The focus of our current digitization process is CONTACT Database Presentation on from the second half of the and immediately thereafter, the Matthias Arnold heyday of comic production in the xiaorenshu Karl Jaspers Centre format which, throughout the 1980s, stayed Voßstraße 2, Building 4400 largely resistant to alternative international 69115 Heidelberg models and assimilates very little from the [email protected] COMICS FROM CHINA - internationalized comic worlds surrounding it. By providing metadata not just on the contents THE SEIFERT COLLECTION and artists, but also on the artistic styles of Exhibition: these comics, our database has the purpose Cartoon Museum Basel A database developed by the Heidelberg of making available Chinese comics as one Ein Museum der Christoph Merian Stiftung Research Architecture (HRA) important genre of Chinese popular culture St. Alban-Vorstadt 28 which needs to be better understood both in CH-4052 Basel terms of its artistic practices and its audience reception as a paradigmatic example for the Cover picture: Pingyuan zuo zhan 平原作战, renmin meishu making of Chinese popular culture which in chubanshe, repr. 2005, cover (detail); Inside: Jia 家, (after Ba Jin), spite or because of being propaganda art is Beijing Lianhuanhua chubanshe, repr. 2003, p.229, and “Leihbibliothek both manufactured from above and appreciated für Kinder an der Straße“, She Zeh Tschi, Der Holzschnitt im Neuen from below. China, Katalog, Dresden 1951, p.101; Back: Wuxian zhongyu Mao zhuxi de chuanzang yunshuxianshang shi yingxiong 无限忠于毛主席 的川藏运输线上十英雄, Beijing renmin meishu chubanshe, 1970, p.3.

Visual Words - Comics from China

At

6.11.2010-13.3.2011 VISUAL WORDS - COMICS FROM CHINA

THE SEIFERT COLLECTION THE DATABASE

More than 40.000 comic (or Chinese lianhuanhua Within only a decade the bookstalls and comic libraries, as Chinese Comic Heroes are a global crowd: they 连环画 chain picture) -titles have been produced in places of public reading, disappeared and the lianhuan- range from Tarzan to Monkey and from Hitler to China over a period of more than 80 years now. Es- hua with them. Today only a small group of people devote China’s First Emperor. While little studied, the im- pecially after the founding of the People’s Republic time and money to collect the last few copies for their own pact of comics on the formation of popular culture in 1949, they were omnipresent as part of China’s pleasure and private collections. The dying medium has and cultural memory — because of their popular- popular culture. Their artistic quality and high draw- been replaced by new comic forms like Japanese , ity, they have been one of the most highly recog- ing standards have earned them praise from both which influence a new generation of young artists seeking nized and reglemented art forms in the Chinese readers and politicians alike who also appreciate for individual ways of artistic expression. Some of these cultural canon — is not to be neglected. The HRA them for their entertainment value and as a propa- new comics from China, like “Remember” by Benjamin, comic database offers digitized versions of Chi- ganda tool. which depart artistically from their Japanese models, have nese comics, especially those which appear in the When I discovered lianhuanhua for the first time even become bestsellers in Europe. form of small rectangular pocket-books (ca. 13 x while living in Beijing in the early 1990s, they were But the old stories and the old comic books remain im- 9 cm) with stories containing a picture on the top already an established art form in China since the portant, their visual impact is felt even by the new genera- and a short narrative on the bottom, the dominant beginning of the 20th century. Numerous well- tion of comic artists. Popular artists like Benjamin or Yao form of comic popular in China since the 1920s. known artists have contributed to this popular medi- Feila, whenever asked about their artistic roots, recall their They would have been available cheaply not just um. Generations of Chinese children began to read personal impressions of the small comic books they once in urban areas, but also in the more remote areas classic stories like “Dream of the Red Chamber” or read. of China: at the barber’s, in the trains, at the hos- “Journey to the West” in the form of the small pocket Lianhuanhua which have formed and influenced the vis- pital and at the streetsides. Thus, by the very na- size booklets, the “small people’s books” 小人书 ual inventory of the Chinese people for a period of some ture of the medium, they may be considered the xiaorenshu. They would read them in their school 60 years can serve, today, as key documents helping re- most popular of all art forms, they “planted the library or at the bookstalls at the corner of their living searchers to understand how Chinese artists reflect their seeds for ideals and knowledge in the hearts and quarters. By the 1990s, however, when I first dis- personal experience. They can also serve as historical souls” of China’s youngsters, as Jiang Weipu 姜 covered them, these Chinese comics were already documents reflecting the twists and turns of Chinese poli- 维朴 (1926- ), one of the most famous chroniclers on the decline. tics as much as the artistic tastes of certain times. of comic art in China has stated. The foundation of my personal collection was laid in the 1990s and when it grew, my interest to write something about them, grew too. When my book on Chinese comics and production “Bildgeschichten für Chinas Massen: Comic und Comicproduktion im 20. Jahrhundert” went into print, I already knew that this would only be a beginning, a starting point for further research and ana- lysis. In providing this collection of roughly 2000 titles to other researchers via the Heidelberg Research Architec- ture (HRA) database I hope to be able to support further research projects using China’s rich store of lianhuanhua. Andreas Seifert