Dramatic Scenes and Monstrous Animals: On the First Exhibition of Chinese Art in the USSR

Abstract

This article reconstructs the story of the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” in the USSR, brought to Moscow and Leningrad in 1934 by the prominent Chinese artist Xu Beihong. The exhibition covered a period from the Han dynasty up to the 1930s, and, for the first time, presented Chinese art to the Soviet audience. Before arriving in the USSR, the show toured Europe, where it was extremely popular and considered the first successful attempt to present Chinese art in the West. In contrast, the exhibition’s perception in the Soviet Union was rather contradictory. The reasons for that could be found in the ongoing Soviet artistic discourse and preconceived vision of Chinese art. Based on archival materials, this study reveals the process of the exhibition’s organization and focuses on the image of China and Chinese art constructed by its curators. Additionally, this article examines the reception of the show by both professional and mass Soviet audiences in conjunction with the Soviet ideology towards fine art, foreign art exhibitions of the 1930s, and existing narratives on China, which shaped the optic of Soviet visitors.

1. Introduction

In 1933, the Chinese artist and curator Xu Beihong (1895–1953), or Ju Peon, as he called himself in the West, brought the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” to Europe. It was opened in Paris in Musée du Jeu de Paume on 10 May 1933, and due to its popularity was extended until 25 June. The initial idea of the exhibition was to introduce Chinese contemporary art to European viewers and gain international recognition for Chinese culture. The Chinese curator’s strategy was not to outline the real situation in the contemporary Chinese art scene, where experiments with Western artistic techniques and genres were then fashionable, but to select only distinctively traditional Chinese ink paintings. The core of the exhibition consisted of approximately two hundred artworks by Chinese contemporary artists. In addition, imperial-era Chinese art was borrowed from French collections to open the exposition. This approach helped to create the sense that Chinese contemporary art was deeply rooted in tradition and provided a distinctive and recognizable image of China. In a publication on the exhibition, Xu Beihong advocated for the uniqueness of Chinese art, claiming that it managed to save its original spirit throughout history despite the interventions of other cultures. Moreover, he drew the image of China as a superior cultural agent in its geographical region pointing out several times that China influenced East Asian and particularly Japanese art. The exhibition received extraordinary attention, was visited by 30,000 people, and more than 200 reviews were dedicated to it (Fournier 2005; Pejčochová 2013; Su 2021). The success of the exhibition in Paris and generally positive reviews by the critics resulted in it being invited to other European cities. After Paris, the exhibition travelled to Palazzo Reale in Milan, where it was held from December 1933 to January 1934. Afterwards, it could set off to London or Rome; however, its curator chose to bring it to the Soviet Union.

In the USSR the exhibition travelled first to Moscow, where it was hosted in the State Historical Museum (Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Muzei) from 7 May until 7 June 1934. From 20 June to 12 July, it could be seen in the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. In both cities the exhibition attracted a large number of visitors comparable to France; magazines and newspapers reported on its high popularity. The exhibition in Russia, as well as the whole European tour, is considered to this day to have been one of the first and most successful attempts to represent Chinese art abroad. It is also claimed that throughout the whole exhibition tour, it received largely positive feedback from both critics and audience. However, in the Soviet critical essays and visitors’ feedback, mismatches with the above narrative can be found. Those debatable or even negative responses have never been examined. I argue that, in the Soviet Union, the exhibition was seen in a rather controversial and less favourable light than in Western Europe. Those discrepancies of perception lead us to issues of Soviet socialist realism, views of art as a reflection of social dynamics and the state of society, and knowledge about contemporary Chinese art in the USSR in the 1930s. The reasons behind negative perceptions of the show can also be found in Soviet exhibition practices, which the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” violated. The contradictory nature of the exhibition and its ambiguous perception in the USSR might make us wonder why a show that did not coincide with Soviet ideology was brought to the USSR. What reasons, then, stood behind the exhibition? I argue that the exhibition was motivated by political goals, rather than by ideological acceptability.

This article is the first to reconstruct the exhibition’s organization process step by step and to outline the impact made by Chinese and Soviet officials and Soviet institutions. The exhibition’s contents and its conception are examined in the context of Soviet artistic practices of the 1930s. The final part of the article looks at the perception of the exhibition in the USSR and the reasons that lay behind it.

Archival sources, such as official exhibition documentation, catalogues, correspondence, reports, and visitors’ books, form the basis of this research. They were found in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF), the State Archive of Literature and Arts (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva, RGALI), the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, AVPRI), and the Archive of the State Hermitage (Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha). In addition, publications in Soviet magazines and newspapers provide information on the perception of the exhibitions in media.

The scholarship of Michael David-Fox (David-Fox 2012), Katerina Clark (Clark 2011), and Katarina Lopatkina (Lopatkina 2019) on Soviet cultural diplomacy and specifically on exhibition exchange provides the background of what we know about Soviet–Western cultural interactions. The research of Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (Birnie Danzker 2004), Anik Michelin Fournier (Fournier 2005), Michaela Pejčochová (Pejčochová 2013), and Stephanie Su (Su 2021) on Chinese art exhibitions in Europe outline the state of Chinese–European cultural connections, as well as the history and the perception of the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” in Western Europe. The only attempt at a comprehensive examination of the exhibition in the USSR was made by Tatiana Postrelova (Postrelova 1987), which I rely on and polemicize with at the same time.

2. The Exhibition’s Organization

Most of the research dedicated to the exhibition agrees that Xu Beihong was invited to bring the exhibition to the Soviet Union during his European tour. The circumstances behind this invitation deserve close examination.

