Liu Haisu was known was one of the earliest artists who had systematically trained by western art education. Liu was expertise in oil painting and Chinese traditional painting. Liu’s work maturely utilized both western and Chinese painting techniques, and contains the artist’s passion in art exploration and rebellious toward stereotypes about both Chinese and Wesrern paintings. This webpage wrote about the important  in Liu Haisu’s career, including his western art education, his controversy about nude painting, and his paintings about Huang Mountain. From learning about the career of Liu Haisu, the audiences are able to see the influence of both Chinese and Western art concepts on Liu’s paintings and drawings, which allow us to have a better understanding on Liu’s art works and his personalities.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/162397.htm

Appeared in the early years of the 20th century and being one of the most popular magazines in China at that time, “Liang You” (internationally known as “The young companion”) had too few documents with the exact origin so that the postpartum generation can learn and research. One of the rare useful sites about this magazine is Wikipedia.This website provides relatively complete information about the origin of the newspaper, its history and its journey through 172 issues and its four editors.After the newspaper stopped publishing, there were many attempts to bring the newspaper back to the public and bring it abroad but were unsuccessful and until now there are not many specific sources of information about each article published in each issue. . However, the site has provided impressive cover images that brought to the magazines uniqueness and success. There are also attached links and related documents about the women appreared on the covers which gave an insight their stories and backgrounds.

Reference:

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/The_Young_Companion#cite_note-brill-4

An article posted by the Chinese Heritage Quarterly is titled A Century of Li Keran. The article is commemorating the life of Li Keran a century after he was born. The article gives an intensive biography about his life. For the centenary of his birth, there was a major exhibition and international seminar at the National Art Museum of China in 2007. The Li Keran Art Foundation is the organization that organized the commencement. The commemoration included an auction where some of Li Keran’s paintings and artwork sold for million of dollars. The article also states that li Keran is known for his black and red landscape artwork today, which he was criticized for when he was producing them.

http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=012_CenturyliKeran.inc&issue=012

This webpage differed from any previous webpage I had seen before. It is titled, “Feng Zikai’s Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award,” and talks about Feng and his impact on the children of China, something that most Chinese artists did not have. Feng is known for his cartoon art that inspired so many Chinese picture books for children later on, and this webpage emphasizes how important this particular art is to modern Chinese culture. What I especially like about this webpage is that it has a detailed timeline of Feng’s life, as well as when and why he created some of his cartoons and comics. This tells me more of what inspired him to create these unique cartoons.

The Award and Feng Zikai

Ai Weiwei is such a world renound artist and is so influential that as I was researching him this week no only where there several different video interviews he had taken part of on various new sources but their was also a very interisting article that poped up written about him by the Smithsonian Magazine in 2012. This article titled Is Ai Weiwei China’s Most Dangerous Man? instantly drew my attention. The writer Mark Stevens goes into great deapth on how the chinese government and Ai Weiwei have had a great deal of friction between them over the lifetime of the artist. With the articile comparing Ai Weiwei artistic attitude to that of Warhol, the message comes across clearly that Ai Weiwei has a statment he wants to make about China and the many wrongs that they have done or continue to do, Ai Weiwei will draw attention to them. For China having someone air that draws this much world wide attention to the negative aspects of your county this make him surley the most dangerous man.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-ai-weiwei-chinas-most-dangerous-man-17989316/

Chen Yifei is an extremely interesting artist because of his works during the rule of Mao as well as his shift in style after Mao’s death. To get a better understanding of Yifei himself I have been using the webpage www.artnet.com. Artnet has been very helpful as it gives a general biography for main points but it also gives a longer, more in depth review of Yifei’s life as well as his art. This webpage also has all of Yifei’s paintings with information on the medium, size, title and date of creation so that I can determine when he changed his style after Mao’s death and started to focus on his own style of realistic portraits, fashion and cinema.

