article argues that the artification of the nude was not only the establishment of a new category of art, but also prompted a revolution in artistic conventions, a reordering of aesthetic hierarchies, a restructuring of the art field and a modernisation of ways of seeing the body.
Keywords
Introduction
Since the time of ancient Greece, the creation of the nude has been an integral activity in western artistic practice (Clark, 1956). By contrast, there was no such category as the nude in traditional Chinese art. As the Republican art critic Fu Lei notes, ‘[i]n the entire history of Chinese art, whether in painting or sculpture, we have never found a nude figure’ (Fu, 1932). This observation has been supported by scholars across disciplines (Clark, 1956; Clarke, 2005; Elvin, 1989; Hay, 1994; Jullien, 2007; Zong, 1981). The absence of the nude has been attributed to the distinctiveness of Chinese aesthetics and artistic traditions, and to the ontological peculiarities regarding the body and the universe (Hay, 1994; Jullien, 2007; Zong, 1981). In pre-modern China, images of the unclothed body were commonly associated with pornography (Clunas, 1997), and belonged to the opposite of the sacred domain of art (Alexander, 2008a, 2008b). The nude only came to be seen as art in the Republican era (1912–1937). This transformation of the nude from non-art to art provides a unique opportunity to understand the process of artification (Shapiro and Heinich, 2012). However, although the event is documented by art historians (Andrews, 2005; Sullivan, 1996), sociological analyses of its processes and implications are scarce.
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The sacred aura of art has evolved into the ‘cult of beauty’ and faith in ‘pure’ art in the modern age (Benjamin, 1992). Bourdieu (1993a, 1993b) theorises this profane form of the cult of art as the ‘fetish’ of artwork, which is collectively reproduced and renewed by agents within and around the art field. Bourdieu’s (1984: 29, 1993b) model of artistic fields emphasises that the production of art involves both material and symbolic dimensions, and it is the symbolic production of art through various art institutions, such as museums and the educational system, that cultivates and reinforces legitimate knowledge and perception, making art ‘demand to be perceived aesthetically’. In line with Bourdieu’s model, the paradigm of artification proposed by Shapiro and Heinich (2012) suggests that the process of developing a new category of art occurs simultaneously at a symbolic, material and contextual level.
This article synthesises the theories of fields and artification to examine the process through which the nude was artified and aestheticised in the Republican period. The established status of the nude in western art makes its development in China a special case for the study of artification. Current research has examined the displacement and transformation of cultural forms from a variety of sources, such as breakdancing, magic and circuses from entertainment (Jones, 2019; Shapiro, 2004; Sizorn, 2019), photography and fashion from leisure (Bourdieu, 1990; Crane, 2019; Van de Peer, 2014), ceramics and tattoo from craftsmanship (Bajard, 2019; Kosut, 2014), film and video games from industry (Baumann, 2007; Smuts, 2005; Tavinor, 2011), graffiti from illegal practices (Campos and Leal, 2021) and football from sports (Hughson, 2019). However, the origin of artification from artistic practice in a different culture has rarely been probed. The artification of the nude in China contributes a case for investigating the de-contextualisation of an art form from its initial artistic, aesthetic and socio-cultural conditions, and its re-contextualisation in a foreign culture that was antagonistic to it. The original position in western art granted artistic legitimacy to the nude. However, this art form, along with the aesthetic hierarchy and cultural values attached to it, also encountered significant local resistance. Therefore, the study of the transplantation of the nude into the Chinese art field provides insights into the multilayered conflicts in the process of artification. The complexity of the process of artifying the nude also enriches the hypothesis of the outcome of artification (Shapiro and Heinich, 2012). Like Manet’s symbolic revolution (Bourdieu, 1993b), the legitimation of nude art in the field had revolutionary effects that were not limited to art and its field, but were also related to wider processes of modernisation. The scrutiny of this artistic transformation can improve our understanding of the interrelated changes in the category of art, the aesthetic hierarchy and the art field, as well as the co-constitution of art and society (Griswold, 2013; Harrington, 2004; Prior, 2011; Wolff, 2008; Zolberg, 1990).
Drawing on insights from the new sociology of art (de la Fuente, 2007, 2010; Eyerman and McCormick, 2006; Eyerman and Ring, 1998; Hennion and Grenier, 2000; Witkin, 1995, 1997, 2005), this article aims to return aesthetics and meaning to sociological inquiry, giving equal attention to aesthetic and extra-aesthetic aspects of artification. On the one hand, the article examines the social practices that enabled the nude to be transplanted and institutionalised in the Republican art field. On the other hand, it elucidates the discursive processes through which the obscene stigma (Bajard, 2019; Goffman, 1963) of the nude was purified and novel symbolic meanings were constructed (Douglas, 1966). Moreover, the article highlights the difficult obstacles and various reconstructions that the nude encountered as it was artified. The eventual consecration of the nude in this period reveals not only a substantive change in the category of art, but also a modern revolution in the field of art, in the aesthetic order and in the way of seeing the body.
