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On Art: Fou Lei’s Early Writings 27 2 On Art: Fou Lei’s Early Writings Writer and intellectual Qian Zhongshu (1910–98), who studied French literature in Paris in the late 1930s, remembers that on his calling card his old friend Fou Lei described himself as Critique d’Art.1 In Paris, Fou Lei had developed his affinity with art and on his return to Shanghai he energetically took up this new role. In an impassioned essay on his friend Liu Haisu, written soon after his homecoming, Fou Lei comments that when Liu read the opening paragraph of Rilke’s book on the French sculptor Auguste Rodin he gave a deep sigh. ‘Rodin’, Rilke writes ‘was solitary before he was famous. And fame, when it arrived, made him perhaps even more solitary. For in the end fame is no more than the sum of all the misunderstandings that gather around a new name’.2 Fou Lei goes on to say that Liu Haisu had a solitary childhood but was now well known and yet fewer people now understand his art. He then poses the rhetorical question: ‘I do not ask whether China wants the artist, Liu Haisu, I only ask whether China wants this person, Liu Haisu.’ Fou Lei praises Liu’s self-confidence, bravery and resilience. He presents Liu as a hard-working artist, stating that exhibitions of his brushand -ink paintings and oil paintings had been well received in Frankfurt and Paris respectively (implying that they should also be well received in Shanghai), and that he was making a great personal sacrifice to return to China and devote himself to art education. Fou Lei closes by exhorting Liu Haisu to continue using fire-like colour to reignite the dying flame of the Chinese spirit. By drawing attention to Liu Haisu the person (someone he knew well), and presenting him as a heroic but misunderstood figure, Fou Lei acknowledges the importance of Liu Haisu’s vision for contemporary Chinese art—a vision that had also come to embrace the practice of brush-and-ink painting. The essay was published in L’Art, the magazine of the Shanghai Art College, and also appears in the volume on Liu Haisu in Masterpieces of World Art, a series of books edited by Liu and Fou Lei that introduced multiple large-scale black and white reproductions of artworks by key modern Western artists to Chinese audiences for the first time. This project developed out of Fou Lei’s and Liu Haisu’s time in Europe in the company of art and artists. Published by China Books in Friendship in Art 28 Shanghai between 1932 and 1936, the eight volumes featured the work of Derain, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Monet—and Liu Haisu. In the introductory essay to the first volume, written while he was in Belgium, Liu Haisu describes Derain as the only modern artist whose work represents a continuation of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century styles, embodying the energy and vigour of the contemporary period. Liu claims that he viewed 360 of the artist’s paintings and studied each of the works that was being reproduced in the book. The second volume, edited by Fou Lei, is devoted to the art of Liu Haisu and provocatively places Liu Haisu’s paintings in the context of masterpieces of modern world art. The images reproduced include a portrait of Liu Haisu’s wife Zhang Junshi painted in a style reminiscent of Matisse, a nude inspired by Derain, a vase of sunflowers clearly influenced by the work of Van Gogh, and Parisian scenes of the River Seine, the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens and the Paris Opera House, all creative responses to his European tour. The volume includes an essay reprinted from Liu’s 1931 Paris exhibition by Louis Laloy (1874–1944), a noted French music critic and musicologist with a doctorate from the Université de Paris. Laloy had a longstanding interest in Chinese music, language and culture and was well known to Liu and Fou. He travelled to China for the first time in 1931 accompanying Fou Lei, Liu Haisu and Zhang Junshi on their return journey.3 Masterpieces of World Art promotes Liu Haisu’s knowledge of international modern masters to a Chinese audience and points to Fou Lei’s role as translator and cultural commentator. While Fou Lei’s contribution to seven of the volumes is not formally acknowledged, his involvement is suggested through the incorporation of French...

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