YIJUN HUANG
Yijun Huang is a senior double majoring in Philosophy and Art History with a concentration in Built Environment Studies. Originally from Shanghai, she is interested in the relationship between art, design, and sustainability. She has explored the interplay between representations of the body and the environment in Chinese paintings, as well as the environmental history of China. Outside of her coursework, she is drawn to design projects that aim to bring meaningful changes to the world and combine empathy, creativity, and sustainability. After graduation, Yijun plans to pursue a graduate degree in design where she hopes to translate these interests into design practice to address social problems.
LIN FENGMIAN'S LADY PORTRAITS: FUSING EAST AND WEST THROUGH AN INTROSPECTIVE LENS
Lady in Blue Gown, Lin Fengmian, Undated, Ink and Color on Paper
Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) was a pioneering figure in Chinese modern Art. Throughout his long career, he remained open to various influences, drawing on artistic sources from Eastern, Western, ancient and modern traditions. Among the many subject matters he treated, Lady Portraits remained a consistent theme throughout his productive career. This paper focuses on Lin Fengmian’s Lady Portraits painted from his return from Europe to China to the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (1926-1949). It explores how Lin’s iconic portrayal of ladies, characterized by a balance of vibrant color and melancholic undertone, established a possible route to reinvent Chinese painting during a period of intense cultural and political transformation that began on the aftermath of the Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60) and forced China to open its ports to foreign trade. Importantly, it shows that beyond hybridizing multiple artistic sources, Lin’s Lady Portraits grew out of his own tragic experience with the many women who entered his life.
This paper begins by situating Lin in the context of traditional Chinese artistic norms that he was familiar with as well as those of European realism that were inspiring contemporaneous Chinese artists to pursue innovative directions. It then turns to Lin Fengmian’s Lady Portraits to trace how Lin conversed with and innovated on ancient and contemporary ideas through an introspective and highly personal lens, eventually defining a distinctive visual language that would revolutionize Chinese modern art. In doing so, this paper delves into several Lady Portraits, analyzing Lin’s use of composition, colors, lines, and materials, and their effects and compares them with canonical Chinese works and the approaches of his contemporaries. I further argue that Lin’s approach of using memory as the pivot of creation associated with his childhood tragedy added a tone of privateness to his Lady Portraits, which is in line with his philosophy of art as being able to form a spectrum of emotive responses in a world in crisis.