art

Shanghai Expression: Graphic Design in China in the 1920s and 30s

As featured in the book Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century by Scott Minick and Jiao Ping

About half of this 160-page book is devoted to the 1920s and 30s, when the ideas of writer and artist Lu Xun were very influential, particularly on the young design professionals involved with the May Fourth Movement. My favorite factoid in the book: Lu Xun—who introduced modern woodblock techniques to China—loved the German Expressionists and Käthe Kollwitz in particular. The authors point out that though Lu Xun taught many Western techniques, he always encouraged designers to seek inspiration in Chinese design history.

Publisher’s description:

From posters and advertisements to book covers and magazines, this book presents a dazzling panoply of modern graphic design in China.

Beginning with the basic traditions of Chinese graphics, the authors show how the writer and artist Lu Xun became the center of cultural revival in the new China. We see Art Deco coming to China in the Shanghai Style, and the birth of a dynamic national design style, born of Russian Constructivism and China’s own drive for new technology. The Socialist Realist art of Mao in turn adopted folk art traditions to fuel the Revolutionary machine, while the continuing search for a new identity can be seen in the graphic images of protest from the summer of 1989. 150 color and 135 black-and-white photographs and illustrations.

Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century makes a nice companion to the Steven Heller’s Art Deco Graphic Design series for Chronicle (though it’s published by Thames & Hudson).

See more at the source.