Lu Xun (1881-1936) and the Modern Woodcut Movement

1 Lu Xun (1881-1936) and the Modern Woodcut Movement CAROLINE CORBAN Bowdoin College, 2017 ABSTRACT While the art of wood engraving existed in China as early as the 9th century, Lu Xun (1881-1936) was the first to examine foreign woodcut prints and recognize the effective potential of using the medium to serve needs in China, as propaganda and to promote social change. He is considered the father of the Modern Woodcut Movement of the 1930s and 1940s and a leading figure in modern Chinese literature and education. Through his lectures and writings, Lu Xun called for a new form of art that gave voice and passion to the people: the woodcut print. This paper not only discusses his direct role in the WC movement but also the art societies and artists Lu Xun supported. Additionally, it delves into the adversary Lu Xun faced as he took on the mission of promoting and publicizing foreign-inspired woodcut prints, which sought to improve, awaken, and unite Chinese society. In The Divergence of Art and Politics, Lu Xun says “contemporary art describes our society, and even we are written into it. Previous art, like a fire across a river, had little to do with us. In contemporary art even we ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 2 ourselves are burning; we certainly feel it deeply.” 1 In this talk given at Jinan University, Shanghai in 1927, Lu Xun, a leading figure in modern Chinese literature and education, discusses the transformation and modernization of art as it mobilized revolution in early twentieth century China. Through his lectures and writings, Lu Xun called for a new form of art that gave voice and passion to the people: the woodcut print. He took on the mission of promoting and publicizing foreign-inspired woodcut prints, known at the Modern Woodcut movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which sought to improve, awaken, and unite Chinese society. The early twentieth century in China was a particularly tumultuous period as the nation struggled to build and solidify itself amidst calls for modernization and the rapid influx of new ideas for political, social, and cultural reform. A strong cultural movement of the time opposed Western imperialism and promoted democracy and science.2 Many major literary, educational and political figures, including the famous Cai Yuanpei, recognized and agreed that the source of Chinese weakness was its Confucian ideology. This debate over how to reshape Chinese culture primarily from 1915-1923 is known as the New Culture Movement. Some reformers, including Chen Duxiu believed that modernization entailed rejecting Chinese traditional culture and adopting Western ideas, from technology and science to literary and art forms. One of the major cultural reforms was the replacement of classical Chinese language with the more easily understood vernacular (baihua, every-day spoken language). Lu Xun made his first step into spotlight during the New Culture movement when he used this new style, writing in the vernacular, in his first and most famous short story, “The Diary of a Madman”, which ridiculed the failings of Lu Xun, “The Divergence of Art and Politics”, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996), 333. 2 Kuiyi Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China.” Shanghai Modern: 1919-1945 (2004), 262. 1 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 3 traditional Confucian society. 3 In his Preface to Call to Arms, Lu Xun describes how his friend Jin Xinyi convinced him to actually voice his opinions by writing and publishing this story in Chen Duxiu’s journal New Youth in 1918. 4 However, Lu Xun began developing his ideas for literary and art reform when he studied medicine in Japan from 1902-1909 when the Russo-Japanese war broke out. 5 As he recalls in his Preface to Call to Arms: one day during class, he was examining a war slide that depicted a group of Chinese people, one tied up and about to be executed while the figures around him that had come to watch the spectacle stood completely apathetic. 6 He states, “This slide convinced me that medical science was not so important after all… the most important thing was to change their spirit.”7 From this moment, he gave up his medical studies for a career as an educator, writer and editor for he believed that literature and art reforms were crucial to modernization and freeing China’s spirit.8 Interestingly, it was Li Shutong who first promoted and exhibited European woodcuts as early as 1912, but it was Lu Xun who recognized the effective potential of adapting the medium to Chinese circumstances, utilizing woodcuts as propaganda and mass education to promote social change. Lu Xun always admired the Western woodcuts of Kathe Kollowitz, Vladimir A. Favorsky, and Frans Masereel and their link to society, fighting for political justice and depicting suffering masses under oppression. Lu Xun saw that woodcuts were not only capable of communicating ideas, but that they were “a people’s art”. 