Bibliography

http://www.artnet.com/artists/chen-yifei/

As, arguably the most well known female artist from 20th Century China, it is no surprise that Pan Yuliang is the only one of the artists I am studying that has an entire website dedicated to her. The website panyulin.org is extremely well rounded and includes everything from her biography to every newspaper article about her. It also includes a complete collection of every one of her works categorized by material and subject. Although the site is primarily in Chinese, it does have an English option to make it more accessible.  It can be very difficult to find information about many female artists of this time because their lives and works were so poorly documented so this website is very helpful as it is so thorough and accessible.

https://www.panyulin.org/index.php

https://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/fengmengbo/bio

This a website that has biography’s of many Chinese Artist. I think this is a very valuable site because it is timeline focused. The site provides a timeline of my artists career with specific points in his career when he has had important exhibits, the names of the exhibits, and the locations of the exhibits. This could be useful when creating an analysis of my artist and when trying to find a specific type of work, Many times when doing research one of the most difficult parts is actually finding a specific piece on the web. This site will help find pieces of work but also help prove points through showing the artist progression.

Two Images of Socialism: Woodcuts in Chinese Communist Politics by Chang-Tai Hung is a scholarly article from the Cambridge University Press that analyzes the influence of woodcuts in Chinese politics. This article provides valuable insight on the relationship between the rise of the Communist party and the modernist woodcut movement. It further delves into the background of the movement and examines its founding father, Lu Xun. The author praises Lu Xun for his contribution to modern art in China and further introduces other well-known woodcut artists such as Li Hua, Wo Zhang, and Gu Yuan. This article provided immense detail about the political aims of woodcut prints and how the CCP strategically used this medium against their political enemies and for promoting the revolution. It analyzed important artists who influenced both the art movement and Chinese politics.

After reading this lengthy article I learned a lot more about my artist, Lu Xun. For instance, Lu Xun was significantly influenced by German graphic artist, Kat Witz; the Russian engraver, Vladimir A. Favorsky, and the Belgian woodcut artist, Frans Masereel. All of which introduced Western techniques of linearity and sharp contrast. Lu Xun borrowed these Western techniques and introduced a new style of woodcut print to China. Both the simplicity of a woodcut and new style of sharp contrast allowed Lu Xun to produce effective messages that promoted social and political change in China. Lu Xun and many other leftists started to believe that this was the new medium for art. Not only could this sway the opinion of the public through effective aesthetics, but it was cheap and easy to mass produce. This article provides interesting information about the modernist woodcut movement in China and its integral relationship with communist politics.

Work Cited:

Hung, Chang-Tai. “Two Images of Socialism: Woodcuts in Chinese Communist Politics.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 39, no. 1, 1997, pp. 34–60.

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/179238.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A93a3148d5ce61f0d7aeaa9482a48b6e8

As I was researching this week I came across an academic article by Chang-Tai Hung called ‘The Fuming Image: Cartoons and Public Opinion in Late Republican China, 1945 to 1949’. Hung is a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his article talked about several political artists in the late 1940s, including Ding Cong. Throughout the article, Hung highlighted each artist’s techniques, views, and opinions of Chinese politics, and how they combined to create strong pieces of art that served a purpose. He described that Ding’s strongest attribute was his ability to play on the contradictions of the Chinese government, and his drawings show the juxtaposition of rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed, and power abuser and victim. This article will help me understand the nuances of Ding’s works during the peak of his career, before he was censored and eventually exiled. Understanding what fuels an artist’s passion, in Ding’s case to draw these significant cartoons for the common people, is always helpful in learning about an artist.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/179329.pdf?casa_token=-IYwS9yYKmcAAAAA:VDWkuBSVjDx6_isrrM3USA5OIobAfkUacfocgoywwdC3FTZSMV9Rk3pFtVRBumKnDECTWtiJtONn6CVtv8pBLQAt70ltcRc1xsOBRyQo3gii5qXNoYc

Hung, Chang-Tai. “The fuming image: Cartoons and public opinion in late republican China, 1945 to 1949.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 1 (1994): 122-145.