On The Art Of Xu Beihong

Xinhai Revolution finished two thousand years' federal society of China and broke the ever-existing social system and ideology. The colonial rule by the western countries and the following politics reform launched by native intellectuals boosted the modernization process of the Chinese society. In this social historical condition gendered May 4 New Culture Movement. The purpose of New Culture Movement was objecting the ideology and traditional culture of federal society and promoting western science and democracy. Definitely, The Chinese literary world was greatly influenced by the social revolution trend. A good many of lofty youth having the experiences of studying abroad had a strong desire to reform or innovate the traditional culture. Kang Youwei's ideas of reform, Cheng Duxiu's thoughts of innovation and Cai Yunpai's propositions of esthetics for religions were among the advanced advocacy.The traditional Chinese painting, which deposited thousands years of traditional culture was not excluded in the compact of this trend. In the world of art, Xu Beihong, who was baptized by western literary putforward the innovation ideas of "adhering to the excellency, succeeding the declining, correcting the shortcomings and improving the imperfection of the traditional skills and merging into them the skills of western drawing. " Improving the traditional Chinese painting by the western realistic drawing was considered defying world opinion of that time. Xu's ideas were closed related to the impact of the occidentalized ideas of "Chinese learning for building one's thoughts and western learning for usage" put forward by a batch of intellectuals including Cheng Duxiu and Kang Youwei. However, Xu's propositions in art reform was indeed a huge strike at the vogue of imitating tradition prevailing in the circle of drawing in the beginning of the 20th century and was a big challenge and development to the traditional Chinese painting. In the field of art education, Xu Beihong introduced the western academic education system, cultivating many realistic oil painters for China and making great contribution to the popularity and development of the western painting education in China, which was unprecedented in the history of modern Chinese art. His contribution, in retrospect, had an active boost to the development of art. Nevertheless, Xu Beihong was a controversial figure in the history of modern art. The contribution he made to the Chinese art education and his perfect realistic skills were highly praised by people, however, the shortcomings of his art were seldom mentioned and not deeply analyzed. This article discusses XuBeihong's art from the flowing three aspects. First, examining the reasons of the growing of art trend of Xu Beihong's time and the development of western realism in the environment, that is discussing the factors helping form the leading position of Xu's scientific realism ideas. The second part studies Xu's viewpoints of art, an important part of which was his thoughts on esthetics education which is excluded in this thesis for the purpose of limiting the length of the paper, and his practice of art. The third part analyzes and evaluates the limitations and bigotry of his thoughts, such as the advantages and disadvantages of reforming traditional Chinese painting with realistic skills.Although a lot of researches have been done by predecessors about Xu Beihong's art, both praise and criticism were given while no final conclusions were drawn. With the development of society, the binding of politics toward art is declining while the influence of the commercial marketing to art is strengthening. After "85" new art movement, Chinese painting had experienced the historical process of western painting in several centuries. Chinese modern art is on the way of diversification. Arguing between realism and non-realism, concretion and abstract, modernism and postmodernism, traditionalism and avant-gardism, globalization and nationalization, etc. are always the focus of artists and in the academic c...