In December 1932, the USSR and the Republic of China (ROC), represented by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT), announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, which had been severed in 1929. The break in relations was preceded by a change in the political course of the Kuomintang after the death of its first leader Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925). The KMT turned away from the former Soviet ally and changed its international policy seeking to establish closer connections with Western countries. In 1927, the Kuomintang launched a purge against Chinese Communists, killing and imprisoning thousands of them. At the same time, relations with the USSR were complicated by numerous armed conflicts including the takeover of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) by a Manchurian general allied with the KMT in the summer of 1929, which resulted in a crisis of relations between China and Soviet Russia and the mutual recall of diplomats. In Soviet official discourse as well as in the press of those years, the former “Revolutionary Kuomintang” became “Reactionary Kuomintang”, showing that the split was both political and ideological. A significant geopolitical shift in the East Asian region pushed the Soviets and the KMT to reestablish their relations. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the growing Japanese military presence near the Soviet border caused the beginning of negotiations and the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1932. Even after that, the Soviets did not seek to immediately coordinate their actions with China, were in no hurry to unite against Japan, and also delayed signing the non-aggression pact, which the Kuomintang was trying to force through. The USSR tried to pursue their own interests balancing between Japan and the Republic of China. The ROC, on the contrary, was looking for reliable allies to defend itself from the Japanese occupation. Despite the establishment of direct dialogue, relations between the countries remained precarious and uncertain. In such an unstable situation, attempts to establish closer connections were reinforced with the help of cultural diplomacy.

In the 1930s, the second-ranking figure in the Chinese Embassy in Moscow after Ambassador Yan Huiqing (1877–1950) was Chinese chargé d’affaires Wu Nanru (1898–1975). He was preoccupied mainly with the efforts to sign a non-aggression pact between the countries, prevent the Soviets from recognizing the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in word or deed, and prevent the sale of the CER by the Soviets to the Japanese. At the same time, Wu Nanru became a driving force in organizing the “Chinese Painting Exhibition”. On 27 July 1933, he “turned to the People’s Commissariat for Education to organize an exhibition of Chinese art in Moscow in order to strengthen the cultural ties between the USSR and China”1 (AVP RF 1934a, p. 1). Late in August, during the meeting of the board of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, the exhibition of Chinese art proposed by the Chinese embassy was discussed. As a result, the People’s Commissariat for Education was allowed to start negotiations on the exhibition (AVP RF 1933, p. 36). At the moment when Wu Nanru became involved in negotiations with the Soviet authorities, the exhibition came into the realm of state-to-state cultural diplomacy. It is important to note that, because the exhibition was initially a personal project of its curator Xu Beihong, the Kuomintang government was not involved in it.2

Long before arriving in Moscow, the exhibition became a bone of contention between Soviet institutions. For some reason, Wu Nanru proposed the exhibition to the People’s Commissariat for Education rather than the main Soviet organization responsible for all forms of cultural exchange with foreign countries, especially foreign exhibitions, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS). On 23 October the Deputy Chairman of VOKS Elena Lerner (life dates unknown) sent a letter (AVP RF 1933, p. 40) to the Deputy Chairman of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, Grigorii Sokol’nikov (1888–1939), expressing her surprise that the exhibition was entrusted to the People’s Commissariat for Education and not to VOKS. Within three days, Sokol’nikov, driven by dissatisfaction due to sluggishness in the exhibition organization, responded by agreeing to delegate the exhibition to VOKS “with the assistance of the People’s Commissariat for Education, of course” (AVP RF 1933, p. 41). From that moment on, the People’s Commissariat for Education was not directly involved in organizing the exhibition despite VOKS assurances that they would work together. It seems that the Commissariat for Education responded painfully to the VOKS exhibition takeover and hindered further VOKS work on the show, refusing to provide them with museum space. After VOKS demanded space in one of the Moscow museums for the Chinese exhibition, the Chairman of the People’s Commissariat for Education, Andrei Bubnov (1883–1938), replied with the following questions: “Why do you think that a museum is a place for organizing any exhibitions. Next, how can one give consent to the organization of an exhibition without providing it with premises in advance. And finally, why don’t you actually provide premises for your exhibitions yourself” (AVP RF 1934b, p. 20). The conflict was intense and made VOKS complain to the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, asking that this higher institution put pressure on the Commissariat for Education (GARF 1934, p. 66). At the very last moment, the Commissariat for Education provided the halls of the State Historical Museum.

To receive the final approval for the exhibition, VOKS reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union about the exhibition. As they did so, they noted the positive reviews of the exhibition in France, the organizational details, and their own readiness to cover the travel costs and all other expenses. It is important that in the same letter, based on the exhibition images, VOKS proclaimed that the proposed artworks were realist, or close enough to the realist aesthetic, which the Soviets championed: “in terms of the sharpness and accuracy of conveying people and things, vivid concreteness and expressive laconism, [they are] very close to realism” (AVP RF 1934a, p. 1). As we will see, what VOKS termed realist art did not fit the expectations.

Xu Beihong and his wife Liao Jingwen (1923–2015) arrived by sea in Odesa together with the exhibits on 22 April and were met by VOKS representatives and sent on to Moscow. On 7 May the exhibition was opened in large rooms on the second floor of the State Historical Museum in the presence of Sokol’nikov, employees of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, all the staff of the embassy of the Republic of China, VOKS members, Soviet cultural figures, and others. The VOKS chairman Alexander Arosev (1890–1938) made a speech referencing the Soviet people’s wish to collaborate with the Chinese people in the field of art. Wu Nanru said that the exhibition was the first cultural event since the re-establishment of official relations between the two countries (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934b, p. 6).

