Chinese Cognition Of African Art Since The 20th Century

The one hundred year history of African art dissemination in China reflects the broad panorama of modern China has created. The social changes and transition of China leaves a deep imprint on its recognition towards African art.Ever since the 1900s, intellects and patriots resort to learning from the west to seek for salvation, the whole nation, bathed in the keen interest in western culture, naturally ignored the African art. Meanwhile, Africa at that time was writhing under the colonists' heels, without dignity or position on the world, the African art remains in a unfavorable place to thrive, not to mention transmit to other countries, for example, China. Even though there were few words mentioning African art, they were loosely scattered in various unsystematic documents. And the communication turned out to be even harder when the Anti-Japanese war broke out in China. Not until the establishment of People's Republic of china did Africa got rid of colonial rule and not surprisingly, the two felt a connection with each other after the experience of invasion, thus an ardent communication between the two parties ensued. After the reform and opening up policy, however, the western culture again washed over the giant oriental country, African art was extinguished for the second time. To one's relief, Chinese by this time had developed a fully informed recognition clear of political elements towards African art. Though only a minor portion compared with the giant chunk of European influence in China, the seed of African art study began to bud. At the turning of 21st century, in less than few years, the African art spread in China with an unprecedented speed. And China, at the same time, responded with a great deal of introduction of academic study of African art. In a short time, the once esoteric African art teemed on televisions, appeared on Chinese school's podiums; and there numerous institutions established devoting the study of Africa arts.Generally speaking, China's African art study and introduction deploys in three aspects:the history of African art, its forms and theories. For many various objective containments, there still remains a lot of mystique about African art unraveled. For example, this particular style of art has its own religious views and broad social meanings, also, it possess a strict set of rules and formulas regarding creation. Researchers have made genuine reflection on the afore-mentioned issues. Some Chinese people has grasped a chin of salt of African art through long term observation, vetoed the traditional view of African art as being rough and primitive.Through tracing the dissemination history of African art in China, I saw two main features of both the Chinese introduction and study of the art:the introduction is updating, and the study accommodating. Nowadays, the discipline of African art study is about to flourish, but it is also not invisible that there still exist a lack of independency of the study.This article tries to make a clear retrospect of the transmission history of African art and the Chinese recognition process since the 20th century, analyze and summarize the point of Chinese introducing and researching African art in academe, discuss the masses' cognition of African art, and put forward several thoughts via documentary study, questionaire survey and interviews and statistical method.