Artification and Symbolic Revolution
Shapiro and Heinich (2012) propose the paradigm of artification to understand the transformation of non-art into art, elaborating on the multiple processes involved, such as displacement, renaming and re-categorisation, institutional and organisational change, individualisation of labour, dissemination and intellectualisation. The default assumption of the paradigm is that it explains changes in a modern art field that possesses both cultural autonomy and systematic art institutions (Bourdieu, 1993b, 1996). Therefore, artification shares a theoretical ground with Bourdieu’s concepts of field and legitimation, although Shapiro and Heinich (2012) intend to differentiate artification from legitimation, regarding the latter as an end and a possible result of the artifying process. The emergence of nude art in the Republican period exemplified a process of artification, occurring along with the establishment of modern art institutions and the transformation of a traditional, cooperative art system (Clunas, 2004) into a modern, competitive art field.
Notably, Shapiro and Heinich (2012) stress that artification includes symbolic, material and contextual dimensions. That is, unlike the orthodox sociology of art, which only focuses on extra-aesthetic factors (Becker, 1982; Bourdieu, 1996; Crane, 1987; White and White, 1965), the paradigm of artification does not neglect the symbolic aspect of art. It thus resonates with the call of the new sociology of art, whose proponents propose to bring art and its meaning back into sociological dialogue (Eyerman and McCormick, 2006; Eyerman and Ring, 1998; Witkin, 1995, 1997, 2005). Despite the explicit emphasis on micro-practices by researchers of artification (Jones, 2019; Shapiro, 2019), the symbolic processes of artification are inevitably related to a wider meaning system. Artification is therefore not an isolated transformation but is situated in a broader social process. In Republican China, the promotion of nude art was not a contingent event, but was closely linked to the New Culture movement and the initiation of the project of modernity in the cultural, social and political spheres (Fung, 2010; Lee, 1999; Yeh, 1997).
Beyond the detailed processes, Shapiro and Heinich (2012) note potential obstacles to artification. Tension and resistance are critical elements in the artification of certain cultural forms, such as magic and theatre (Jones, 2019; Proust, 2019). When an art form is imported from another culture, conflict and struggle could be characteristic components of the transplantation process due to the alienness of its aesthetics and cultural values. The introduction and institutionalisation of the nude in the Republican period was not just a matter of incorporating and positioning a new artistic genre, but also involved an intense clash of visualities, or scopic regimes (Berger, 1972; Crary, 1992, 1999; Foster, 1988; Foucault, 1970; Jay, 1988; Mirzoeff, 2009; Mitchell, 1996). As François Jullien (2007) explains, the classical nude in western art represents a mathematised and geometrised archetype of bodily beauty, a distanced object for contemplation, and furthermore, existence itself, which is incompatible with the holism of the body emphasised in the Chinese tradition. According to the holistic vision, the body is a dynamic process rather than an objectified static substance; it is inseparable from the vital energy, environment or spirit (Hay, 1994; Jullien, 2007), and is integrated with morality and manners (Ames, 1984, 1993; Man, 2016; Wenzel, 2006). In this sense, nudity signifies the incompleteness of the body rather than its beauty or the essence of life (Jullien, 2007). In addition, according to the western tradition, the nude is an art form for expressing aesthetic values and symbolic meanings, which is distinct from pornography (Clark, 1956; Nead, 1992). Conversely, in China, pictures of fully naked bodies were typically related to ‘vulgar’ imagery in sex manuals (Van Gulik, 2004), and were therefore strictly excluded from the ‘noble’ domain of art. The distinctive aesthetics and visuality of the body, as well as the stigma of indecency attached to nakedness, presented a difficult barrier to the artification of the nude in Republican China.
Positioned within the framework of process sociology, as Shapiro (2019) underlines, artification refers to a trend rather than an achieved status or a final outcome. Nonetheless, when artification involves the introduction of a new visuality, the effect can spread beyond a particular art form, as Manet’s symbolic revolution did to the nineteenth-century French art field. According to Bourdieu (1993b: 238–253), Manet’s art not only overturned established artistic conventions and aesthetic values, but also reordered positions in the field, replacing the former ‘nomos’ with the institutionalisation of ‘anomie’. The transplantation of a foreign visuality can produce equally, if not more, revolutionary effects. The visuality imported from another culture represents not only itself but also the visual hierarchy in which it is situated (Morphy, 1992; Wolff, 2008: 31–51). Challenges will thus arise not only from a specific local visuality but also from the whole local visual hierarchy. By the same token, the positioning of a foreign visuality is more complicated than that of a new artistic style as postulated by Bourdieu (1993b). In addition to the resistance of local aesthetics and visuality, pressure could also come from local cultural, social and political forces in the processes of renewing artistic norms, reordering aesthetic hierarchies and restructuring the art field (DiMaggio, 1982, 1987, 1992; Heinich, 2000; Lamont, 1992). The importation of nude art provides a special case of artification for understanding the bumpy, complex and yet fascinating process of cultural reconfiguration and the dynamic interaction between art and society.