3. The Exhibition’s Content and Its Presentation

A closer look at the exhibition’s content reveals that in terms of chronological coverage, subjects’ variety, and presentation, the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” stood out from the mainstream tendencies of the Soviet artistic policy.

The exhibition in Moscow consisted of a total of 339 exhibits,3 divided into two parts. The first part of 83 exhibits was dedicated to ancient Chinese art ranging from Han-dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) stone rubbings and Song-dynasty (960–1279) paintings to Qing-dynasty (1644–1911) scrolls and fans. During the Paris exhibition, it was largely mentioned in the catalogue and the press, that ancient artworks could not travel from China due to political circumstances. However, in Milan, as well as in Moscow, ancient paintings from Chinese private and institutional collections appeared, and so the Italian and Soviet lists of exhibits largely coincided (Mostra di pittura Cinese antica e moderna 1933, pp. 29–30; Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, pp. 21–26).

The exhibition was exceptional in terms of chronological coverage. Loan art exhibitions brought to the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s, whether solo, group, thematic, or national, usually presented recent art, or at least art created after the mid-nineteenth century. Such was the case with the national exhibitions organized in those years: “Contemporary Art of the Netherlands” (1932), “Contemporary Polish Art” (1933), and “Contemporary Latvian Art” (1934); the solo shows of Käthe Kollwitz (1932), Heinrich Ehmsen (1932), Alex Keil, also known as Sándor Ék (1933), and Albert Abramovich (1934), group exhibitions such as “Artists of the John Reed Club” (1932), “Revolutionary Art in Capitalist Countries” (1932). Less famous exhibitions of the early 1930s also displayed artworks created in recent decades. Of course, the art of previous epochs was on view in numerous Soviet museums but such works did not interest the organizations responsible for international art exchange.

The core of the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” was devoted to contemporary Chinese ink painting, represented by 80 artists and comprising a total of 256 artworks. All the artworks were Chinese ink paintings, whereas no oil paintings were included in the exhibition. The exhibition showed genre diversity and included paintings on different subjects, from landscapes, flowers, and animals to portraits, images of gods and goddesses, mythological characters, and scenes from classical Chinese novels. The artist Xu Beihong with 37 paintings, Qi Baishi (1864–1957) with 31 paintings, and Ren Bonian (1840–1896) with 30 paintings, were most fully represented. Lü Fengzi (1886–1958) and Zhang Shuqi (1901–1957) were represented with nine works each. Jing Hengyi (1877–1938), Chen Shuren (1884–1948), Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), and Wang Yiting (1867–1938) showed eight works each.

It is worth mentioning that, for the USSR edition of the exhibition, no special changes to fit the Soviet viewers’ expectations were made. The same Han-dynasty stone rubbings with “Dramatic Scenes” and “Monstrous Animals”, an ink painting of the Chinese mythological Mother-goddess Nüwa, landscapes, and still lives were brought to Moscow as well as to Europe. As can be seen from the above list of previous exhibitions of foreign art in the USSR, these had been oriented not merely towards up-to-date art, but also towards revolutionary and socially significant topics. The “Chinese Painting Exhibition”, on the contrary, did not reflect any issues of revolutionary struggle or social injustice even in its contemporary part.

We do not know what the Moscow exhibition looked like. Neither descriptions nor images (except for only one, of poor quality, depicting guests at the opening ceremony) have survived. However, the Hermitage edition of the exhibition was well documented and permits us to examine the exhibition’s logic and appearance.

The exhibition came to Leningrad accidentally. On 23 May, two weeks after the opening in Moscow, the State Hermitage director Boris Legran (1884–1936) and academic secretary Mark Filosofov (1892–1938) wrote a letter to the Leningrad VOKS office with a request to bring the Chinese exhibition to the Hermitage (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934b, p. 97). The exhibition opened on 20 June in halls on the second floor of the Winter Palace.

As had been the case in Paris and Milan, the Hermitage saw the exhibition as an opportunity to display artworks from its collections. Additional exhibits were selected from the Hermitage collection by the museum’s employees: the Head of the Far East Department, Ernst Querfeldt (1877–1949), and research fellow Elsa Westfalen (1884–1942),4 who were the main co-organizers of the show. They chose the best examples they had: Buddhist art from Dunhuang and Khara-Khoto, ceramics from the Tang dynasty (618—907) up to the reign of Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722); Qing, Tang, and Song bronze, porcelain from the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing, lacquer work, carved stones and carpets from the Qing (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934c, pp. 67–70). This approach worked well in depicting Chinese art as being deeply rooted in the Chinese tradition and in emphasizing the antiquity of Chinese civilization.

The exhibition occupied eight rooms.5 The chronological principle was abandoned and works by living Chinese artists were juxtaposed with paintings of their predecessors, and with applied art from the museum’s collection. Instead of formulating a logic of artistic and technical development, the exhibition provided a general overview. As I will show further, this way of organization was criticized by some of the visitors.

It should be noted that the exhibition was vividly decorated. A banner with the exhibition title in Russian and Chinese was hung above the entrance to the museum from Uritskii Square (now Palace Square). On the October staircase, which led from the entrance to the second floor, two large white elephants with vases on their backs were adorned with flowers, and behind them, a Chinese carpet was hanging. Flowering plants and even small trees were placed alongside the exhibits. They came from the botanic garden and their stay at the exhibition was even extended due to the increasing number of tourists from abroad (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934b, p. 107).

