| Abstract | This dissertation investigates a crucial but previously unexplored facet of visual culture in Shanghai: the increasing presence of Japanese goods, prints, and entertainment in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century. By constructing the daily circulation and consumption of Japanese material culture in Shanghai, this dissertation will argue that Ren Bonian, arguably the most creative and representative painter of Shanghai at the time, adopted and appropriated many designs and conventions from Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and lacquer designs, but without giving explicit credit. In contrast to the supposed mainstream of Chinese-centered mentality in the Shanghai art scene at this time, ironically, it is indeed this unrecognized and somewhat surreptitious appropriation of artistic idioms from Japanese popular culture by painters like Ren Bonian that shaped what we now identify as the most inventive element of Shanghai paintings. In terms of the structure, this dissertation begins with a methodological discussion of the various issues regarding the significance of the period from 1842 to 1895, and of the artist, Ren Bonian, in the study of not only Chinese art history, but also cultural exchange and Sino-Japanese history. Due to the deeply rooted misconception that has always asserted a unilateral Chinese influence over Japan, Chapter One first “rewrites” a history of how Japanese luxury goods, including art objects, were indeed circulated, consumed, and appreciated in China throughout history. Coming back to Ren Bonian and Shanghai, in Chapter Two and Chapter Three, I reconstruct the Japanese things and Japanese people that Ren might have encountered and associated with, respectively, in his day in Shanghai. Then, Chapter Four is devoted to a formal investigation of Japanese idioms in the art of Ren Bonian. This visual analysis will finally come together with pieces of cultural fragments gathered in the previous chapters to form a picture of the emerging trans-national popular culture in Shanghai in the nascent modern world of the late nineteenth century. |