Methods and Materials
Methodologically inspired by the reflections of the new sociology of art (Alexander and Bowler, 2018; de la Fuente, 2007; Eyerman and Ring, 1998; Inglis, 2005), the research examined both the social conditions and symbolic construction of Republican nude art. In the initial stage, the art field was mapped in order to understand the context in which the nude was produced materially and symbolically. This included the survey of the following aspects: (1) the hierarchy of art forms and the position of western-style art; (2) significant artists of different styles and their positions and connections; (3) the complex of art institutions that legitimised the nude and valorised its symbolism; and (4) crucial agents that connected the art field with other fields. I examined literature on modern Chinese art history and visual culture, biographies and memoirs of important artists and cultural intermediaries in the field, archives and historical documents of art institutions, as well as canonical artworks of the period.
Based on an in-depth understanding of the field, I collected three main types of discourse datasets. The first gathered discourses of crucial actors, including articles, letters, lecture scripts and interviews regarding the nude by modern artists, art critics, intellectuals and conservatives participating in the debates over the nude. The second dataset focused on historical materials archived by art institutions. I collected relevant materials from three major art education institutions (the Shanghai Art Academy, the National Hangzhou Art Academy and the art department of the National Central University), catalogues and publications of the 1929 National Art Exhibition, as well as articles on the nude published by influential art journals. To examine social responses to the nude, the third source of data incorporated relevant discourses in popular media. I collected these data through thematic searches in the Nationwide Index of Newspapers and Periodicals, an archival database of the Shanghai Library.
Discourse analysis was a crucial method in my toolkit. The epistemological prerequisite for discourse analysis is the constructionist approach to language and knowledge (Gill, 2000). As Foucault (1972) argues, knowledge and power are produced in discourse. Thus, discourse analysts tend to remain conscious of the historical, social and cultural specificities of knowledge and are critical in their reading of texts and conversations (Gill, 2000). I therefore ‘immersed’ myself in other pertinent intertextual and contextual discourses, including canonical literary works produced by Republican writers, as well as social debates on topical issues such as the New Culture movement, modernity, gender equality, women’s liberation, sexuality, the body and health. These additional background materials allowed me to experience Republican ethos, aesthetics and emotions textually, leading to an empathetic understanding and interpretation of the core discourse data. 1
Transplantation and Institutionalisation
The development of nude art in Republican China exhibited many of the processes of artification identified by Shapiro and Heinich (2012). In particular, the strong criticism and heteronomous intervention in the 1920s engendered a special process of conflict in its artification. Overall, the artifying course consisted of three major phases: (1) the exploration phase from the 1910s to the early 1920s, which mainly involved the processes of displacement and institutional change; (2) the struggle phase during the mid-1920s, when the artification of the nude encountered significant obstacles and its proponents and opponents engaged in intense debates; and (3) the consolidation phase during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937), when nude art was legitimised in a more developed and autonomous field, blessed by a more favourable socio-political context.
Throughout the Republican period, the artification of the nude was facilitated by the modernisation of the Chinese art field. The transformation of the field started in the early 1910s when the country began the pursuit of modernity socially, culturally and politically. The art fields of modern countries in the West, like many of their other fields, were keenly imitated by the newly established Republic. The foundation of modern art institutions, such as art academies, national museums and exhibitions, art publications and art associations, provided the necessary context for the production, circulation and consumption of nude pieces and the symbolic meanings attached.
The nude as a category of art was first introduced to art students, among whom both the forms of nude art and its cultural knowledge were reproduced and circulated. Li Shutong was one of the initiators of this project, institutionalising the modern art education that he had experienced in Japan in the early 1910s when he taught at the Zhejiang First Normal College (Andrews and Shen, 2012). In 1914, he used a male nude model for the first time in his life-drawing class (Wu, 1959), a milestone in the history of Chinese art education. In the meantime, Li taught western art history at his department. Although it was not artistic knowledge specific to the nude, Li undoubtedly imparted novel aesthetics of the body to his young students.
