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This course aims to explore the cultural developments and social practice in Modern China from perspective of visual culture. Visual materials, including photographs, films, lithographs, advertisements will take you on “field trips” where you will engage with intellectual and art trends, political culture, the local diversity and the national unity. This course have dual themes: firstly, visual materials will be focused to represent the transformation in political, social and cultural environments of China from late Qing to the twenty- first century, and they will provide stimulating and powerful venues for you to understand China’s significant transitions though modernization. Secondly, visual material will not merely be treated as the reflection of the political and historical situation. The complex relationships among the arts, political developments and historical backgrounds will be discussed in order to address the dynamic reactions during the process of knowledge production.
This book studies the idea and image of ruins from China’s antiquity to the present. Wu Hung first examines the absence of ruins in China in earlier times, and then examines the circulation of ideas and images of the ruin between China and the West from the eighteenth century through the end of World War II. Wu Hung then moves to explore images from the mid-twentieth century onwards after the Sino-Japanese War, featuring realistic paintings and drawings of the aftermath of war, political images of the 1960s and state-sponsored art during the Cultural Revolution, and post-Cultural Revolution images. Finally, Wu Hung examines large-scale demolition in Beijing and the artistic responses.
This book analyzes the multiple and complex ways in which urban Chinese subjects saw themselves interacting with the new visual culture that emerged during the turbulent period between the 1880s and the 1930s. The media and visual forms examined include lithography, photography, advertising, film, and theatrical performances. Modernity, as the author shows, can be seen as spectacle. She demonstrates that, although the excessiveness of this spectacle captivated the modern subject, it did not completely overwhelm or immobilize those who engaged with it. After all, she argues, they participated in and performed with this ephemeral visual culture in an attempt to come to terms with their own new, modern self.
本書致力於通過的晚清畫報的研究，探究與西學東漸的圖像敘事的關系，揭示蘊藏的歷史文化內涵。全書共五章。第壹章探索晚清三種教會讀物，《教會新報》， 《天路歷程土話》和《畫圖新報》。第二章關註《點石齋畫報》的崛起，以及百年來諸多文人學者對這壹盛行十五年的畫報的追摹與懷念。第三章關註晚清科學小說，以飛車形象為中心進行了考察。第四章透視了晚清北京畫報中的女學。第五章再現了晚清畫報對帝京景象的描摹，是晚清社會的真實寫照。
本书作者参考了包括《点石斋画报》以及清末四大小说杂志《新小说》《绣像小说》《月月小说》《小说林》在内的大量文字与图片资料，选录了两百余幅照片，展现了谭嗣同、梁启超、蔡元培、鲁迅、吴趼人、包天笑等人种种奇异的科学幻想与科学实践，从电线、电话、大炮、海底隧道、潜水艇，到会写字的蜡人、留声机、蒸汽机器人、火车，到“近代唯灵论”、“电气说”、“催眠术”、“脑电”这些神秘科学，再到想象的飞车、飞舟、热气球。
本書回顧了近百年來中國時尚的最具代表性的元素，如新女性的解放纏足與短發、自行車、在百樂門、延安革命根據地和解禁年代的交際舞，西餐，胸罩、泳裝、內衣、中山裝、布拉吉等服裝，上海小報，百代唱片與以鄧麗君為代表的港臺流行音樂，進入公民生活的政治話題，情色文學，從戶籍、檔案、指標、編制中的解放，以及大學生結婚等等。作者試圖展現的，不只是這些風尚的表象，更是這表象背後人們生活方式與思想觀念的逐步解放和變遷。