9 Woodcut prints were particularly advantageous as they could be easily reprinted and widely distributed. The Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen, The Art of Modern China (Berkeley: 2012), 43. Lu Xun, “Preface to Call to Arms,” Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996) 241-242. 5 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 266. 6 Xun, “Preface to Call to Arms,” 239. 7 Xun, “Preface to Call to Arms,” 240. 8 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 266. 9 Chang-Tai Hung, “Two Images of Socialism: Woodcuts in Chinese Communist Politics,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1997), 37. 3 4 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 4 physicality of the medium and the practice of producing woodcuts created graphic black and white, bold and often crude lines, offering an emotional rawness that can used for social betterment.10 In a society where art was typically characterized by the Confucian and Daoist notion of harmony, woodcuts were a departure from tradition as their depiction of suffering was revolutionary.11 The art of wood engraving actually existed in China early as the 9th century; however modern woodcuts departed from those of China’s past in the sense that they were internationally-inspired, derived from foreign influence. Additionally, the Modern Woodcut movement introduced significant changes in the practice of making prints. Artists of the Modern Woodcut movement printed with European oil-based printing inks, rather than traditional water based inks.12 Furthermore, in traditional Chinese prints, the drafts or painting was often made by one artist and then given to another for the actual wood-carving. 13 However, 20th century printmakers carved and printed their own blocks, which created a sense of immediacy fit for the intention behind their works.14 Throughout his life, Lu Xun had always admired graphic art and illustrations in Western textbooks and collected international rubbings and prints as well as Chinese books and papers.15 Lu Xun’s global view on art and literature led him to introduce many foreign, specifically European woodcuts into China by organizing exhibitions in the 1930s with the support of his friend Uchiyama Kanzo and Uchiyama’s bookstore in Shanghai. 16 He organized a number of events and lectures where young artists could hear Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 269. Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China (Berkeley, 1996), 80. 12 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 266. 13 Woodcuts of Wartime China: 1937-1945 (Shanghai, 1946), xvii. 14 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 266 15 Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China, 80. Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 267. 16 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 82. 10 11 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 5 his view on the significant potential of using this new art form to modernize art and improve Chinese society. In 1928, he founded the Morning Flower Society in Shanghai to introduce foreign literature and woodcuts. The society published 5 volumes for foreign woodcuts, including Soviet graphic art.17 While Lu Xun and many young printmaking artists were not officially part of the Communist party, they sympathized with the Communist party’s aims and involved themselves in left-wing activism. 18 Additionally, opposition against the Nationalist government was augmented when Japan attacked Manchuria in 1931.19As many printmakers were persecuted for their politically active works, many artists changed their names, met in secret and were imprisoned.20 The Morning Flower Society itself came to an end in January 1931, when the Nationalist police discovered their secret meetings and consequently confiscated many of their works and shot 23 members, including 3 of the 5 founding members: Hu Yebin, Yin Fu and Rou Shi. To commemorate the death of Rou Shi, one of his beloved students, Lu Xun published The Sacrifice by Kathe Kollowitz in the first issue of literature journal Beidou (fig. 1). The woodcut depicts a grieving mother with outstretched arms, holding the body of her dead son. 21 In 1936, Lu Xun also sponsored and wrote the introductory text for an anthology of Kollowitz’s prints, The Selected Prints of Kathe Kollowitz.22 In “Written in the Deep of the Night: On Kathe Kollowitz” published in April 1936, Lu Xun discusses his and Rou Shi’s admiration for Kollowitz’s works. He points out that those Chinese people who have not had an opportunity to travel abroad have the idea that all white people are well-dressed, well-fed, and financially secure Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China, 80. Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 269. 19 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 270. 20 Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China, 83. 21 Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China, 84. 