While Li’s introduction of the nude probably stemmed from his passion for western art, Liu Haisu and his artist friends openly expressed their enthusiasm for the nude itself. These modern artists established the pioneering Shanghai Art Academy in 1912. Despite the outdated teaching methods and rudimentary teaching conditions during the exploratory phase, the Academy’s programmes were significantly upgraded with the addition of some foreign graduates from Europe and Japan. Institutionalisation similar to that of Li Shutong’s department began in 1916, when courses in perspective, aesthetics and art history were incorporated into the revised curriculum. Life-drawing classes became regular training for senior students. The Academy employed its first male nude model in 1917 and its first female nude model in 1920. In 1922, the new curriculum, which included the pedagogical use of nude models, was officially approved by the Ministry of Education. By the early 1920s, the general educational environment for nude art had improved, and the adoption of nude models and the dissemination of western aesthetics of the body were no longer alien to art academies and private art studios.
Art exhibitions provided an indispensable venue for the circulation of nude artworks. Modern exhibition institutions such as museums and galleries were absent in traditional China, but literati gatherings, art studios, painting workshops and art shops had similar functions and existed for many centuries (Cahill, 1994; Clunas, 2004). Nonetheless, there was no place for the nude there – a modern audience was yet to be cultivated. Li Shutong found the first audience for nudes in his own department. He often organised exhibitions of his students’ works, ‘open only to an internal audience’ (Wu, 1959). Liu Haisu went a step further and invited the public to the graduation exhibition in 1917. Outside of the friendly rapport, Liu and the Academy’s nude paintings were more vulnerable to various social criticisms. Despite the challenges, Liu proceeded with his colleagues and friends from the Heavenly Horse Society (
The provincial environment was much harsher than that in Shanghai. In 1924, when Chen Xiaojiang, a French graduate and a former colleague of Liu Haisu, was planning to exhibit his nude sketches and paintings in Shanxi, the local authorities denied him access to the province (Sun, 2013). That same year, Rao Guiju, a graduate of the Shanghai Art Academy, wrote to Liu for help when his exhibition of nudes was forced to close in his home province of Jiangxi. Nonetheless, provincial hostility to the nude did not prevent modern artists from exhibiting their nude pieces on an increasing scale from the late 1920s onward. Through the strenuous efforts of its advocates, the nude was finally included in the two National Art Exhibitions and displayed alongside literati paintings in the last decade of the era.
The flourishing print media provided nude advocates with a powerful tool for reproducing and disseminating nudes and their symbolism. Nude art publications were of three main types. The first was art journals established by pioneering western-style artists. In 1918, the Shanghai Art Academy founded one of the earliest art journals
The second type of publication was painting manuals of the nude. In 1924, a painting album called
Lastly, the third type of discursive site for nude art was newspaper art columns. As early as 1911, the art critic Li Yuyi published a review titled
Advocates of the nude were mainly western-style artists, united by art associations in art centres such as Shanghai and Beijing. The Oriental Society (
The Board of the Shanghai Art Academy, established in 1919, was an example of such modernised networks. Prior to the establishment of the Board, the Academy was directed by Zhang Yuguang, a successful commercial artist in Shanghai. The Academy’s network in his tenure was an old-fashioned one, with exchanges limited to peers. After Zhang’s resignation, Liu Haisu became the new director and organised the Board within a few months. Four of the Board’s first seven directors were prominent cultural and social leaders, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei and Wang Yiting, who had deep ties to both the literati world and modern intellectuals. The remaining three directors Zhao Jujiao, Shen Enfu and Huang Yanpei were also influential figures who provided timely local assistance to the Academy. This panel connected the colleagues and students of the Academy to a wider social network. The Board was also part of the networks of western-style artists in Shanghai. Liu Haisu acted as a bridge between elite intellectuals and western-style artists, ranging from less-educated commercial artists to modern-educated foreign graduates. In addition, many members of important art associations, research societies and art academies in Shanghai were acquaintances. These networks provided a crucial social foundation for the promotion of nude art during this period.
Purification and Redefinition
Between 1924 and 1926, modern artists and intellectuals published a series of articles on the nude and the life model, sparking public debates on the topic.