4. Catalogues

Two catalogues were prepared for the Soviet exhibitions: one for the show in Moscow and one for Leningrad. Both of them contained the same article by Xu Beihong, offering a historical overview of the development of Chinese art. This article was a compilation of two texts Xu Beihong had prepared for the Paris exhibition: his essay for the Paris catalogue “La peinture chinoise dans les temps modernes” (Exposition d’art chinois contemporain 1933, pp. 15–17) and “Peinture chinoise”, which was published in the journal “La Revue de l’art ancien et moderne” (Xu 1933). In the French and Italian catalogues, the ancient part of the exposition and the historical development of Chinese art was described by a local specialist, whereas Xu Beihong only described art from the 17th century up to the 1930s. As was noticed by Anik Micheline Fournier, French sinologists used the exhibition to demonstrate their knowledge of Chinese art and their own vision of it (Fournier 2005). That is probably why Xu Beihong was limited in sharing his views in the catalogue but could express his vision of the genesis of Chinese art in a journal article.

In contrast, in the Soviet Union, Xu Beihong was given carte blanche to formulate a narrative of the history of Chinese art in the catalogue. He presented Chinese art as unique, having its own path, and deeply rooted in history and tradition. He described the struggle of Chinese art with foreign influence and concluded that despite the interventions of Buddhist (Indian) and Mongol cultures Chinese art had managed to preserve its authenticity. He framed the history of Chinese art as a process of constant loss and rediscovery of its inner nature, using words like “simplicity”, “sincerity”, “love of nature”, “courage”, and “originality” (the last two terms meaning freedom from academism and repetition of existing models). Xu Beihong also pointed out that “because China had so powerful and stable artistic traditions, no social changes could overturn its dogmas” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, p. 15; 1934c, p. 36). This passage seems to be superfluous because it was placed between descriptions of Ming-dynasty art and late 17th-century art, and Xu did not explain what social or political changes he meant. Originally this paragraph had been placed at the beginning of Xu’s articles for the European catalogues and its meaning was much sharper: “Revolutions, which gave birth to elements of contemporary European art, did not exist in China. [China is] a country with a strong tradition so solidly framed that no revolutionary movement could claim to completely overturn the dogmas and fundamentals of our art” (Exposition d’art chinois contemporain 1933, p. 15). We do not have any insights whether this passage was corrected by Xu Beihong himself or by someone from the Soviet side; however, in both the original French and Russian translations, it clashed with the acceptable Soviet discourse. As social changes and revolutionary struggle were seen as the driving force in all spheres of life including art and culture, Xu Beihong’s original argument contradicted Soviet ideology. Probably because of this the “revolution” was replaced by the less loaded term “social changes” and the paragraph itself was placed in the middle of the text, where it seemed not to refer to the contemporary situation, but to art between the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The European and Soviet versions coincided in general, but there were a few more differences besides the passage just quoted. Not only what was mentioned in Xu Beihong’s article, but also what was excluded from it is important. In the article for the French magazine, Xu described the nature of Chinese art as “abstract”, because the Chinese artist “immerses himself in a special state of mind, and must render the painted object with a few brushstrokes” (Xu 1933, p. 199). Xu repeated this during his speech at the Moscow Artists’ Club: “Chinese painting is essentially abstract painting” (RGALI 1934b, p. 10). However, despite the importance of this statement for the artist, it was excluded from his article for the Soviet catalogue along with the whole paragraph. By 1934, in parallel with the rise of socialist realism, the campaign against “formalism” in art had already started in the USSR. Non-figurative art was criticized and was already being excluded from Soviet exhibitions. The critique of formalism intensified in the second half of the 1930s and remained in force for the next forty years. Without having direct evidence, I can only assume that the Soviet organizers of the exhibition, namely VOKS, tried to deflect potentially problematic moments and smooth out rough edges being aware that the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” went against the grain of Soviet policy in art and was liable to attract criticism.

It is surprising, but three out of four references to realism were erased from the Soviet version of Xu’s article. The only exception was this statement: “The Chinese people have always been gifted with a natural artistic sense, in which both idealism and realism are present at the same time” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, p. 11; 1934c, p. 31). It seems that the Soviet version tried to avoid calling certain movements of Chinese art “realistic”. In contrast with Xu’s French article, neither artistic groups of imperial China, nor contemporary Chinese art were called “realist” in the Russian text. Views on realism in the USSR did not quite match those of Xu Beihong. Calling Chinese art realistic, Xu meant that it depends on a truthful depiction of nature, rather than on academic canon, which he criticized throughout his article. As I will show below, “realism” in the USSR was a more complex notion and was valued differently.

Another exclusion from the catalogue reveals not only the ideological tension between the Chinese and Soviet artistic spheres but also the political conflicts between the two countries. Soviet catalogues as well as European ones provided lists of exhibits with artists’ names and brief descriptions of their background.6 In the cases of the two artists, their connection with the current Kuomintang government was excluded from the Soviet catalogues. In them, the artist Chen Shuren (1884–1948) was called a loyal supporter of Sun Yat-sen, while the artist Jing Hengyi (1877–1938) was described as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, pp. 32, 35; 1934c, pp. 56, 59). In the French and Italian catalogues, however, both of them were mentioned as members of the Kuomintang Central Committee, while Chen Shuren was even described as an active member (Exposition d’art chinois contemporain 1933, p. 26; Mostra di pittura Cinese antica e moderna 1933, pp. 26–27).7 In the Soviet political code of the time, affiliation with the former Kuomintang leader Sun Yat-sen was positive, because he was praised as the father of the Chinese Revolution of 1911, and thus that description was left unchanged. In contrast, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Kuomintang and its leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) were seen as traitors of the revolutionary cause. By 1934, the KMT persecution of Communists and ideological and political tension between the two countries kept influencing the image of the KMT in Soviet eyes. Even after official relations were reestablished, incriminating articles about the KMT kept appearing in the Soviet press. On 8 May 1934, the announcement of the exhibition opening appeared in the “Pravda” newspaper, on page 6. On the previous page, there was an article accusing Chiang Kai-shek of burning books, especially Communist literature, under the title “Like the German Fascists” (Siao 1934, p. 5). Including information on the affiliation of Chinese artists with KMT ruling structures in the exhibition catalogues would have been disconcerting for the Soviet audience. Moreover, there was no mention at all of the KMT in Soviet publications about the exhibitions, despite the direct involvement of the Nationalist authorities in bringing them to the Soviet Union.