22 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 82. 17 18 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 6 while Kollowitz shows that “there are others ‘injured and insulted’ like us in many places on the earth, as well as artists who mourn, protest and struggle on their behalf.” Especially in The Sacrifice, we see the idea of all mothers grieving and suffering, representative of the universal effects of war.23 Following the Nationalist crackdown in Shanghai in 1931, Lu Xun lived in semiseclusion in the Japanese district of the city, where he gave rise to the Modern Woodcut movement.24 While the date of the birth of the Modern Woodcut movement is not universally agreed upon, many sources claim the event that marks its birth was the woodcut training class conducted by Lu Xun and Uchiyama’s younger brother, Uchiyama Kakechi from August 17-22, 1931.25 Thirteen students were recruited for the class held at a Japanese school in Shanghai. During this summer course, Lu Xun lectured on the history of prints in his collection and the practical art of making woodcuts.26 This six day workshop, the first time young artists were actually taught printmaking technique, was later commemorated in Li Hua’s woodcut Lu Xun and Uchiyama Kakechi Conduct a Woodcut Class in Shanghai (fig. 2). One of Li Hua’s earlier works, this woodcut print captures a moment where the seated students eagerly examine pieces of Lu Xun’s foreign collection while Lu Xun himself stands upright and authoritative in the center of the classroom.27 Lu Xun also conducted more study sessions and classes for young artists later in his career. Many of Lu Xun’s students had come to Shanghai for higher education and then spread their enthusiasm for this new art form when they went back to their cities (e.g. Guangdong, Sichuan, Zhejiang) thus propagating printmaking centers all over the nation.28 Lu Xun, “Written in the Deep of the Night: On Kathe Kollowitz,” Shanghai Modern (2004), 291. Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 83. 25 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 268. 26 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 83. 27 Sullivan, Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China, 85. 28 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 83. 23 24 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 7 Among the first new printmaking clubs that sprung up in Shanghai in the early 1930s are the Eighteen Art Society established by Lu Xun’s mentees including Chen Tiegeng and Jiang Feng. In 1932, Chen Yanqiao and He Baitao created the Wild Grain Woodcut society at the New China Art academy.29 After Japan’s attacked Manchuria in 1931, many young artists took to expressing their anger and frustration about the passivity of the Nationalist government through woodcuts. One important woodcut print representative of this anti-Nationalist sentiment is Jiang Feng’s Kill the Resisters, which depicts the members of the national army trying to put down protestors (fig. 3).30 In the upper left hand corner, Jiang Feng incised the icon “sun” of Nationalists who are seen oppressing the people. Interestingly, to accentuate people’s opposition against the Nationalist government, the Nationalist army is depicted in black while the protestors are carved to away to reveal the whites of the medium. There is a certain sense of rawness and suffering to the protestors’ faces, which express fear and desperation as they appear to flee off the woodcut itself away from government oppression. Jiang Feng and other students of Lu Xun formed the Spring Earth Painting Research Center, the successor to the Eighteen Art Society. The society’s had leftist goals and its manifesto was rather collective and didactic: “Modern art must follow a new road, must serve a new society, must become a powerful tool for educating the masses, informing the masses, and organizing the masses”.31 The idea of art for the masses parallels Lu Xun’s statement in his own writing On the Power of Mara Poetry: “The essence of all art is to rouse and delight the audience.”32 In mid-1932, the Spring Earth Painting Research Center held an exhibition which displayed prominent works like the woodcut print To the Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 83. Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 84. 31 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 85. 32 Lu Xun, “On the Power of Mara Poetry,” Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996), 105. 