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The efforts of these advocates of nude art exemplified the symbolic dimension of the artification process. The distinction between the nude and the naked body, which art historians propose (Clark, 1956; Nead, 1992), may not be immediately apparent to those without knowledge of the boundary (Alexander, 2008a, 2008b). The differentiation was particularly hard for pre-modern Chinese viewers due to the pornographic stigma attached to nude pictures. To construct the purely aesthetic nude in China, clear boundaries were drawn between nude painting and pornography. Liu Haisu, the most vocal advocate, outlined three distinctions during the debates. First, he drew a clear line between the nude and eroticism. For example, when commenting on Raphael’s
Second, Liu (1925) solemnly condemned all forms of obscene erotica produced by ‘shameless artisans’ in the popular art market, emphasising that these works had nothing to do with the nude or the life model. Liu made a clear distinction between fine-art nudes and pornography, as well as between artists and producers of erotica. Furthermore, Liu emphasised the commercial and obscene nature of those pornographic pictures while reinforcing the purity of the nude, which belonged to the aesthetic domain and was devoid of economic or erotic associations. Liu also criticised the superficiality of nude pornography and its various vulgar contexts, pointing out that nude art, as its opposite, carried profound meanings and required an aesthetic context.
Third, Liu followed the cultural leader Cai Yuanpei in negating any possible relation between the nude and traditional Chinese erotic painting ( [W]hen facing the nude paintings by Raphael and Rubens, we dare never bear desires as provoked by looking at Zhou Fang’s
Liu (1925) echoed Cai’s voice when interpreting Rodin’s work
The modern intellectual Zhang Daofan perfectly endorsed Liu’s distinctions in a public lecture, claiming that the purified nude represented beauty and civility, detached from any ‘sensual’, ‘immoral’ or ‘obscene’ connotations (D. Zhang, 1926a). By differentiating the aesthetic and pornographic gaze, Zhang reinforced the boundary between the nude and erotic imagery. Furthermore, he justified his stance with his expertise in aesthetics and art history, suggesting in an elitist tone that people tend to see what they know. Zhang’s aesthetic approach to the nude embodies what Bourdieu (1993b: 254–266) calls ‘the aesthete’s eye’. Possessing a wealth of cultural capital, Zhang was confident in his cultural authority and aimed to share his aesthetic vision with the public. He challenged the erotic gaze and those who held such a vision, enhancing the cultural distinction between the ‘noble’ and the ‘uncivilised’.
In parallel with the purification process, new meanings of the nude were diligently constructed. Art was the first meaning that modern artists resorted to when promoting the nude. Liu Haisu, for instance, in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Shanghai Art Academy in 1922, claimed that ‘the body is the most important matter to the study of painting, which is known to anyone with a basic knowledge of art’ (Liu, 1987: 37). He also cited international artistic practice more than once to convince the public that the nude was both a conventional artistic genre in European countries and a common artistic practice in modernising countries like Japan (Liu, 1987). The modernist artist Chen Baoyi agreed with Liu’s proposal, but Chen focused on the technical difficulty of painting the body. He believed that the nude could be considered art because of the challenge it posed in accurately depicting the human form, which required ‘scientific knowledge of anatomy’, ‘persistent practice’ and ‘artistic sensitivity to beauty’ (Chen, 1925). Chen’s emphasis on technical aspects helped to unite artists from different schools, from commercial artists like Ding Song to academic artists like Xu Beihong.
Relatedly, humanist aesthetics was another connotation that advocates often associated with the nude. ‘Life’ was a keyword employed by Liu in his interpretation of the aesthetics of the body in 1922:
Because the body contains such a smooth and endless flow of life, it has high aesthetic significance and value. The principle of beauty, in simple terms, is to follow the laws of life. (Liu, 1987: 38)
For Liu, the nude was aesthetic because it embodied life; the changes, fluidity, richness and complexity that life brought to the body constituted the essence of art and aesthetics. Liu’s appreciation for life echoes the humanism celebrated by ancient Greek art (Clark, 1956). Moreover, Liu (1925) intentionally prioritised humanist aesthetics represented by the nude over the aesthetics of traditional literati art, arguing that the body could be a superior form to nature because ‘humans are the soul of all creation’.
The explanation of the aesthetics of the nude helped to justify the use of life models in art classes. As Liu (1925) claimed, ‘[t]he life model is the soul of art; to respect the study of art, the life model should be advocated’. The use of life models in the classroom, however, was a fairly modern practice, even in Europe where nude art originated (Nead, 1992: 47). By closely linking life models to the study of art, Liu implicitly promoted a modern system of art education. Therefore, for Liu, the nude represented not only art, the beauty of the body and humanist aesthetics but also a modern and professional approach to teaching and learning art.
In addition to art and aesthetics, advocates of the nude also associated it with the zeitgeist of the time and endowed it with great social significance. The sense of scientific knowledge and truth was a primacy modern spirit that Liu Haisu aimed to attach to the nude. To borrow legitimacy from the scientific field, Liu (1925) compared the life model in the art class to the use of the human body in medical schools and questioned: ‘How can the human body [. . .] be allowed to be studied only in medical schools, but not in art academies?’ He also reinforced the scientific sense of the nude and life-drawing class by referencing similar practices in art academies worldwide. The art academy, as part of the modern educational system, embodies a site of knowledge production and dissemination (Bourdieu, 1984). Situating the life model in the art academy was therefore an attempt to impart the authority of scientific knowledge to the nude. The keywords ‘knowledge/truth’, as well as ‘art’, were frequently used by supporters of the nude and were reiterated in the discourses of prominent intellectuals and the five major art associations in Shanghai.
