Women of the past (I): calendar posters, Shanghai fashion and artists
In the first half of 1900s, the "calendar poster" to a large extent reflected the new image of urban women other than showing traditional Chinese mythology.
The "calendar poster" was a kind of commercial poster originated in Shanghai during the period from the beginning of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. It was a combination of stomp painting and color painting. Early foreign advertisements were in the form of paintings of western scenery and beauties coming with the goods for free. But such western styles hardly appealed to Chinese people. Therefore, businessmen from both home and abroad started to replace western beauties with traditional Chinese landscape and figure paintings. As the advertising industry developed and people's tastes changed, figure paintings were soon replaced by paintings of beautiful women from ancient and modern times. The images of these women were either living up to the standards of traditional beauty or using current opera singers and rising TV stars as prototypes. Many famous people even had their images painted on the posters directly, such the commercial poster for Ha De Men tobacco drawn by Hu Boxiang (胡伯翔), in which the woman sitting by water bore a strong resemblance to Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉). Some celebrities even signed on the commercial posters with their images. This might be the beginning of celebrity advertising in China.
Famous calendar poster painters were Zhou Muqiao (周暮桥), Zheng Mantuo (郑曼陀), Hang Zhiying (杭秪英) and Jin Meisheng (金梅生). Under the influence of the advertising function of calendar poster, the painters used their brushes to create more secular female images, somewhat reflecting a little bourgeois sentiment that just started to emerge in China. Women in some posters were dressed more boldly and openly, such as Zheng Mantuo's Yang Yuhuan Bathing Picture for Da Chang tobacco company and Flirting in the Boudoir for Chaohu Gongxing silk and satin bureau, Hang Zhiying's Not Confused by Seven Emotions for Hongxi partridge herbal medicine pharmacy, and Jin Zhaofang's (金肇芳) After Bathing for Shandong tobacco company in Qingdao. Women in these advertisements were all half naked in order to show female beauty. In Wu Guangzhi's (吴广志) Body and Love Flower Picture for China Ruilen tobacco company, the woman with a half-naked front posed in resemblance to the figure in Titian's Sleeping Venus. Although the images were a commercials means to attract eyes, the female images in these posters did represent the arrival of a new trend in society. After the spread of the concepts of "democracy", "science" and "overthrowing Confucianism", such posters indicated that the culture of Chinese society was developing towards modern commerce in an irresistible way.
At the moment, another disturbance in the world of fine art was the well-known model incident of Shanghai Art College. It was a very influential argument. It did not only touched upon the inherent traditional Chinese female ethics, but also pushed a new kind of aesthetics—beauty of human body—to the front of ideological innovation, facilitating the ideological liberation of Chinese people.
A top female artist of the Republic of China should be Pan Yuliang (潘玉良). Her life that was full of ups and downs was a miniature of how the social status of women was a result of how open the society was at that time. Her life also indicated that women started to express self-consciousness with the identity of a real artist.
source: http://www.artnews.cn/uploadfiles/special/38funcjie/2.html
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