29 30 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 8 Front! by Hu Yichuan, another one of Lu Xun’s printmaking students (fig. 4). Hu Yichuan was also an organizer of the Eighteenth Art society and was closely involved in the woodcut movement.33His woodcut has an intense stylistic boldness and elicits a sense of aggression and movement. This emotional intensity is made possible not only through the crudeness and physicality of carving but also through the opposing pulling diagonals and the central figure reaching out to the audience, making the image demanding and immediate. Created with an anti-Japanese agenda in response to the Shanghai war of 1932 when Japan bombed and destroyed many cultural buildings in the city, Hu Yichuan’s woodcut print is very much a call to the people to the take up arms and fight against foreign invasion. In Lu Xun’s “A Defence of ‘Picture Books’” of 1932, he pushes for the idea of picture books as art and as a form of propaganda, claiming that they should be taken seriously as there already exists forms of art as propaganda such as the frescos in the Vatican. He argues that people should be able to make their own standards, overturning previous bourgeois notions of art. Most importantly, the actual act of claiming prints as a political statement is representative of the power of the masses.34 Jiang Feng’s Kill the Resistors and Hu Yichuan’s To the Front! both embody Lu Xun’s ideas in their political agenda and their capacity to inspire and motivate the Chinese people. However, soon after the Spring Earth Painting Research Center’s exhibition where Hu Yichuan’s work was displayed, Jiang Feng and other members of the Spring Earth Society were arrested. Lu Xun sent letters to artists such as Jiang Feng during their imprisonment, praising them for their activism and keeping up their morale. In addition to lecturing at universities and exhibitions, Lu Xun also corresponded with many other 33 34 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 85. Lu Xun, “A Defence of ‘Picture Books’”, Shanghai Modern: 1919-1945 (2004), 292-294. ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 9 printmakers, advising and financially supporting artists such as Chen Yanqiao and Zheng Yefu. 35 Because of frequent arrests of printmaking artists and the political suppression of organizations, printmaking clubs were born and died very rapidly. In 1932, the MK society was established in the Shanghai Art Academy, of which the founding group included Zhang Wang and talented members such as Hu Yichuan, Chen Tiegeng, Chen Yanqiao and Zheng Yefu.36 When Lu Xun attended one of their exhibitions, he particularly admired Chen Tiegeng’s Mother and Child (fig. 5). Also published under the title Waiting, Chen Tiegeng’s work portrays a poverty-stricken family of a rickshaw puller Chen Tiegeng had met during his labor activism. However, the group was short-lived; they were disbanded when some of their members, including Hu Yichuan were arrested and their works and supplies were confiscated. In 1933, the Dumb Bell Woodcut Research Society (also known as the Wooden Bell Society) was established at the West Lake National Art Academy. While also imitating the school of Paris style in postimpressionist, fauvist and cubist oil paintings, its members also held exhibitions of their own woodcuts and published their catalog in 1934, which was distributed by the Uchiyama bookstore. 37 In 1934, Lu Xun published 24 socially critical prints in his anthology Woodcut Progress also distributed by the Uchiyama Bookstore which documented recent developments in the movement. One of the prints included in Zhang Wang’s Head Wound, which glorifies the injured and sympathizes with the hard life of urban workers and rural peasants (fig. 6).38 This powerful close up uses cleanly modelled lines and white areas to portray the figure’s ached facial expression. Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 85. Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 274. 37 Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 86. 38 Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 277. 35 36 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 10 While there was a large crackdown on printmaking clubs in Shanghai in 1934, one strong printmaking group, the Modern Woodcut Society, was established in the less tightly controlled city of Guangzhou by artist and teacher, Li Hua.39 In 1935, the first national woodcut exhibition was organized by the Pingjin woodcut Research Society. The show was the first of its scale and publicity as it featured many well-known works of artists such as Jiang Feng, Hu Yichuan and Li Hua and traveled from Beijing to many other cities, bringing a great deal of attention to the woodcut movement. The Modern Woodcut Society of Guangzhou organized the second national exhibition in 1936 which was also brought to many other cities. Lu Xun attended the show in Shanghai on October 8, 1936, just 11 days before his death.40 Heavily influenced by Lu Xun, the founder of the Modern Woodcut Society Li Hua was a great printmaker and curator who played a vital role in the Modern Woodcut movement especially after Lu Xun’s death. After the demise of the father of the Modern Woodcut movement and the outbreak of war in 1937, woodcuts experienced changes in terms of style and content. Many sources argue that the Modern Woodcut movement’s history is divided into two phases separated by the Japanese invasion in 1937. Woodcuts from before the invasion are described as “multi-faceted modernism”. However as the survival of the nation was in question and discontent with the Nationalist government grew, woodcuts produced afterwards were generally characterized by themes of unity and the collective, an ideological tone and a more realistic, easily comprehendible style.41 This shift from personal experimentation with style and form to more narrative and legible content is manifested in Li Hua’s works of the 1930s Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 278. Shen, “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China”, 281. 