On the Path to Chouxiang: The History of Twentieth-Century Chinese Abstract Art

This dissertation explores the historical narrative and aesthetic characteristics of Chinese abstract art throughout the twentieth century. Its primary goal is to establish a chronological evolution of Chinese abstraction. It argues that the genesis of Chinese abstraction can be traced back to the early twentieth century. Although abstract painting was not created in this period, the earliest linguistic translations concerning abstract art and the emergence of modernist paintings, popular science, optical devices, new photographic techniques, and urban visual culture collectively shaped a new aesthetics of simplicity and rationality expressed in geometric abstract forms of fine-art photography, fashion, graphic, interior, industrial and product design. The case study of the creation of Chinese abstract art is Wu Dayu’s private experiments in the Maoist period. Wu’s manuscripts, correspondences, self-made canvas, small-size works, and other materials attested to his exploration of abstract painting, revealing an alternative art beneath the mainstream socialist realism. Wu’s art played an essential role in the history of Chinese abstraction as it links abstract art’s incubation in the Republican period and its boom in the post- Mao period. Following Wu’s experiments is the flourishment of abstract art in the reform and opening-up period when China established diplomatic ties with Western countries. However, this boom did not come without a price. There was a twisting path towards understanding and accepting abstract painting. Reformist artists and scholars reconstructed artistic and cultural meanings of abstract painting to respond to public criticism on the ideological implication of abstract art. Relevant to the historical narrative is the evolution in the stylistic features of Chinese abstraction. This dissertation investigates works by artists of different generations, including their abstract styles, techniques, media, and the natural and cultural resources upon which they enrich their abstract vocabularies. The elderly artists, like Wu Dayu, Wu Guanzhong, and Yu Youhan, maintained the traditional method of easel painting popular during the time, adopting an approach of reduction and simplification to create abstract paintings that stress the independence of painterly elements such as dots, lines, circles, colors, and brushstrokes. The younger generations furthered the movement by introducing non-traditional art media and forms. In so doing, they have redefined abstract painting as more than finite and static objects created for human viewing, but as autonomous and dynamic forces that connect the multiple entities of nature, artist, and viewer. Waves of social and political changes in twentieth century China made it particularly challenging to develop abstract art in Chinese society. The ultimate legitimacy of abstract art resulted from the collective efforts of artists of different generations—their firm belief in art and life, their continuous experiments, and their brave attempts to engage art in society. While this dissertation ends with twentieth century Chinese abstraction, it also recognizes a starting point of twenty-first century Chinese abstraction, where science and technologies become a new inspiration for artistic creation and only time will tell how the new trend in Chinese abstraction develops