Abstract
How does a piece of visual art enter the public realm, become meaningful, and be recognised by the viewers? This study focuses on the images on the cover page of the only art magazine, Fine Art, in the late-1970s and early-1980s China, and discusses the meaning-making strategies adopted by the editors. In particular, the study primarily analyses these images’ visual contents (textual meaning), and employ the multimodal discourse analysis to examine the interactive relations between these images and the texts inside the corresponding issues (contextual meaning). The data consists of 40 issues of Fine Art from 1978 to 1983 out of the total 65 issues published during this period, which had one painting (rather than multiple or other types of art) on their covers. While existing literature on contemporary Chinese art usually discuss the human actors, this study introduces art publications and the social roles of images into consideration. It takes publications (books, magazines, etc.) not as sources of data that merely record historical and social facts, but meaningful cultural objects themselves. Based on categorisation of the 40 images and close iconographic analysis of several examples, this study argues that the textual and contextual meanings of these images are either in conflict against or in accordant with each other, revealing the ambiguous political environment. The study thus primarily contributes to studies on the development of contemporary Chinese art by introducing art publications, and also theories and methods of the sociology of arts by analysing the artworks, texts, and contexts collectively.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Magazine Cover Images, Contemporary Chinese Art, Sociology of Arts
