1930·40년대 중국 목판화의 리얼리즘: 사실(寫實)과 현실(現實) 사이에서

Abstract

With the rise of Realism in the field of Chinese literature and art in the early twentieth century, Chinese modern woodcuts broke the old fetters of Chinese print tradition and evolved into a new development as a creative art. In the midst of the May Fourth Movement, Chinese literature and art paid attention to the 19th century Western artistic movement, ‘Realism’. The prominent Chinese writer and critic Lu Xun (1881-1936) was the leading figure who eagerly advocated the adoption of Realism in both Chinese literature and art, in particular, Chinese woodcut. The woodcut movement led by Lu Xun reflected Realism, which was branching out in various directions in the Chinese literary and artistic world. This paper examines how the term Realism was translated and adopted in early twentieth-century China and how Lu Xun’s artistic vision on Realism came to be embodied in Chinese modern woodcuts in the 1930s and 1940s. After Western Realism was introduced to China, the process of changing the translation for ‘Realism’ from Xieshizhuyi to Xianshizhuyi was not just a translation issue but was actually reflective of the process of cognitive change in which the pursuit of the ‘art revolution’ was transformed into the pursuit of ‘(socialist) revolutionary art.’ Lu Xun’s Realism and the woodcut movement he inspired developed in the midst of the transition in artists’ commitment from ‘art revolution’ to ‘revolutionary art’. He expected Realism to derive awakening and action from people by expressing the pain and struggle of the Chinese people that artists observed and experienced in person. Lu Xun’s Realism reflected in Chinese woodblock prints was the variety of Realism that aimed to reveal the hardships of the people and call for action, i.e. ‘Xieshizhuyi’. On the other hand, the woodblock prints of Yanan, the Northwestern base of the Communist Party in the 1930s and 40s, developed not in line with Lu Xun’s Realism, which adheres to observation and experience even in the expression of political aspirations, but in line with a variety of Realism which actively projects socialist ideals onto the prints and other forms of art works, i.e. Socialist ‘Xianshizhuyi.’