Transnational Canon Formation: The Rediscovery of Ming Yimin Ink Painting in Modern China, 1900-1949 Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Yanfei Zhu, M.A. Graduate Program in History of Art The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Professor Julia F. Andrews, Advisor Professor Kirk A. Denton Professor Lisa C. Florman Professor Christopher A. Reed Copyright by Yanfei Zhu 2013 Abstract This dissertation addresses modern Chinese ink painters’ use of seventeenth-century yimin art as a philosophical, aesthetic, and political vehicle for synchronizing the fundamental values of Chinese art with the modern world during the first half of the twentieth century. In this case, the polemical term “yimin” designates “leftover subjects” or loyalists to a previous fallen dynasty. “Ming yimin art” refers to the ink paintings done by a group of seventeenth-century individualist masters—among whom the most famous is Shitao (1642-1707)—whose paintings often appear expressive or abstract from a modern perspective. The rediscovery of this individualist art in a modern context was carried out almost simultaneously in China and Japan, and later spread to Europe and America. Employing a body of still understudied materials from art journals, museum archives, and artists’ writings to paintings, my study challenges the common misconception that early twentieth-century Chinese ink painters were conservative and their paintings outdated. I argue modern ink painters re-appropriated and canonized seventeenth-century individualist painting with a dual purpose not only to legitimize and prioritize the value of traditional ink aesthetics within an international art scene, but also to create an ink painting suitable to a new forward-looking Chinese culture. ii The rediscovery and reformulation of Ming yimin painting by twentieth-century intellectuals can best be understood as a process of temporal and spatial “alignment” or “synchronization” as modern ink painters sought to situate themselves both within China’s historical continuum and within an international scene increasingly aware of cross-cultural comparison and market competition. This bipartite act of synchronizing the past and present, the traditional/Chinese and modern/Western, enabled early Qing individualist painting to be reinterpreted as an art of modern value and transformed into something new by both Chinese and Western standards. The simultaneous impulses to historicize and renew are both responses to the exigencies of Chinese modernity. Well-exposed to the notions of Social-Darwinism and constantly reminded of the undeniable success of Western powers, early twentieth-century Chinese painters strategized to find an artistic heritage in China’s past that could be compared, no matter how vaguely, to certain aspects of modern Western art. Concurrent with, and partially inspired by, contemporaneous Japanese interest in seventeenth-century individualist art, many late Qing and Republican ink artists readopted and reevaluated yimin painting in order to transform their medium into an art they considered distinctively modern. Their promotion of yimin art and theory as parallel to contemporary European art was aided by the modern means of printing and publishing. Reflecting the drastically changing ideological concerns of Chinese intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, the appropriation of yimin art and the reinvigoration of ink traditions were carried out in a variety of fashions by different generations of historians and painters. iii Acknowledgements Many teachers and friends have helped me on my journey to accomplish this dissertation. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Julia Andrews, for her unwavering care and guidance. I would also like to thank Dr. Lisa Florman, Dr. Christopher Reed, and Dr. Kirk Denton on my doctoral examination and dissertation committees for their valuable support. I am grateful to the institutes that have provided financial aid to my research. The two-year Ittleson Fellowship by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, enabled me to conduct field research in China and Japan during the first year and finish writing my dissertation in residence at the gallery in Washington D.C. during the second year. The Department of History of Art and the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University have endowed me with multiple travel grants to perform preliminary research at libraries and museums in the United States, China, and Japan. There are many other individuals who have been of great help to my dissertation project. I want to thank: Stephen Allee, Angela Anderson, Kathryn Barush, Oskar Bätschmann, Susanna Berger, Louise Burkhart, Kaijun Chen, Hyejeong Choi, Ying Chua, Anita Chung, Lynne Cooke, Elizabeth Cropper, Elise David, Sean DeLouche, Ankur Desai, Anne Dunlop, Thierry de Duve, Meredith Gamer, Cynthia Hahn, Joseph iv Hammond, Marius Hauknes, Alexandra Hoare, Jessica Horton, John Huntington, Susan Huntington, Asato Ikeda, Paul Jaskot, Nathaniel Jones, Mayumi Kamata, Katie Kilroy, Hyun Kyung Kim, Youn-mi Kim, Lin Lizhong, Stuart Lingo, Ling-en Lu, Peter Lukehart, Colin Mackenzie, Christina Mathison, Nancy Micklewright, Therese O’Malley, Courtney Delaunay, Emily Pugh, Fredo Rivera, Guendalina Serafinelli, Andrew Shelton, Jerome Silbergeld, Xiaosu Sun, Yuichiro Tashiro, Tsai Chia-chiu, Catherine Walworth, Eugene Wang, Michelle Wang, Yang Wang, Yiyou Wang, Stephen Whiteman, Yanfei Yin, Ann Yonemura, Jingmin Zhang, and Xinxian Zheng. To my parents, my mentors, and my friends: Thank You! v Vita August 24, 1982 .............................................Born, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China 2004................................................................B.A., Museology and Relics Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai 2004-2005 ......................................................Assistant Specialist, Department of Ceramics and Other Works of Art, Shanghai Jiatai Auction Co., Ltd., Shanghai 2005-2011 ......................................................Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant, Department of History of Art, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2007................................................................M.A., History of Art, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Summer 2008 .................................................Curatorial Intern, Curatorial Department, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida 2011-2013 ......................................................Ittleson Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia Fields of Study Major Field: History of Art vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv Vita ..................................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ......................................................................................................................x Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 History......................................................................................................................8 Collotype ................................................................................................................15 Art ..........................................................................................................................22 Japan ......................................................................................................................31 Chapter 1: Historicizing the “Four Monks” and Ming Loyalist Painting ..........................38 From “Two Stones” to “Four Monks” ...................................................................38 The Revisions .........................................................................................................43 Ōmura Seigai’s Adjustment ...................................................................................48 Ming Yimin Painting ..............................................................................................52 Chapter 2: Fine Art Publishing in Collotype .....................................................................63 Collotype Printing and Painting Albums ...............................................................65 Two Early Collotype Periodicals of Traditional Art ..............................................70 vii The Commodification of Art .................................................................................76 Preservation and Promotion ...................................................................................83 Huang Binhong’s Regionalism and Traditionalism ...............................................86 Culturalism and Nationalism .................................................................................94 Chapter 3: Appropriating Shitao’s Artistic Legacies .........................................................99