"Time Cartoon" And The Modernist Writing Of Chinese Cartoons (1934-1937)

In 1930s,the first peak and enlightenment period of modernized arts in China has arisen in Shanghai’s relatively free and open cultural space,and manhua became a extremely active visual strength in such new art tide.Modern Sketch was a represented periodical,published by Shanghai Times Press,was called "the only initial satiric humor pictorial in China".It was mainly composed of manhua images and supplemented by photographs,essays and original literature works.As the best-selling manhua periodical at that time,39 issues of Modern Sketch had been published from 1934 to 1937,with a single sales volume of more than 10 thousand.The dissertation is divided into introduction and five chapters of the body,carries out a special discussion on Modern Sketch.The introduction trace back and comb the research literature about manhua in the Republic of China,positioning the researching perspective in "the modernism under culture and politics of semi-colonialism".Starting from sorting out the Times group’s early historical materials of publishing and editing,the body text selects classical models of manhua such as woman-themed manhau,documentary manhua,folk songs manhua and illustrated manhua on Modern Sketch.The main goal of this study is to depict manhua’ s modernism by examine its figurative form in modernism’s marketization,the crisis of the nationalities,the neo-traditionalism,and the image popularity in 1930’s Shanghai.Chapter one analyzes modern manhua’s cognitive construction by Modern Sketch and its creators."Time" group’s publishing and editing facts regards to the early manhua periodical are regarded as the principal line so as to analyze the modern manhua recognition which combining both social criticism and enthusiasm towards western fashion.Such recognition is formed by the Times group through referring to external resources and adjusting localized reading needs.It is believed that the "modern"group accepted the linear conception of time and evolutionary theory which were popular since the May fourth Movement but built the cross-border identity as an intermediary for the main body in the globalization context amid the extensive practice of commercial arts.Chapter two focuses on the women-themed manhua in which female body was the main image to reflect modernism.Through sorting out the manifestation of female bodies from the Modern Sketch,it is confirmed that the creation of pornographic manhua which results in a great deal of controversies is not only the expedient for the survival of the periodical and coping with the censorship but also related to the modernity and tradition of the pornographic narrative in the western comics.Simultaneously,the "neo-sensationist" school(xin ganjue pai)derived from metropolis consumer culture constructed the pioneer text which is beyond kitsch art by taking the visual reference from American lifestyle magazines when conducting intertextuality with novel texts.Chapter three has an intensive discussion on the rise of documentary manhua led by the Times group and Modern Sketch.Under the national crisis,Documentary manhua responses to the grand theme of the construction of modern nation state in the first half of the 20th century,the cartoonist group yearned for grasping a real China and established the identity of the nation by visually image,thus "report manhua" and"travel manhua" has been of the value in providing visual cognition.National Criticism and frontier writings became the keenest themes for documentary manhua.The expressionistic technique was used to present the benighted masses who were oppressive and brutal and ignorant in awakening,while the expressionistic technique of realism was used to reproduce Nanyang(a general name used for the Southeast Asia of Singapore,Malaysia,Indonesia)and the northwest which congregated the feelings of the the great China on the edge of the nation.Two designing strategies which seem to be different aim at evoking the identified national sensation.The fourth chapter analyzes the traditional conversion strategies existing in the modern creation of comic.The embrace of modernity will definitely be reflected on the attitude towards traditions,Hereby the comic series Folk Love Songs and The Plum in a Golden Vase respectively compiled by Zhang Guangyu and Cao Hanmei are taken as the individual cases.The creation of Folk Love Songs and The Plum in a Golden Vase was influenced by the local literature re-defined by the current literature movement;it also discovered the artistic values of tradition via the Western aesthetic experience.According to their creation process,the artistic universality reviewed by the cartoonists in the 1930s in Shanghai through the modern perspective was the reason for their art full of vitality and modernist characteristics.The fifth Chapter focuses on the visuality of the manhua in the 1930s,reviewing the photomontage manhua generated from media-technical languages such as films and photography in Modern Sketch.The rich experience of visualization in Shanghai’s urban cultural media space had made it possible for the cartoonists to built the visuality of manhua.The film provides a powerful technical visual language for manhua,which greatly enriches the narrative and representational dimensions of manhau as a graphic art.The techniques and aesthetic experience involved in visual reproduction,such as films and photography,have become a common sense in images for cartoonists.Therefore,as the avant-garde culture introduced in China from the Soviet Union and Germany,the photo montage technique was rapidly accepted by the cartoonists.On the one hand,they were attracted by the mellow expression of sensory experience in Hollywood movies,on the other hand,they cast off vanities and turned to the nationalist creation when the Sino-Japanese War was approaching.Photomontage manhua clearly presented as two creative orientations focusing on the erotic stimulation of visual consumption and nationalism calling for resistance.Modern Sketch was at the end of "the golden ten years" ruled by the national government and before the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War,and the production of its contents received dual influences of modern discourse of Shanghai modernism and nationalism discourse that was rising gradually,gathering the best cartoonists of the time with its absolute advantage of the magazine platform.The existing research on the manhua in the period of the Republic of China focuses more on the modern ethical expression of contents and themes upon manhua,while ignoring the dominant position for the modernism of the Chinese art in comics-comics as a popular cultural commodity,with highly inclusive painting styles and free speech channels,stand for a liberal and incisive cultural observer perspective.The innovation of this dissertation lies in avoiding the argument that manhua in the Republic of China era was "doomed to be modern" through identifying,analyzing,commenting and retrospecting the modernism value of Modern Sketch which has great classical significance,offering a reasonable and re-contextualized framework to the discussion upon how manhua in Shanghai during 1934 to 1937 could be moden,beginning with the cross-section of pictorial conventions.