Such erasures and modifications are no mere accidents of translation. Analyzing them in their entirety shows that these small adjustments were made intentionally to prevent or at least smooth out the ideological discrepancy. As will be shown in the section dedicated to the perception of the exhibition, even if the conceptual controversy, as well as the political background of the show, were all but removed from the catalogue pages, the exhibited paintings spoke for themselves and provided some grounds for criticism.

But before turning to perception, let us have a look at the additions made to the two catalogues. The Moscow catalogue was accompanied by an article written by the Director of the Museum of Oriental Cultures, Boris Denike (1885–1941). Denike attributed the paintings presented at the exhibition to the “era of feudalism and its decay”, stating that “the art of this time presents a picture of an exceptional rise in creativity and a great diversity of artistic styles and expressions” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, p. 6). At the end of the article, he expanded on Xu Beihong’s history of Chinese art by writing about Chinese posters and caricatures, and arguing that they emerged as a result of “the changes of social conditions and ideology after the revolution” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, p. 9). This statement is diametrically opposed to Xu’s claim on the inability of social changes to influence Chinese art. Denike tried, on the one hand, to write the exhibition into the history of the development of painting as it was seen in the Soviet Union and, on the other hand, avoid criticizing it for being inconsistent with Soviet ideas about the role and tasks of contemporary art. Denike also added information on Chinese painting techniques and listed the best examples of Chinese art in Soviet collections.

In the Leningrad catalogue, Denike’s article was replaced by a text by the Soviet Union’s leading sinologist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Vasily Alekseev (1881–1951). This article aimed to explain the seemingly “monotonous” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934c, p. 5) Chinese paintings, and the peculiarities of Chinese art in comparison with the European, to museum visitors. It offered a view of Chinese art in the context of art history problems, completely excluding the political interpretation of art, attempts to evaluate its ideological background or fit it into the Soviet scheme of artistic development. The catalogue contained Alekseev’s translation of a Chinese treatise on art by the eighth-century artist and poet Wang Wei (699–761). The Leningrad catalogue also included the list of exhibits provided by the State Hermitage for the exhibition.

5. Perception

5.1. Visitors’ Book

It may be argued that the exhibition was popular, even if the remaining archival documents do not allow us to see the whole picture. In Moscow, a total of 14,698 visitors came to see the exhibition, while 938 of them joined excursions, and 2351 exhibition catalogues were sold (RGALI 1934b, p. 38). We do not have the same statistics for the Leningrad exhibition, and can only say that the catalogue, prepared by the museum, was printed in an edition of 3000 copies. Nevertheless, a single visitors’ book survived in the archive of the Hermitage Museum. Although it contains only 36 responses, some of them are of interest in particular aspects of the exhibition.

Most of the responses attest that visitors very much admired the exhibition. They called it “vivid”, “graceful”, “new”, “amazing”, “interesting”, “great”, “created with love and taste”, “good”, and “original”. Visitors also reported on their “grandiose” and “stunning” impressions, “pure and unexpected joy”, and “range of complex, subtle sensations”. They noted the Chinese mastery in working with tone and colours, as well as with line and strokes, their perfect artistic skill and great love of art. Some asked that several paintings be kept at the museum or that photographs of the artworks be made in order to give the Soviet audience another opportunity to see the paintings (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a).

The most frequently mentioned artist in visitor’s book was Xu Beihong. This was to be expected because his paintings were the most numerous, occupied a whole room, and even spread to neighbouring rooms, sharing them with works by other artists. Xu Beihong’s name also circulated broadly in the Soviet press together with reproductions of his paintings, so his persona seems to have been the most recognizable for the audience.

There were also many complaints about the way the exhibition was presented. One visitor complained that the art of different epochs was mixed together in the same room (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a, p. 8). In another response, the question was raised “Why is there an ‘ancient’ painting at the beginning of the exhibition, and not ‘feudal’ (why was it called like that)?” (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a, p. 28). The expectation of seeing art from the chronological perspective as well as the demand for the specific “feudal” instead of the abstract “ancient”, corresponds closely with the spread in the 1930s of practices involving Marxist theory in exhibition planning. The museum exposition reflected history as the consistent change of socio-economic formations (primitiveness—slavery—feudalism—capitalism—Communism). Communism was seen as the pinnacle of historical development. This approach spread widely after the First All-Russian Museum Congress, which took place in Moscow in December 1930. The Hermitage Museum also practiced it (Lopatkina 2019). Moreover, Moscow’s Museum of Oriental Cultures, the leading institution that exhibited Eastern art, followed the same principle in its newly organized permanent exposition of Far Eastern art (which included China and Japan) in 1932. Some Soviet visitors would have demanded to see artistic development as a part of world progress and would have favoured political terms over neutral ones.

