Fu Lei And Visual Art

This thesis focuses on the artistic activities, works and criticism of Fu Lei. It consists of four chapters. Chapter one discusses Fu Lei's studies, travels and social life during his stay in France, as well as studies and social life of some other Chinese artists studying in France at that time. Chapter two traces Fu Lei's teaching, writing as well as managerial work while he was in Shanghai Arts College, as a way of reconstructing Fu Lei's career as an educator in arts, focusing his personal relations with the president of Shanghai Arts College, Liu Haisu. Chapter three starts with an account of Fu Lei's social relations with the famous artist Huang Binhong, followed by a discussion on his role in organizing the latter's Eighty-year-old Memorial Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition as an opening to discuss Fu Lei's artistic tastes and ideals, and ends with an analysis of what Fu Lei means to Huang Binhong. Chapter four mainly discusses Fu Lei's artistic works and his art criticism, focusing on a discussion on the nature of his main artistic writing Twenty Lectures on Famous World Paintings, the translation, publication and influence of A Philosophy of Arts as well as its special status among all of Fulei's translated works, and a brief analysis of the characteristics of Fu Lei's artistic criticism.This thesis is fundamentally a basic research into the life and work of Fu Lei. While most of subjects of discussion are not of a highly significant nature, its main contributions lie in the corrections and clarifications of a number of issues as mistakenly or vaguely reported in earlier studies of Fu Lei's life and work. As such, the purpose of this study is to pave the way for further and more comprehensive studies of Fu Lei as a very important educator and art critic of modern China.