Whether it be seeking to evolve itself through modernization, consulting with western culture, or refining politics for the good of the majority, China’s ideological stability had shifted throughout the vast majority of the twentieth century. Modernist artist Pan Yuliang, deemed by art historian Phyllis Teo as “The Misunderstood “Mistress” of the West,” channeled these western influences that served to emphasize issues of gender politics within the country. By introducing an immense number of female nudes to the art world of Chinese culture, Pan’s works serve as an introduction to feminism in Communist China. However, it is the concept of the nude form that my exhibition will focus on. As Pan’s work begins as a starter point, I plan for my exhibition to survey the human body.

As nude art is a basis for much of western art, the trend rarely reached the east. When the concept of nude art reaches China, the body takes on a new narrative, a narrative that attempts to question the established orders of gender, politics, and culture. I plan to explore different works of art that frame the body in a new realm. How can the nude body be politicized? With themes of ideological domination, whether it be from the government or the patriarchy, subjectivity, feminism, and male chauvinism, I hope to show how something so simple as the human body can be something so revolutionary. Is it the Western characteristic of the nude art that causes China to resent it so much or is it something else? With a lack of sexual liberation in Chinese culture and an attempt to block out a female narrative, China’s complicated history with the nude brings to light apparent issues in their society. Why to this day is the concept of nudity still a forbidden zone in Chinese culture? By surveying art and theory surrounding the time before and during the Cultural Revolution, I hope to frame Chinese nude art as something that transcends western nude art.