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160 John A. Lent and Xu Ying John A. Lent and Xu Ying Produced 160 Book Reviews John A. Lent and Xu Ying, (2017) Comics Art in China. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 234 pages. ISBN (hardback): 9781496811752. John A. Lent and Xu Ying produced the book, Comics Art in China, mainly at the basis of intense interviews with at least 121 comic art-related personnel in China during past 15 years. This book successfully fulfilled its aims to present the most comprehensive overview possible of China’s comic art, including lianhuanhua, xinmanhua, comic books, newspaper strips, political and social commentary cartoons, humour/cartoon magazines, pictorial periodicals and animation. By highlighting its key events, personnel, issues, trends, and stories in the contexts of Chinese politics, culture, society, and economics, the book chrono- logically displayed the six historical periods of the development of China’s comic art. Chapter 1 “Cradle of Chinese Cartooning” uncovered the Chinese roots of main characteristics of cartoon art and the early development of mod- ern Chinese cartooning that emulated its Western counterparts in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The development was stimulated by efficient printing technology as well as people’s increasing dissatisfaction with the cor- rupted Qing government and threatening foreign nations. The unsettling and turbulent times nourished the first generation of devoted cartoonists, who alto- gether created the “Manhua’s Golden Age” (1920s–1930s) (Chapter 2). Those two decades spawned the first successful newspaper comic strips, an avalanche of cartoon magazines, the initial efforts to professionalise comic art with the creation of a cartoon association and exhibition, and a more precise definition of humor and cartoons. War provided a paradise for Chinese cartoonists to use “Cartoons as Wartime Weapons, 1930s–1949” (Chapter 3). Both Communist and Guomindang cartoonists engaged in satirising Japanese brutality, imperialistic greed and Chinese traitors throughout the war with Japan. The cartoonists split into two opposed ranks during the Civil War, at the service of their respective party. Chapter 4 “Liberation, Maoist Campaigns, and Cartoons, 1949–1976” pre- sented an era that cartoons was redefined by Mao as an ideological weapon promoting the Communist and nationalist cause, as well as demonising state and Party enemies, which in practice became the main tasks of cartoonists.The shifting relationship between art and policies led many cartoonists to confu- sion, ambiguity, and suffering in political campaigns. Chapter 5 “Reform, Mod- ernization, Market Economy, and Cartooning” demonstrated a period of many adjustments to be made in the cartooning sectors, such as, individualism, the permitted acceptance of Western cartooning, and the establishment of new association and magazines, because of the rise of modernisation, the switch Asian Journal of Social Science © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15685314-04701012 Book Reviews 161 to a market economy, and major innovations in technology. Chapter 6 “Anima- tion: From Hand-Crafted Experimentation to Digitalization (1920s–2015)” told a relatively independent story of the development history of animation: in the beginning, it struggled to learn the secrets of making pictures move (1920s– 1940s); it survived wars and disastrous government campaigns, sometimes engaged in propaganda; it sparked and nurtured two golden eras of exquisite, world-class animation (1950s–1990s); and it went through the transition from planned to market economy and further stepped into a period characterised by norms of commercialism, bigness, and lower quality (1990s–2015). Based on these rich knowledge, authors shed light on the common threads throughout the history of Chinese comic art, the outside factors played roles in its development, the professional links between Chinese comic art and art in general, and the relationship between comic art to Chinese society. First of all, from the 19th Century onwards, Chinese comic art has been involved in each stage of the country’s modern history, serving as a reporter and critic of current affairs, a recorder of history, and a storyteller, jester, and educator. Carrying out these tasks was often difficult because cartoonists faced government restrictions, economic deprivation, and severe punishment. They also received rewards, as some of them helped set artistic policies for China, many more fought the good fight during wars, the formation of the country, and the drive to modernisation. Recurrent political and social crises not only provided cartoonists with topics, individuals and institutions to satirize, but also required major adjustments from time to time on definitions, purposes and mechanism of Chinese comic art, especially during stressful political cam- paigns. Second, Chinese comic art was influenced by outside factors from the begin- ning: the earliest cartoon periodicals assumed European or American names, were published by foreigners and used a Western manner to arrange content; Chinese cartoonists emulated foreign artists at the beginning of their careers in the 1930s; Soviet and Eastern European art and animation styles were popular in the early 1950s; and Japanese manga and US comic books have had impacts on lianhuanhua and the creation of xinmanhua since the 1990s. Third, despite objections to the embrace of cartoons as one of the arts, in China, there are many connections between cartooning and the larger art and literary professions: (1) Much of the early comic art was considered wor- thy of publication in top literary and pictorial magazines or in prestigious art periodicals; (2) a number of famous cartoonists were also prominent painters, muralists, calligraphers, script writers, and sculptors (some wrote treatises in an attempt to develop a sound theoretical framework of their profession); and (3) when China’s culture was revamped after 1949, cartoonists played key roles Asian Journal of Social Science 47 (2019) 141–162.
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