Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 11. (Budapest, 1991)

FERENCZY Mária: A modernizáció megjelenése a századeleji kínai ábrázolásokon

The Imperial Birthday (no.13.). The earliest piece in this collection, this is an authentic representative of the Yang-liu-ch'ing tradition, with its theme and its artistic execution connected directly with its high art model. It could be turned into a New Year picture because the dowager empress wished to propagate the nationwide importance of her birthday and the accompanying festivities.

65 Twenty-five years later the use and function of a New Year picture was known to the officials of the Chih-li Provincial Office of Education in precisely the same way, hence The Treasures of Modern Prosperity (no. 15.) was ordered from the Yi-hsing-ho xylographie studio and the printing office in Feng-t'ai. Viewing the role of the New Year pictures from another angle we can see that — in conformity with the rites — they originally served the natural, spontaneous handing down of the elements of tradition, and played an important role in a society which was, for the most part, illiterate. Analysis of the pictures gives us an inside view of this process, and it has been undertaken to show that the makers of the pictures reacted in the same natural way — in fact, in a traditional spirit, with a flexibility characteristic of folklore — towards the changes in the world surrounding them, inserting its elements into their works. Thus, it is easy to see that the Magic Picture Promising the Rise of a Family (no.8.) could serve in its clumsy way the propaganda of modernization without the need of a government order: a rich family, playing at theatre/rite in its home is surrounded with the treasures of traditional wealth, and thus the wish expressed in the title is represented literally. This set phrase without a tradition is invested with the same magic power as the majority of the traditional symbols, but three out of the four sons of the family wear clothing which is partly foreign. More importantly, the promise is a rise in society already conceived in terms of the physician in European clothes, thus suggesting a positive course of action for a talented intellectual on the individual's road to modernization. As for the colouring of our pictures, The Altar of the Lord of All Souls (no.

2.) is the most old-fashioned, although the use of chemical paints in it is unmistakable. These paints (mostly imported), although not alien to Chinese tastes, are too bright. With a single exception, the production technique is traditional coloured block-printing combined with the hand-colouring characteristic of Yang-liu-ch'ing. There are great differences in the accuracy of the colours' application, as well as in the quality of composition: beside pieces carefully executed (as e.g. the Twin Gods of Luck, no.5. and the Magic Picture Promising Many Offspring, no.6.) some are made in a slipshod manner. Finally, there is an example of the modernization of technique in the collection: the Magic Picture Promising Prosperity and a Large Family (no.9.) was produced by lithography.

66 Its colouring, however, was done by hand in a traditional way. Even the faces were individually whitened, eyes, mouths and eye-brows being painted with delicate brush-strokes on the basis of the drawing that showed through the white, as on block-prints. Thus the decaying tradition was still rather powerful even in the second decade of the twentieth century: it was still able to integrate the new technology among the traditional elements, being a single, though a decisive, clement in the printing process.