A Research On The 20th Century Chinese Picture-Story Book

The Chinese picture-story book is a new and peculiar art form appeared in the 20^th century. With the remarkable art achievements, the numerous artists and works, it becomes one of the most significant parts of modern Chinese history of art.This dissertation, aiming at finding out the fundamental factors that directed the dramatic fate of the 20th century Chinese picture-story book, will look into the various stages of the evolution experienced by the 20th century Chinese picture-story book, namely, its emergence, prosperity and decline. It will then go on to look into the reasons behind this evolution and the historical conditions related. It asserts to reconstruct the historical scene and put the picture-story book in a broad social-historical context. It will start from the internal elements of the picture-story book, namely its themes, the publishing and the release, and tries to provide a whole picture of it by treating it as a result of the interplay of various elements, such as the social, the political, the cultural and the artistic.The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first chapter, composed of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, is a general introduction to the picture-story book in the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 1, trying to give a picture of the idealistic and cultural context in which the picture-story book was accepted by the mass, describes the emergence the concept, the formal characteristics and the process of evolution. Chapter 2 discusses the social image of the early picture-story book, and aspects such as the publishers, the themes and contents, and the creators will be included in the discussion. Part 2, the highlight of this thesis, spans five chapters, from Chapter Three to Chapter Seven. It analyses the reasons and social-historical conditions of the boom of the picture-story book in the 1950s and 1960s, including the relation between the picture-story book and the society, the publishing, the specialized education, the theory, the review, the history of the picture-story book, and the status of its creators. Part 3, or Chapter 8, focuses on the decline of the picture-story book in the middle and late 1980s. It asserts to analyze the internal and external causes of the decline of the picture-story book from aspects such as the internal problems and the changes in the social and cultural contexts.