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Trailblazer of Chinese nude art ahead of his time
By Li Shuo
Janaury 28, 2005
Chen Zui's name has been connected with Nude Art since as early as the 1980s.
The year 1988 was crowned by many as the "Year of Chen Zui" in China, because
earlier that year his academic treatise "On Nude Art" went into print and
became a best-seller.
At a time when Chinese could read nothing about Nude Art, and in public
anything concerning nudity was a taboo, the essay was a stone thrown in a quiet
pool.
The stone turned out to be a smash success - some 200,000 copies of the book
were sold that year alone.
"If three people read one book, the readership could amount to 600,000," said
Chen, 63, a doctorate tutor and researcher at the Art Research Institute of the
China Art Research Academy.
Chen found great pride in the success of his mission. Before him there was no
person who dared to touch this forbidden zone; he was glad to be the first.
In the years after his first hit, he has written a dozen books of essays on the
topic, and painted numerous paintings of nude figures.
In the middle of this month Chen held a comprehensive exhibition in the
academy's art museum. Chen displayed over ten essay books on Nude Art, and
about 100 pieces of his oil and Chinese paintings. Over 80 paintings featured
nude figures.
Chen's research on Nude Art have reflected the general development of Chinese
people's changing ideology in society over the years.
As stated in one of his essays, since the Song Dynasty (960-1279) until the
"cultural revolution" (1966-1976), China was under a sexual depression.
"For a long time in China there was no such reflective report of any kind
available in public, neither about Nude Art in the West nor about our own Nude
Art," Chen said.
In the history of culture, sex was deemed unsuitable as it was reflected in
some pornographic depictions in novels. "There were all kinds of 'Chun Gong
Hua' (pornographic pictures given to newlywed brides, as a form of sex
education from shy parents), yet these were definitely kept underground," Chen
said.
Such "Chun Gong Hua" disappeared after the founding of the People's Republic of
China in 1949. Much of the media was "cleaned up" without any mention of nudity
going to print.
Chen was a student at the Shanghai Drama Institute majoring in stage design
from 1960-1964. "I came to know a little about Nude Art around 1960, when the
door of the nation was not yet shut off," Chen said. He recalls during his
studies, he also painted nude models with other students in classes.
During the "cultural revolution," nude art was condemned as complete
pornography and bourgeois, a dark corner that was never to be touched by
anyone.
But these thoughts of "purity" changed a great deal in the late 1970s and early
1980s.
Some Western art then appeared in China, although not necessarily the latest,
the art gave Chinese people differing perspectives.
Still, no one dared touch on Nude Art. "As a man with warm blood and passion, I
was determined to break through the forbidden zone, to conduct research on Nude
Art," Chen said. He was then a postgraduate at the China Arts Research Academy
under tutor and art critic Wang Chaowen.
Chen thought of focusing his postgraduate essay on Nude Art upon graduation,
but was told "wait a while" by his tutor and friends, who feared the topic was
too sensitive, and that he might be affected negatively because of the subject
matter, as they drew lessons from former political movements. "In the 'cultural
revolution,' Chinese wore blue, stiff uniforms," said Chen. "Even if your
collar opened a bit wide, you were deemed of bad ideology."
Chen began to collect materials for his topic in 1980, although he dropped the
idea of writing his graduation essay on the topic.
"Actually after becoming a researcher in the academy, I found no social
pressure to pick my topics for research, so I did not give up the idea," said
Chen.
In the following seven years before publishing his book, Chen read veraciously
about art, history, culture, anthropology, and noted down any related words on
Nude Art.
On a trip to the Dunhuang grottoes, he found a nude figure on a mural, he
copied it down in sketches in his notebook. "I was too poor to buy a camera
then, but now society has developed so fast that even a primary school student
can play with digital cameras," Chen said.
Even as an expert of Nude Art, Chen is still surprised to see the changes of
people's ideas on nudity.
In 1914 when nude models were first applied as vital tools for art students to
learn how to paint oil paintings, few were willing to be such models. Some
believed that by being painted, their souls would lack energy or that they even
might die. Many thought it too embarrassing to be naked in front of other
people, deeming it as an inhuman insult.
In 1986 in the countryside of Jiangsu Province, ignorant villagers still deemed
being a nude model in an art school as an indecent job, much like prostitutes
who sold their flesh. Their bias drove a young woman mad, who returned home for
rest after working as a model at the Nanjing Art Academy.
But today it is a totally different story. "I call this period a pan-nude
phase," Chen said. "Many young women queue up to become nude models for
painters. They see it as a way to capture their youthful beauty in paintings.
Beginning a couple of years ago, women even fly to photo studios, paying to
have their nude photos taken," he said.
"Chinese people no longer avoid Nude Art as a virus, nor treat nude models with
prejudice, it is such a different world than before, but maybe we have gone too
far, to another extreme," Chen wonders.
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