For more revolutionary advocates like Liu Haisu, the nude also signified anti-feudalism. Liu (1925) attributed Chinese hostility towards the body to Confucianism, which, contrary to humanist aesthetics, preferred bodily reservedness to expressiveness. Liu contended that the nude represented a transcendence of the Confucian doctrine and bodily oppression, a step away from ‘backward’ feudal values. The stereotyping of the dirty body was another feudal ideology that Liu challenged. He noted that ‘the Chinese traditionally [. . .] regarded the human body as unclean and nature as clean’ (Liu, 1925). By criticising this stereotype, Liu promoted a purified vision of the body, as embodied in the nude. However, the attempt at purification can enforce order (Douglas, 1966). Liu considered the traditional belief of the impure body to be superstitious and accordingly reinforced the scientific and civil order of its opposite, namely the purified nude. Additionally, Liu (1925) criticised the sexist and misogynist belief that ‘female bodies are more unclean than male bodies’. By contrast, Liu’s gesture of appreciation of the female body symbolised a rejection of traditional Chinese gender prejudice.
Science, anti-feudalism, humanism and gender equality were all social meanings of the nude that resonated well with the spirit of the contemporaneous New Culture movement. 4 Under the construction of the advocates, the meaning of the nude was extended beyond art and intertwined closely with modern social discourse. This approach helped to gain support from the emerging modern cultural alliance. Yet, as not all Republican Chinese were equally optimistic about modernity, confrontation with others was inevitable.
Criticism and Appropriation
Many conservatives expressed harsh criticism of the nude during the debates of the mid-1920s. The rebukes in the accusatory letter in 1924 by Han Zhixian, a provincial councilman, epitomised their views:
The departments of nude painting in art schools entice poor men and women in the name of life models and force them to bare their bodies for male and female students to paint. Regarding the school, this undermines reason and truth and frustrates humanity. As for the models, it is suffering and shameful, a desperate choice. At the social level, it endangers morality even more severely than lewd dramas and obscene books. (Han Zhixian, cited in Liu, 1925)
Han’s criticism appeared to be a moralistic interrogation, but harm to morality was not his only accusation. The model’s least privileged situation was his foremost concern, followed by doubts about whether the nude qualified as knowledge and truth. Furthermore, by comparing the nude to pornography, Han firmly refused any artistic significance of the nude.
Likewise, Jiang Huaisu, a councilman in Shanghai, raised some thorny issues besides the moral concern (Jiang, 1926). First, he acknowledged the possible legitimacy of the nude in foreign cultures, but asserted that its promotion in China was a result of ‘abandoning traditional cultural values’, which required justification. Second, he questioned the necessity of introducing an alien subject that contradicted Chinese painting conventions. Following this, Jiang questioned why ‘the focus was solely on the depiction of the female body’. This question may imply a feminist tone (Pollock, 1988), but Jiang’s emphasis was on the inevitability of eroticism in nude painting. Fourth, Jiang’s reference to the precarious status of the nude as art even in the West further challenged its artistry that nude supporters proposed. Opponents of the nude frequently used such interrogatory points. This gained support from influential conservatives such as the local warlord Sun Chuanfang, who imposed a ban on nude painting and life models in 1926.
Disagreements also came from those with a modern western educational background and a good understanding of both western and Chinese art and culture. Their voices sounded more reflective than critical. The art critic Fu Lei, for instance, expressed such a reflective attitude:
The issue of ‘the nude’ raised by Liu Haisu is controversial not only due to the opposition of moralists but also because it is incompatible with Chinese aesthetics. [. . .] Chinese philosophy does not consider human beings to be superior to other creatures. [. . .] [C]ompared with humankind, ‘nature’ is more transcendental, sublime and magnificent. It is more infinite and uncertain, and more easily leads the transcendence of the soul, not to be over but rather outside everything. (Fu, 1932)
Fu explored the critical philosophical and aesthetic reasons for the absence of the nude in Chinese art history. He argued that the different understanding of humans and the world generated distinctive Chinese aesthetics that excluded the nude. Fu’s account implied respect for this distinctiveness and a reluctance to rank it below western aesthetics. In contrast to this position, Liu Haisu’s passionate advocacy of the nude seemed to be an effort to promote a different set of aesthetics than the advanced one he claimed. In addition, the humanist aesthetics that Liu espoused, as well as his quasi-Renaissance interpretation of the nude, were at odds with his own post-Impressionist artistic practice and the ‘l’art pour l’art’ ethos of his art academy. This inconsistency opened Liu to criticism from artists who were knowledgeable about western art, such as the realist artist Xu Beihong. The intense confrontation between Xu and Liu exposed the internecine struggles for artistic legitimacy within the field in the artification process (Bourdieu, 1996).
