A Defiant Brush:Su Renshan and the Politics of Painting in Early 19th-Century Guangdong
- FilmMediaFine Arts
- Categories:History & Criticism Painting & Drawing
- Language:English(Translation Services Available)
- Publication date:
- Pages:248
- Retail Price:(Unknown)
- Size:208mm×286mm
- Page Views:20
- Words:(Unknown)
- Star Ratings:
- Text Color:Black and white
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Review
“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the painter Su Renshan in specific and nineteenth-century art in Guangdong in general. It provides lucid and thought-provoking discussions on the art world and local society that strived to cope with the tremendous political and socio-economic changes of late Qing China. Through close readings of the works by Su Renshan and other Guangdong painters, Yeewan Koon demonstrates the intricate negotiation of different levels of identities, which were expressed through and shaped by the defiant brushes of these painters.” —Cheng-hua Wang, Academia Sincia, Taiwan
Description
In 1839, Guangzhou has shifted from a cosmopolitan trading center with a diverse art world into a place of violence. During the following decade, one voice of discontent and defiance rang out above all others: Si Renshan. His provocative, uncompromising, and sometimes ugly paintings berate Confucius for his hypocrisy. He turns his brush trace into graphic lines that mimic the printed page, and he depicts women as alternative exemplars of a moral intelligentsia. It is believed that his outspokenness prompted his father to place him in prison for filial impiety, where he probably painted his last work. During this turbulent period of incipient modernity, close readings of Su Renshan’s paintings within the rich contextual history of art in Guangdong Province reveal how the trauma of war prompted a re-evaluation of social and political values, and indeed the moral responsibility of a scholar-artist.