41 Andrews and Shen, A Century in Crisis (New York, 1998), 213. 39 40 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 11 and 1940s. In arguably his most profound woodcut print China, Roar! Li Hua renders a human form on the verge of emancipation from foreign oppression with emotion-charged, angular and jagged lines (fig. 7). Xiaobing Tang develops an insightful interpretation of this piece in Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement. The tension in the print is derived from the contrast between the horizontal tightening ropes and the naked male’s muscular upright body. The pinnacle of the print is the man’s face and his agonized expression, where Tang points out how the blindfolded man, who is prevented from seeing us, makes us uncomfortably aware of our situation as viewers. Consequently, we yearn to hear the cry from his wide-open mouth and express our humanity in reassuring the figure of our receptiveness.42 The man’s scream is described as the “collective voice of the unrepresented…urging the dormant masses to cry out against ignorance, injustice, and oppression.” Interestingly, though the image by its title is mostly likely intended to unify the China to fight against the Japanese invasion, there is no visual indication that the man is necessarily Chinese. He is an incitement for awakening and possibly a metaphor for a present, universal condition of suffering.43 Tang also expands Li Hua’s print to a literary context by relating the image’s indomitable spirit to Lu Xun’s collections of short stories, Call to Arms or Outcry, published in 1923 which included his famous “The Diary of a Madman” and “The True Story of Ah Q”. 44 Lu Xun voices his disappointment with Chinese political culture during the 1910s-1920s in “The True Story of Ah Q”, which describes the life of a delusional, social Xiaobing Tang, Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde (Berkeley, 2008), 216. Rossella Ferarri, “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang”, China Review International (2009), 273. 44 Carolyn M. Bloomer, “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang,” The China Journal (2009), 149. 42 43 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 12 loser and the bleak, mean-spirited society in which he lives, satirizing the 1911 revolution as empty and meaningless.45 In his writings, On the Power of Mara Poetry from the late Qing period and The Divergence of Art and Politics from 1927, Lu Xun evidently always believed in the liberating voice of literature and art. Lu Xun’s earlier writing is rather idealistic and spiritual; he states that “literature has at least as much utility for human life as do food, clothing, shelter and religion…it can nurture our imagination…and open one to the truth of life.”46 While he advocates that literature and morality are inherently linked, there is an undertone of distress in his writing as he worries: “Where are the warriors of the spirit? Is there a genuine voice to lead us to goodness, beauty, vigor?”47 Lu Xun’s later writing during the revolutionary reforms of 1920s and 1930s is still visionary but more grounded in the social reality of the time. He specifies that literature is the language of society and that art is in “ceaseless conflict with politics: politics wanted to keep the status quo but art hastened the social evolution that caused the gradual disintegration of society.” 48 Politics in this context refers to the Nationalists, the government at the time. Evident especially during the outbreak of civil war in 1946, woodcut prints such Li Hua’s have a political agenda against the Nationalist government; however their visual aspects are more narrative, didactic and immediately understood. Li Hua’s content-based Take Him In! details a family helping an injured student coming from a rally against the government (fig. 8). The corruption and incompetence of the government especially after the war with Japan fueled more revolutionary support evident in the prints of the late 1940’s that voice the general public’s anti-Nationalist opinions. Li Hua’s Arise, Suffering Slaves from his Tide of Anger series brings about a sense of R. Keith Schoppa, Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History (2002), 167. 46 Xun, “On the Power of Mara Poetry,” 106. 47 Xun, “On the Power of Mara Poetry,”, 108. 48 Xun, “The Divergence of Art and Politics”, 329. 