Ways of Seeing the Nation: Chinese Painting in the National Essence Journal (1905-1911) and Exhibition Culture

This paper explores the uneasy position of painting in an early twentieth-century Shanghai publication, the National Essence Journal (Guocui xuebao, 1905-11), published by the prominent and influential Society for Preservation of National Learning (Guoxue baocunhui). The publication is like international expositions and museums in peculiar ways; the Chinese paintings in it, devoted to the nation, are paradoxically invisible. In the article I explore how and why, establishing the ways in which painting was newly understood to matter in the modern era.