Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In 1925, André Breton describes a dream of China in his ‘Lettre aux voyants.’ Although Bre-ton never travelled to Asia himself, surrealism proved influential among avant-garde circles in the French concession of cosmopolitan Shan-ghai. This article begin with a consideration of the early photographic work of Lang Jingshan. The first Chinese photographer to portray female nudes, Jingshan’s images closely resemble those of Man Ray, whom he later meets in Paris after World War II. Paris-based Chinese student Pang Xunqin, moreover, painted a surrealist-inspired pastiche called Suchlike Paris in 1931, and drew images of the surrealist muse Kiki of Montparnasse. His Storm Society (juelanshe) of Shanghai cited ‘the dreamscapes of sur-realism’ in their 1932 manifesto. Three years later, Breton’s 1924 manifesto was translated by Zhao Shou, a Chinese artist who encountered surrealism in Japan. While avant-garde Chinese artists appropriated the iconography of Parisian surrealists, surrealism’s political engagement appear to have been less influential.
Source: Histoire de l art
Author: Lauren Walden
Language: English
Topic: Art, Politics, and Modernism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3115120029