During the later phase of the debates, the aesthetic nude promoted by Liu Haisu was appropriated in multiple ways, leading to the development and occasional reconstruction of its meaning. Ni Yide, a modernist artist who supported Liu Haisu, did not merely echo Liu’s voice. Instead, he claimed that ‘the beauty of the body that modern artists seek is the aesthetic intoxication induced by the body’s sensuality, roundness and colours’ (Ni, 1925). Ni’s interpretation of modern aesthetics of the nude included an erotic element, although he was careful not to cross the aesthetic boundary of the nude set by Liu. For Ni, the distinguishing factor between the nude and pornography was not eroticism but rather deliberate provocativeness. Therefore, Ni’s modernist approach to eroticism in the nude only challenged the taboo of sexuality, not that of pornography.
The modern intellectual Zhang Jingsheng agreed with this distinction, arguing that ‘the purposes of nude painting are for beauty, art and physiological hygiene, whereas erotica serves the purpose of sexual stimulation and lovemaking’ (J. Zhang, 1926b). As an advocate of a scientific and healthy attitude towards sexuality and the naked body, Zhang emphasised that nude art could familiarise the public with the beauty of the body and gradually reduce the negative connotations of nakedness. Thus, Zhang argued that in addition to its aesthetic significance, the nude could cultivate a neutral or positive view of the naked body, facilitating the dissemination of knowledge on ‘physiological hygiene, sexuality, and reproduction’ (J. Zhang, 1926b). This novel significance of the nude differed from previous artistic discourses. Although Zhang’s account suggested support for the aesthetic nude, he actually developed new meanings of the nude for his own agenda.
Compared with Zhang Jingsheng’s physiological approach, the commercial appropriation of the nude by popular painters was more destructive to its aesthetic sense. One of their main creations was the calendar poster featuring nude women. While avant-garde artists aimed to incorporate an erotic sense into the nude, the calendar painters excluded almost all of its symbolic meanings except eroticism. The absorption of the form of the naked body into pornographic posters somewhat threatened the artistic status of the nude. Moreover, not only the forms of nude painting, but also nude-specific terms such as ‘life model’ and ‘beauty of the body’ were appropriated by the nude calendar market. The eroticisation and commodification of the nude vulgarised its pure aesthetic and sabotaged the purification of its indecent stigma. This seriously disrupted its artification and, as a result, although commercial artists did not actively participate in the debates, they were constantly mentioned and criticised by defenders of the nude.
Moment of Consecration
The term ‘consecration’ (also ‘legitimation’ and ‘canonisation’) is used by Bourdieu (1993b, 1996) to describe the moment when avant-garde artists and their new styles acquire a legitimate position in the art field. After nearly two decades of determined promotion by its advocates, the nude had reached its moment of consecration in the Chinese art field. Its artistic status was legitimised in the last decade of the Republican period. With the establishment of the Nanjing government, Cai Yuanpei was appointed as the president of Academia Sinica in 1928, gaining the power to develop the cause of aesthetic education that he had championed. Having studied in Europe, Cai developed an interest in the model of the European art field. In 1927, university art education and the organisation of art exhibitions were his two central concerns. Cai’s positive attitude towards western art also led him to enthusiastically support graduates returning from foreign art academies and to incorporate western art into higher education and national art exhibitions. The nude benefited from such an open socio-cultural environment towards western art.
In 1928, the National Hangzhou Art Academy was founded with government support and Lin Fengmian, a French graduate and modernist artist, was appointed as director. Lin’s training in western art and his modernist style influenced the Academy’s curriculum. A pedagogical emphasis on western art had been evident since late 1928. More members of the senior faculty were educated in western art, while more class hours were devoted to western painting. The Academy had a relatively rich collection of full-length plaster casts, and life drawing from the nude was available to senior students. The production of the nude was highly legitimised within the quasi-French curriculum. There were also opportunities to display nudes in the Academy’s public exhibitions, which reached a wider audience in Shanghai, Nanjing and Japan. The legitimacy of the nude was further consolidated in 1928, when courses in western art were introduced at the newly established National Central University. Xu Beihong, the head of the art department, brought his French academic orientation to the programme. Realistic painting skills were prioritised, and three classrooms were equipped for drawing plaster casts and life models. The nude was undoubtedly a legitimate category of art in these two modernised educational institutions.