Visitors also noted the lack of information about artworks, artists and artistic circles, dynasties, and techniques. They asked for short descriptions, a catalogue, and a “rukovoditel’” (leader, or guide), who could provide explanations (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a). It may be that not only curiosity led visitors to raise all those questions, but that they also reflected the same mainstream tendency of the Soviet late 1920s and early 1930s to make the museum serve educational and propagandistic needs. From the perspective of the First All-Russian Museum Congress, leaving exhibits without additional labels or information was seen as a fetishization of the object. This approach was seen as outdated and typical for museum workers and art historians, who cared more for beauty and less for science, i.e., the Marxist approach to history as changes of formation and class struggle. Therefore, the introduction of geographical maps, tables, diagrams, as well as political slogans into the exhibition was encouraged (Trudy Pervogo Vserossiiskogo muzeinogo s’ezda 1931, p. 81). The Hermitage, like other Soviet museums, introduced this practice and provided expositions, in which auxiliary material occupied a large space. The visitors not only demanded but expected to see explanations, all the more in such an unusual and new show as the exhibition of Chinese art.

The Chinese exhibition, however, lacked almost any explanations, apart from modest labels with artists’ names, dates, eras, and artwork titles. One of the visitors complained: “You cannot turn a Chinese exhibition into a ‘Chinese alphabet’. […] You can, of course, admire wonderful things, but this is not enough” (Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a, p. 28).

The Leningrad catalogue was probably created to fill the expected gap, as it contains brief descriptions of glass boxes with the Hermitage exhibits, names of the artists both in Russian and Chinese, their life dates, sometimes their current occupation, and the list of artworks. The State Hermitage catalogue edition was sent to the publisher nine days after the exhibition’s opening, on 29 June. We do not know whether the catalogue was already available at the beginning of July when visitors left the feedback just cited.

The last, but not the least aspect of visitors’ feedback, stressed a perceived avoidance of reality by the artists. Visitors wrote:

“It is strange, however, that Chinese artists do not care about social issues and living people; they are most interested in rodents and insects”.

“Contemporary artists are so blind not to reflect [their] time. We can expect from them [the depiction of] modern or past China, but not kitties, roosters, flowers and other […] it is impossible to judge Chinese painting by the formal qualities of the picturesque and pictorial features of the Chinese”.

“The monotony of the subjects is surprising. For some reason, artists do not touch upon or reflect the deeper content of their era”.

“Chinese painting is striking in its lack of reflection of social sentiments, social life, and class struggle. Contemporary art, it would seem, should have responded to the entire revolution that took place in China. It would be interesting to know what explains this gap between art and politics”.

“One must think that a coolie in China is unlikely to have artistic knowledge. Art in China, not counting Soviet China [a reference to the “Soviet”, created by the Chinese Communist Party in southern China in 1931], is in the hands of the privileged class, and therefore it is clear that [this class possesses] power, and money, and time, and from this it follows that most of the exhibits’ subjects present art ‘in general’”.

“Many works of Chinese artists are masterpieces in the full sense of the word, especially in the field of drawing and the finest combinations of colours. However, the exploits of their leaders, their rulers are not glorified here …”

“Why don’t we see the social changes of our time reflected in painting at all?”

(Archive of the State Hermitage 1934a, pp. 1–3, 5–7, 15, 28)

Behind this demand for depicting real life, social issues, and current historical changes stood an ongoing discussion on the socialist realist method in art. The exhibition took place in a moment of great ideological shift, marked by the decree “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations”, issued on 23 April 1932, which announced the dissolution of existing literary and artistic groups and the creation of a government-controlled union. The First Congress of Soviet Writers, which opened on 17 August 1934, is famous for proclaiming socialist realism as the only method of Soviet literature. Long before the superiority of socialist realism was announced officially, the switch towards the depiction of “real life” and revolutionary subjects had already become visible.

Since socialist realism, judged only by its form, could easily be confused with non-socialist realism, a certain hierarchy of realistic art was developed to distinguish one from the other. The realism of the nineteenth century was termed “bourgeois”. Although it was seen as an important step in the society’s development, originating in a desire to approach reality, it was also considered to serve the bourgeois hushing up of the class entity of phenomena. Still life and landscape were seen as the most developed genres of “bourgeois” realism. Socialist realism demanded not only a figurative realistic approach to art but also a “truthful depiction of reality” (Obespechim vse usloviia tvorcheskoi raboty literaturnykh kruzhkov 1932, p. 1), “instilling hatred of the past in the reader”, understanding history as a class struggle and “depicting the grandiose phenomena and processes of the present” (Gorky 1933). It was also supposed to be understandable by the masses, express their thoughts and will, and mobilize them (Gaposhkin 1934, p. 2).

Xu Beihong is largely known as an advocate for realism. He studied art in China, Japan, and France, and was trained in the European academic realist tradition. He acquired and practiced the skills of depicting the human body, shading and oil painting, and combined them with traditional Chinese techniques while seeking to modernize Chinese art. Soon after his return to China in 1927, he began teaching art on the basis of the French curriculum. In his articles for the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” catalogue, he emphasized the realistic features of Chinese art: “the Chinese people has always been gifted with a natural artistic sensation, which at the same time has idealistic and realistic origins” (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934c, p. 31). However, his vision of realism at that moment was different from the one the Soviets demanded. And when he was asked by the Soviet workers visiting the exhibition, why the content of Chinese paintings always lacked socialist spirit, he answered: “Chinese artists follow the sentiments of their heart and imitate nature. When they see birds and flowers, they paint them. When they see landscapes, they paint landscapes. They do not oppress peasants, nor do they have the ambition to overthrow imperialism” (Xu 2005, p. 70). Exhibition visitors, who emphasized the absence of social and political agenda in the artworks shown, were not alone in their critique, as we are about to see.

