Status’ Transformation And The Spirital Transcendence

The late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China is the period that Chinese society pattern transformed from classic to modern. Art, known as one of the cultural symbols was along with this kind of "transition", and the title of a "Painter" had also changed accordingly. This thesis chooses Wang Yiting as the most representative person in this transition. By listing his activities between1900and1917, we discuss the "game" and "transformation" between his multiple social identities, until he turned his identity title from policital man and business man into the leader of the Shanghai Painting School. It should be said that, in the process of this transformation, art activity itself also came up with "function transformation", which was different from classic pattern, thus promoted the modernizing transformation of the art under new social environment.The thesis analyses the complex and superimposed social identities of Wang Yiting at first, elaborates the characteristic of his identity title by stating his various "identities" which were different from classical painter——commercial activities and a comprador, disaster relief and a social philanthropist, revolutionary activities and a political character, foreign activities and an art introducer; then the thesis differentiates and analyses the concrete behavior of Wang Yiting’s art activities, from the perspectives of the communication and works of the painter, the activities of fine arts association, the commercial, disaster relief and political activities of the fine arts, discusses the time, the location, the character, the process, the development and the meaning of each activity. At last, the thesis takes social transitivity and contradictoriness of modern society as background, discusses from the perspective of "art function and identity reshape","scholar character’s destruction and reconstruction","’used for Dao’to’used for Qi’",explores the reason of the variation which occurred to art activities represented by Wang Yiting, together with his different identities, ascertains the changing process of Chinese scholars’psychology and behavior, and points out the meaning of this professional and practical transformation in art activities.According to the thesis, as a comprador in Japanese company, chamber of commerce’s leader, financiers, industrialist and philanthropist, political activists, artists, art patrons, Sino-Japanese cultural exchange ambassadors, lay Buddhists, Wang Yiting achieved the marketization, social recognition, and the diversity of art function of the Shanghai fine arts through different types of art activities in different period. Under his efforts, Shanghai fine arts has realized the transition from old type to new type, and explored a different way of its own which differed from "Realism","Western School" and "Chinese and western eclectic". At the same time, Wang Yiting reshaped his social identity and image through all kinds of expression of "game", and gradually mastered the "speaking rights" in the Shanghai Painting School. And in this process, Wang Yiting also realized the mutual unification of the artistic ideal and the practical function, then achieved the transition from "used for Dao" to "used for Qi".