Women's Art Writing in the Literati Circle: Jin Taotao's Painting Treatise and Gender Roles in the Early-Republican Art World and Society

Date(s)： 2024/07/23

Time： 15:00~17:00

Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall

Host： Prof. Lai Yu-chih （Associate research fellow, IMH,AS）

Speaker：Prof. Doris Sung（Assistant Professor of Art History, The University of Alabama）

Organizer： Women and Gender History Research Group

Abstract：
This lecture examines the art writing of Jin Zhang (Jin Taotao, 1884–1939), a woman of the gentry who had received an education at an American-run missionary school in Shanghai and traveled to London and Paris on two different occasions. Her treatise Haoliang zhileji (The Joy of the Fish) was the only known comprehensive manual on painting fish, a subject matter that no surviving Chinese painting manuals have thoroughly discussed. Written in classical Chinese and filled with scholarly analysis of the historical, cultural, and artistic discourse on the subject, Jin’s book followed the tradition of art treatise writing which had long been the domain of male connoisseurs and literati elites. Discussed together with her art practice and representations in the popular press of the time, this lecture presents how Jin and other women artists navigated their roles and gender positioning in the early-Republican art world and defied the male-centered canon of art connoisseurship.

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