5.2. The Soviet Press

There were many short notes on the exhibition’s opening and operation in the daily newspapers, but those texts provided facts instead of analysis of the artworks or the show. There were only a few comprehensive analytical articles about the exhibition. Two of them were published in the leading Soviet magazine “Iskusstvo”, in its May issue.

The first article, by art historians Konstantin Razumovskii (1905–1942) and Aleksandr Strelkov (1896–1938), was entitled simply “Chinese Art”. It provides a well-illustrated historical overview, partly quoting Xu Beihong’s catalogue article. Divided into two parts, it starts with a description of the development of traditional Chinese art, focusing on its artistic qualities, such as composition, colours, and lines. The second part is dedicated to contemporary processes in Chinese art, described as combining traditional techniques and realistic depiction while parting from the strict rules of academism and thereby gaining artistic freedom. This rather positive review concludes with the claim that Chinese contemporary art is “adequate to the specific aspirations of the Chinese nationalist bourgeoisie” (Razumovskii and Strelkov 1934, p. 148). This argument was further developed in a shorter review by K. Evgen’ev, “The Chinese Art Exhibition”, published right after the text by Razumovskii and Strelkov. Here the exhibition is radically criticized. The art shown in it is described as the reflection of artistic attitudes towards the world, characterized by “passive contemplation” and “sophisticated hedonism” (Evgen’ev 1934, p. 151). Evgen’ev called Chinese art of the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries “decay, repetition of the old, perverse technical skill and a complete inability to create a new original style and free oneself from the deadening influence and ideology of decaying feudalism” (Evgen’ev 1934, p. 151). He also characterized contemporary Chinese art as “flourishing formalism” and concluded that adherence to this approach in art does not give it the chance to develop successfully in the future. Admiring visitors to the exhibition were, according to Evgen’ev, attracted by the exotic and therefore unwilling to seek out true artistic value. There is here a striking difference in tone and in perspective on Chinese art. What Evgen’ev described as the dead-end branch of development is seen by Razumovskii and Strelkov as the result of a progressive pursuit of realism in China.

Two other articles, published by the magazine “Sovetskoe iskusstvo”, provided a less ambiguous description of the show. “The Chinese Painting Exhibition”, also written by Strelkov, following his article in “Iskusstvo”, repetitively attempted to describe Chinese art as true to life. Thus, Ren Bonian had mastered “healthy realism”, while Xu Beihong “combines a clear realistic style with primordial traditions”, and Wang Yiding and Qi Baishi show attention to detail (Strelkov 1934). The following article, “Two Generations”, by a certain Ru Menken (life dates unknown), was on Xu Beihong and his father Xu Dazhang (1874–1914) as representatives of two generations: new and old, innovator and traditionalist (Menken 1934).

Chinese art, especially that contemporaneous with the 1934 exhibition, lacked reflection on the ongoing political changes and class struggle, even if it was positively named “realist”. In the hierarchy of Soviet realism, it fitted into the category of “bourgeois realism”. Both article authors and exhibition visitors noted the absence of a political agenda, which they expected to see. Did the Soviet audience have an opportunity to view Chinese art that would have satisfied that expectation?

In his critical article, Evgen’ev mentioned the current development of political poster art in China. Boris Denike referenced political posters in all the texts he wrote on the exhibition. On the pages of the “Izvestiia” newspaper, he expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of “examples of oil painting by European-style artists, as well as such branches of art as posters and socio-political caricature that developed during the era of the Chinese revolution” (Denike 1934). In his speech at the special evening dedicated to the exhibition of Chinese art, he referred to these new forms of Chinese art as “bright in theme and calling for the fight against imperialism, for the liberation of the Chinese people” (RGALI 1934a, p. 6). Posters and caricatures were also mentioned in his catalogue article (Vystavka kitaiskoi zhivopisi 1934a, p. 9). Denike noted that posters “artistically do not represent outstanding art”; however, their content makes them especially valuable (RGALI 1934a, p. 6).

The main Soviet institution that hosted the exhibition of Chinese art was the Museum of Oriental Cultures (Moscow), which Denike worked for. This museum gathered the nationalized collections of Eastern art in Russia and received contemporary anti-imperialist propaganda posters from China and other countries via the Soviet authorities. In 1926 the museum acquired a new building and opened there the Cabinet of Revolutionary Movements of the East, named after the Azerbaijan Bolshevik, Nariman Karbalayi Najaf oghlu Narimanov (1870–1925). The last room in the exposition, the Cabinet aimed to describe the contemporary state of the “Oriental” countries, one of which was China. The exposition was based on graphs, maps, schemas, photomontages, and posters. As most of these objects were created on-site by the museum staff, the main examples of Chinese visual arts were posters. Their content reflected not only the actual political situation in China but also showed the way the Soviets saw contemporary China. The main themes of the posters were “the national liberation movement and its strongly anti-imperialist forms” and the anti-capitalist workers’ movement (Dobrianskii and Gurko-Kriazhin 1927, p. 20). Until the cabinet closed in 1932, these themes remained unchanged, and those posters were widely used. Also in 1932, the museum opened a permanent exposition of Chinese and Japanese art. It is not clear, whether Chinese posters were incorporated into the new exhibition, although we do know that there were Japanese revolutionary posters together with oil paintings on the same theme. This group of Japanese works formed an entire section in the Far East permanent exposition of 1934.

In the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s posters from “Oriental” countries, especially China, remained probably the only accessible examples of contemporary art in terms of cost and transportation. Its political content fitted well with the ongoing discussions of the Chinese anti-imperialist struggle and the rise of Communism. We do not know if the Hermitage exhibition visitors were aware of Chinese poster art, but Denike doubtless was, and so was Evgen’ev. Therefore, emphasizing the absence of social themes in the “Chinese Painting Exhibition”, they based themselves not only on the demand for socialist realism but also on the practices of exhibiting Chinese art at the Museum of Oriental Cultures.