45 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 13 movement and greater unity through its depiction of a mass of seemingly similar figures in a vicious charge against the Nationalist government (fig. 9). Lu Xun’s claim that “art is a thorn in politicians’ flesh” is appreciated in context of these images where the artist was clearly sowing the seeds of revolution.49 As Lu Xun was a firm believer that art, particularly woodcuts, could free the human spirit, his strive to give voice to the Chinese people is undoubtedly conveyed in both Lu Xun’s literature and the prints of artists he supported, like Li Hua’s China, Roar! In his preface to Itagaki Takao’s History of Modern Art, Lu Xun says, “The great artist, even the genius, is nothing but the executor, the supreme fulfillment of the Kunstwollen (Reigel’s ‘will-to-form’) of his nation and age”. Most importantly, Lu Xun believed that art belonged to its own time and could only be understood in the historical context in which it was created. The woodcuts of this revolutionary period give viewers a strong sense of what the Chinese people were experiencing and how artists utilized this medium to express the human condition and instigate social change. 50This idea is critical to the understanding of the avant-garde woodcut movement. Inspired and adapted from expressionist European and Russian woodcuts, the work of the Modern Woodcut movement departs from traditional Confucian and Daoist notions of harmony with stark, compelling prints of inhumane social conditions designed for the people.51 Xun, “The Divergence of Art and Politics”, 329, 331. Andrews and Shen, The Art of Modern China, 89. 51 Bloomer, “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang,” The China Journal, 148. 49 50 ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 14 Bibliography Andrews, Julia F. and Kuiyi Shen. A Century in Crisis. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1998. Andrews, Julia F. and Kuiyi Shen. The Art of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Bloomer, Carolyn M. “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang.” The China Journal (2009): 148150. Ferarri, Rossella. “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang”. China Review International (2009):271-275. Laing, Ellen Johnston. “Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement by Xiaobing Tang.” The Journal of Asian Studies (2008): 1437-1438. Hung, Chang-Tai. “Two Images of Socialism: Woodcuts in Chinese Communist Politics.” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1997): 34-60. Schoppa, R. Keith. Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. Shen, Kuiyi. “The Modernist Woodcut Movement in 1930s China.” Shanghai Modern: 1919-1945 (2004): 262-289. Tang, Xiaobing. Origins of the Avant-garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement. Berkeley: University of California, 2008. Xun, Lu. “On the Power of Mara Poetry.” Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996): 96-109. Xun, Lu. “Preface to Call to Arms.” Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996): 238-242. Xun, Lu. “The Divergence of Art and Politics.” Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (1996): 328-334. Sullivan, Michael. Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century China. Berkeley: University of California, 1996. Xun, Lu. “Written in the Deep of the Night: On Kathe Kollowitz.” Shanghai Modern: 1919-1945 (2004): 290-291. Xun, Lu. “A Defence of ‘Picture Books’.” Shanghai Modern: 1919-1945 (2004): 292-295. Woodcuts of Wartime China: 1937-1945. Shanghai: Kaiming Book Company, 1946. Andrews, Julia F. and Kuiyi Shen. The Art of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 15 Images Figure 1. Kathe Kollowitz, The Sacrifice from The War Series, 1922-1923, 37.2 by 40.8cm, woodcut series of 7 prints. ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 16 Figure 2. Li Hua, Lu Xun and Uchiyama Kakechi Conduct a Woodcut Class in Shanghai, 1931, woodcut print on paper. Figure 3. Jiang Feng, Kill the Resisters, 1931, 14 by 17.7cm, woodcut print on paper, National Art Museum of China, Beijing ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 17 Figure 4. Hu Yichuan, To the Front!, 1932, 23.2 by 30.5cm, woodcut print on paper, Lu Xun Memorial, Shanghai Figure 5. Chen Tiegeng, Mother and Child, 1933, 12.8 by 11cm, woodcut, Lu Xun Memorial, Shanghai ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 18 Figure 6. Zhang Wang, Head Wound, 1934, 24.3 by 15.2cm, woodcut print on paper, Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum, Nanjing Figure 7. Li Hua, China, Roar! 1936, 23 by 16.5 cm, woodcut print on paper, Lu Xun Memorial, Shanghai ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 19 Figure 8. Li Hua, Take Him In!, 1946, woodcut print on paper. ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015 20 Figure 9. Li Hua, Arise, Suffering Slaves from The Tide of Anger series, 1947, woodcut print on paper. ______________________________________________________________ BOWDOIN JOURNAL OF ART, 2015