The True Record And Visual Modernity

In the history of Chinese pictorials, there is an illustrated magazine named The True Record which witnessed the typography transition of pictorials from lithography to photogravure printing. It has been a key to interpret visual culture of the early Republican China because of its rich variety of visual texts.The True Record was founded in Shanghai in 1912.Its founders are two brothers named Gao Jianfu and Gao Qifeng, the representatives of the Lingnan School of painting. Both of them are members of Tongmeng Party and had participated in the early revolutionary activities. Their dual role of artists and revolutionaries give rise to distinctive content and forms of this magazine. Based upon the complex context and multiple relationships between image and text, tradition and modern, East and West, enlightenment and revolution, politics and art, The True Record presents a wide view of that era, including political situation, change of art genre, and mechanism of graphic communication.This paper attempts to analyze The True Record from the perspective of "visual modernity" and clarity its position in art culture and its role in the history of journalism and communication. As a matter of fact, "visual modernity" is a viewpoint to explore modernity. Therefore it cannot do without association with some keywords of "modernity":instrumental rationality, science and technology, nation-states, industrial society, self-consciousness. In this paper, "visual modernity" can be interpreted from five aspects as follows:"truth", "time-space", "machine show", "new art" and "communication", all of which were constructed through photography, painting, mass media and other "modern objects". The first three aspects rely on the text of photos, while "new art" is based upon paintings. Undoubtedly, photo is the main part which can embody "visual modernity" in that era, photography is also an important aspect which makes The True Record different from contemporary pictorials. "New Traditional Chinese Painting" which embodies "art modernity" can be viewed as another dimension of "visual modernity". "Communication" aims to interpret the mechanisms and significance of the production, transmission and circulation of visual texts from the perspective of mass communication and interpersonal communication.In short, the "visual modernity" of The True Record is the combined effects of "photography modernity", "art modernity" and "communication modernity", which aims to construct people’s cognition and perception of the world through visual texts, that is:"see what" and "how to see".