Abstract
In the inter-war period, Hong Kong experienced a new wave of consumerism and nationalism, and many local products were marketed via print media, witnessing the rise of a new Chinese industry. Calendar posters (yuefenpai) became a mainstream commercial medium, disseminating modernity and ideologies of the Chinese woman in the early twentieth century. Several Chinese artists contributed in modern print media, including ‘King of calendar poster’ Hong Kong artist Kwan Wai-nung, creating numerous Art Deco advertisements and prints. However, research on these pioneers in modernising Chinese commercial art is scant. While studies reveal the myriad relations between women and consumer culture, positioning Art Deco as an intentional marketing strategy to ‘glamorise’ modern lifestyles (Todd 2004) as well as by being instruments of propaganda of modern living conditions, this field has yet to be explored for early modern Chinese art. This paper will utilise postcolonial theory as the basis for an analysis of early modern print media in Hong Kong and regional Chinese cities, arguing that there were ‘invisible’ forms of politics (as opposed to Bozdogan’s ‘visible politics’ of top-down programs in modernising non-Western countries) and that certain Chinese artists were problematising the artistic style while they contested colonial agenda in their commercial designs. This paper also argues that certain Chinese print media in the early twentieth century were not passive subjects unable to escape the pressure of British colonial ideology, but could instead ‘consume the dominant culture’ (Ashcroft 2001) via the Art Deco style in a strategy of self-fashioning and self-representation.
Presenters
Leung Kwok Prudence LauAssistant Professor, Associate Head of Department, Department of Cultural and Creative Arts, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Modern Chinese Woman, Print Media, Commercial, Art Deco, Hong Kong
