On The Cause Of Lateness Of China's Acceptance Of The Impressionism Compared With Japan

Through comparing the process of the transmission of the Impressionism in Japan and China, the present study searches for the reason that caused China to drop behind Japan in accepting the Impressionism. From the May 4th Movement in 1919 to the end of the Cultural Revolution, the main stream of the fine art of China had been endowed with social and political responsibility, but the law of the development of the art had been ignored. Hence, the spirit of the fine art in contemporary China became different to that of the western art. The independent development has been thus suppressed. However, the transmission of the Impressionism in Japan can be regarded as a sort of recursive of culture. Moreover, Japan adopted western culture actively, so that it could accept the Impressionism very soon, which promoted the modernization of fine art. On the contrary, China passively took up the western culture. Besides, the superiority complex of its own culture prevented China from admitting and developing the Impressionism. The reasons mentioned above caused China's lateness in accepting the Impressionism comparing with Japan. Fine art, as an essential part of the Chinese culture, failed to update with the development of modern art, due to its laggard acceptance of the Impressionism, which caused the malposition of the social and cultural development of modern China.