Researcher: Dr. Xi XU

The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing is today the leading art school in China, and it has a strong tradition in French as well as Soviet academic practices. During the socialist period, it was the leading art school to shape socialist realist art in China. The project will therefore combine an investigation of the history of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, of histories of realism at CAFA and other academies, and of the receptions and translations of Eastern European teaching practices, theoretical texts, and artworks. Key issues to be investigated include: Translations of institutional structures, curricula, and materials from Japan, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union; modern Chinese conceptions of the term “realism”; the shaping of artistic genealogies within CAFA and its predecessor schools as well as beyond; how the academy adapted to changes in the political system, crises, and political campaigns; and how legacies of academic and socialist realism were addressed in the reform era.

Researcher: Prof. Dr. Juliane Noth

The China Academy of Art in Hangzhou was founded in 1928 as a National Academy of Arts. The project will study how the French-trained faculty adapted the Beaux-Arts model to the Chinese situation, how they interpreted European and Chinese art histories, and how their work can be traced through later generations teaching at various art schools. A special focus will be on modernist practices. CAA also has a strong tradition in Chinese ink painting, especially under the directorship of Pan Tianshou (1897–1971, director 1944–1947 and 1959–1967). This case study will serve to analyse how artists working in modernist or traditionalist styles navigated the political and institutional changes brought about by the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or the implementation of the Soviet system in the 1950s. It will trace curricular, personal, and artistic continuities from the Republican era into the late twentieth century, but also disruptions and debates.

Researcher: Xiaoya Fang, M.A.

CHINACADEMY will take the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts as a case study for the work of what might be called art academies with a regional focus. The project will investigate the relations between the national metropoles and provincial centres on the one hand and the role of regional traditions in the work of the academies on the other. The latter are particularly strong in Guangzhou, which has a long history as a trade port and close artistic ties to Japanese art centres. During the Republican period, Guangzhou was also an important centre for left-wing woodcut artists, and this became part of the school tradition. CHINACADEMY will study how local schools and artistic movements with their global connections shaped the work at the academy and which role regional identities played in the classrooms and the academy’s self-representation. It will investigate the relations between local characteristics and cross-regional networks, and especially the impact of national administrative directives and cultural politics on local practices.

Researcher: Dr. Yuet Heng Wong

Although the art academies were founded to institutionalize a modern art education based on European and Japanese models, ink painting as a national art form was at an early point considered an important element in the curriculum. The project will trace the history of ink painting education across Chinese art academies from the 1910s into the 1990s. It will study the debates about inherited teaching practices such as copying earlier paintings, the role of drawing and discourses of realism, and the positioning of ink painting and calligraphy as regards abstraction, installation, and conceptual art. A special focus will be on the question of how receptions of art and art history from other world regions shaped interpretations of Chinese art historiography and the medium of ink painting in what can be called a translated historiography.