The Golden Key: Modern Women Artists and Gender Negotiations in Republican China (1911-1949) - Hardcover

by Amanda Wangwright (Author)

The first monograph devoted to women artists of the Republican period, The Golden Key recovers the history of a groundbreaking yet forgotten force in China's modern art world. Through its detailed examination of the lives and careers of six female artists--Guan Zilan, Qiu Ti, Pan Yuliang, Fang Junbi, Yu Feng, and Liang Baibo--this book argues that women were central to the emergence of modernist art in early twentieth-century China and to the nation's larger modernization project. Amanda S. Wangwright's analysis of a wealth of primary sources demonstrates how these women constructed public personas, negotiated space within art societies, applied feminist thought to their artistic praxis, and surmounted obstacles to their careers--wielding art as the "golden key" to professional advancement and gender equality.

Author Biography

Amanda S. Wangwright, Ph.D. (2011), University of Kansas, is associate professor at the University of South Carolina. She has published on twentieth-century Chinese art, its transnational patronage networks, conceptualizations of gender and the body, and unfolding canonization.