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Ways of Seeing the Nation: Chinese Painting in the National Essence Journal (1905-1911) and Exhibition Culture
- positions: east asia cultures critique
- Duke University Press
- Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 2011
- pp. 55-82
- Article
- Additional Information
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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.