6. Conclusions

Why would the Soviet authorities invite such an ambiguous exhibition to the USSR? The answer to this question may be found in the correspondence of The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs: “We have paid and continue to pay a certain attention to this exhibition, not only because of the artistic quality, which it undoubtedly represents, but, mainly, since we wish to emphasize our readiness to maintain and develop cultural ties with China” (AVP RF 1933, p. 15).

The Soviet Union used exhibitions as a tool of cultural diplomacy. Bringing loan exhibitions from abroad was not a primary goal; the Soviets were rather interested in attracting foreign Communist supporters, spreading their influence abroad, and presenting Soviet art to the world. By hosting a “Chinese Painting Exhibition”, they reached it all.

After a talk with Xu Beihong, Arosev reported: “Ju Peon told me completely confidentially that he and the artists and intellectuals, with whom he is associated in China, are very left-wing and sympathetic to the Communist movement in China, have a deeply negative attitude towards the Nanjing government and are conspiring against it.” (AVP RF 1934b, p. 3). Thus, Xu Beihong, an artist previously unknown in the Soviet Union, was recognized as a Communist sympathizer and also became an active initiator of cultural exchange with the USSR on both the official and interpersonal levels.

While he was still in the USSR, Xu Beihong proposed a painting exchange, which was met with great enthusiasm by the Soviets, because it was seen as a political act of strengthening cultural ties with China (AVP RF 1934a, p. 32). The artist himself was driven by the idea of creating an art gallery in Nanjing to represent European art in China. He left paintings in the USSR, which were shown in the exhibition. Thus, the State Hermitage Museum and the Museum of Oriental Cultures acquired 13 scrolls by Xu Beihong, Qi Baishi, Pan Tianshou (1897–1971), and other artists, which remain in Russian museums’ collections to this day as significant examples of twentieth-century Chinese art. After Xu Beihong’s departure, the People’s Commissariat for Education selected 12 artworks by Russian and Soviet artists and sent them to China. When Xu Beihong saw them, he protested about their low quality and even called some of them “an attempt to maliciously slander Soviet painting” (GARF 1935, p. 29). Somehow this conflict was resolved, and Xu Beihong remained “a close friend of the USSR”.

Because of Xu Beihong’s later impact on the development of Sino-Soviet cultural relations, and also due to his shift towards a social and historical thematic, he became the best-known Chinese artist in the USSR. In turn, the artists he introduced to the Soviet audience became the most recognizable in the USSR. Their artworks were shown in Soviet museums, books on their art were published decade after decade, and Qi Baishi was even honoured by a postage stamp in 1958.

For a long time, the attempts by VOKS to make Soviet art recognizable in China were unsuccessful, and VOKS operations in China until the mid-1930s were modest and irregular. Xu Beihong became a driving force of cultural exchange and an advocate for Soviet art. He actively wrote articles about it, supported the organization of exhibitions, and was a leading member of the Chinese—Soviet Cultural Society (Kitaisko-Sovetskoe kul’turnoe obshchestvo, KSCO), established in 1935. He maintained communications with Soviet-prominent figures, such as the artists Alexander Daineka (1899–1969), Aleksei Kravchenko (1889–1940), Igor Grabar’ (1871–1960), and many others. Xu Beihong also kept on sending artworks and their copies to Soviet museums.

“Cultural ties” with the Republic of China, established by the “Chinese Painting Exhibition”, would strengthen in the following years through other activities, which included the widely known Soviet tour of the Beijing opera actor, Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) in 1935. Janne Risum in her research showed that this tour was also a part of cultural diplomacy between China and the USSR and that it was specially designed to meet political needs (Risum 2019). The next exhibition of Chinese art in the USSR, which was organized with the help of the ROC, took place in 1940–1941. Contrary to the groundbreaking exhibition of 1934, it attested to the rising awareness of Soviet sinologists about Chinese art and the intensified influence of the political agenda on its content.

The “Chinese Painting Exhibition” was a contradictory event in many respects. It received much attention from visitors, but only a rather tiny media coverage. Even one of the visitors, in his written feedback, accused the Soviet press of hushing up the exhibition. Most of the publications about the exhibition reported facts: the opening, the move to Leningrad, and the number of visitors. However, analytical articles were few and far between. Even those artists and sinologists, whom Xu Beihong befriended in Moscow and Leningrad, published nothing about the exhibition. The surviving book of visitors’ feedback expresses both admiration and criticism for failing to reflect Chinese social life. The contemporaneous discussion of socialist realism together with whatever knowledge the Soviet public possessed of Chinese art and the advanced methods used in presenting exhibitions in Soviet museums at that time formed the optic of Soviet visitors. And the exhibition did not fit into it.

The case of the “Chinese Painting Exhibition” showed that VOKS, despite aiming to serve as “a filtering and controlling organ” to prevent “an uncontrolled penetration of controversial or alien cultural movements from abroad” (Golubev 2004, pp. 104–5), was being flexible in a situation of high political importance. Bringing to the USSR an exhibition so controversial to Soviet political and artistic discourses, they tried to cover up potentially debatable ideas and facts, editing out of the catalogue statements by the exhibition’s curator. However, visitors and critics noted these discrepancies and actively commented on them. While remaining a milestone in exhibition history, as well as in the history of the study of Chinese art in the USSR, the exhibition of 1934 also represents an exceptional example of Soviet cultural diplomacy, which sought to balance ideology and potential political gain.