The 1929 National Art Exhibition provided another arena for the consecration of the nude. It was the largest art exhibition in all of Republican China. Western-style painting was the second largest section with 354 works, more than a quarter of the works exhibited in the literati painting and calligraphy section. Nude painting was a regular genre in the western-style painting section. The styles of the nudes on display ranged from academic to modernist. The female artist Pan Yuliang brought four nudes, among which the two male nudes were special, as nude paintings in the Exhibition were mostly of women. Excellent nude pieces were published by the exhibition journal
Besides the government-sponsored higher education and art exhibitions, the further development of the modern art field in the 1930s facilitated the legitimation of the nude and the continued reinforcement of its artistic status. With the return of foreign graduates, various European avant-garde styles were introduced. At the same time, many new art journals, art columns and art associations were founded by the expanding group of western-style artists. Moreover, the transformation of the traditional literati art system into an institutionalised art field gave the latter greater legitimacy. In this newly formed modern and eclectic art field, western art enjoyed a natural currency, which ensured the stable position of nude art – its long-legitimised category. These favourable conditions for nude art allowed nude artists and their nudes to gain prestige. The consecrated nudes in the field presented a variety of western modernisms, as well as indigenous innovations and hybridisations. Some of the western-style artists of the period gained widespread recognition, and their canonical nudes were not only recognised in the Republican era, but also commemorated by contemporaries in museums and galleries, in textbooks and archives, and in auctions and reproductions.
Conclusion
The artification of the nude in the Republican era was a process of transplanting an established category of western art into a culture that was otherwise hostile to it. The artifying process was facilitated by the simultaneous development of a modern art field in which the production, dissemination, intellectualisation and legitimation of the nude were fruitfully pursued. Nevertheless, the non-artistic status of the nude in traditional China and the stigma of the naked body as incomplete and unpresentable posed difficult hurdles for nude advocates as they sought to rework its meaning and boundaries. The intense debates about the nude and the social pressures faced by its proponents suggest that conflict and struggle essentially constituted its artification. The struggle has not ceased, as processes of its de-artification and re-artification (Sizorn, 2019; Van de Peer, 2014) have continued in subsequent eras.
The consecration of the nude in this period marked a symbolic revolution, like Manet’s transformation of French art (Bourdieu, 1993b). First, it revolutionised the conventions and aesthetics of Chinese art. As the nude became a legitimate category of art, the naked body began to be an object of artistic contemplation – a signifier of the aesthetic, the humanistic and the erotic. This dramatically overturned the holistic vision of the body in pre-modern China. The corporeal body became an independent spectacle, de-contextualised from its environment, social relations and subjectivity. Moreover, not only did the form of the physical body itself connote the ideal of beauty, humanity and sensuality, but because of its roots in western art, the nude also represented western, modern and ‘advanced’ aesthetics. A range of social, cultural and political meanings were woven into the nude, from a sense of scientific art education and an anti-feudal ethos to a spirit of liberation and a quest for civilisation.
Second, the artification of the nude initiated a repositioning in the art field and its structural transformation. In the artifying process, the nude and the aesthetics of the body it conveyed were challenged by both conservatives and modernists. There were also disagreements between modern artists of different styles. The struggles for artistic legitimacy between different modern styles, and between western-style and traditional art, created what Clarke (2008) calls ‘heterogeneity’ in the modern Chinese art field. The two different paths of artistic conflict embodied the specificity of Chinese cultural modernity (Hay, 2008). The nude, as the tinder of the symbolic revolution, interrupted the traditional aesthetic discourse and yet fostered artistic plurality. The coexistence of multiple aesthetics and artistic styles indicated the formation of a modern art field in which ‘anomie’ was institutionalised (Bourdieu, 1993b).
Lastly, the artified nude radically modernised the vision of the body. As a symbol of aesthetic modernity, the nude promoted a humanist and secular way of seeing the body, but it also had some negative consequences. The use of the form of the naked body to represent humanity, beauty and sensuality indicated the primacy of the materiality of the body over its spirituality and sociality. The excessive focus on the physical body and its isolation from attachments and connections reflected an objectified and fragmented perception of the body. Furthermore, the widespread production of female nudes by modern Chinese artists revealed the patriarchal idealisation and gendering of the female body and the fetishisation of nakedness. These consequences festered further when the nude was enthusiastically embraced by various commercial artists. By the 1930s, the body was heavily fetishised, commodified, fragmented and alienated in popular visual forms. The legacy of the artified nude was not confined to art and its field, but affected other fields as well as the experience of the lived body.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Nick Prior, Stephen Kemp, David Inglis and Liliana Riga for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
