The Discourse of Guohua in Wartime China

Having been associated with “traditional” and “conservative” in standard art history, Guohua (national painting or Chinese painting) was a central yet problematic subject in the discourse of art in twentieth-century China. Due to its connotations of elite culture and “Chineseness”, guohua was criticized severely yet regarded as the only art form that could represent modern China in the international art scene. This paper looks at the discourse of guohua in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), aiming to shed light on our understanding of the production and reception of guohua in the complex sociocultural context of wartime China. In 1937, the government relocated the capital and resources from eastern China to western inland, which resulted in the reconfiguration of the Chinese art world. Displaced artists lived in three areas that were ruled by different governments: the Nationalist government, the Communist Party, and the Puppet government. While the Nationalist government exported guohua exhibitions to Europe and America to construct national identity and gained diplomatic support, the Wang Jingwei’s puppet government organized national art exhibitions and promoted guohua, competing against the Nationalist government for cultural legitimacy. Furthermore, the changing status and layered meanings attached to guohua were complicated by the theory of the Greater East Asian Culture put forward by Japanese scholars, which glorified guohua and nihonga (Japanese painting) as the root of East Asian art and criticized western art as cultural imperialism. The case of guohua demonstrates how politics, ideology productions, and aesthetic discourse were interwoven in modern China.