According to Mr. Jiang Danshu, a famous art educator in China, the emergence of modern art education in China can be divided into two types: proximate cause and remote cause. The immediate cause is to abolish the imperial examination and promote learning. Imperial examination education is characterized by private school education, excluding art education, while modern school education includes art education. Therefore, private school education and school education have actually become the dividing line between the changes of art education. The remote cause is the relationship between westerners' missionary work and trade. The influx of foreign goods made western art known to Chinese people. Art with strong intuition has even become the main reason for Europeanization. "You know, Europeanization is the easiest thing to feel, not before art, not in art, not in general art, not in deep art."
Mr. Jiang Danshu's analysis certainly makes sense. However, the more direct driving force for the rapid development of modern art education in China is science and industry.
The spread of modern western practical sciences such as humanities, sound, light, chemistry and electricity has made Chinese people see that most of the teaching subjects offered by western schools are related to painting. For example, "mathematics" needs a lot of pictures, "geography" needs various maps, geology depends on surveying and mapping, and "botany" cannot do without specimen maps. People have realized the tool value of art as a tool to promote the development of social material production from the perspective of science and industry, which is first reflected in the new school established by the Westernization School.
1866, Zuo set up Mawei Ship Administration Bureau in Fuzhou, which included Ship Administration School. Its teaching subjects include mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and geology, as well as painting. 1867 Mawei Painting Academy was established to train drawing professionals, which is divided into two parts: one part is to learn ship drawing, and the other part is to learn machine drawing. Students are called "painting students".
Subsequently, more and more new schools set up pictures (cartography), including Tianjin Telegraph School (founded in 1880), Jiangnan Navy School (founded in 1890) and Tianjin Chinese and Western School (founded in 1895).
Developing education, promoting learning and training new teachers is a key issue. This naturally led to the germination of normal education in China.
Liangjiang Normal School (formerly known as Sanjiang Normal School) was founded by China modern education activist Zhang Zhidong on 1902 (officially opened in 1904), and it is one of the earliest normal schools in China. The school has three subjects: undergraduate course, accelerated course and most accelerated course, aiming at cultivating primary school teachers with high and primary level. The courses studied include self-cultivation, history, geography, literature, mathematics, education, physics and chemistry, and gymnastics. Painting is also a compulsory course and there is also a legal system; Elective courses such as financial management, agriculture and English. 1905, this school was changed into an excellent normal school with the purpose of training primary school teachers and middle school teachers.
1906, Li Ruiqing, the school supervisor (principal), was invited to play and founded China Normal University 1 Department of Art-Department of Painting and Handicraft. "The main course is painting and handicraft, and music is a minor course. Let's talk about pictures, such as western paintings (pencils, charcoal pens, watercolor oil paintings), Chinese paintings (landscapes, flowers), instrumental paintings (flat and three-dimensional), patterns, etc. "
The art education system of capitalist countries is adopted in the course of picture handicraft, which is comprehensive and complete, highlighting the characteristics of art normal education. The courses offered in the course of picture arts and crafts are: education-oriented; Painting and handicraft are the main subjects; Music is a minor subject; Chinese, English, Japanese, history, geography, mathematics and gymnastics are minor subjects. Students must pass the liberal arts general courses in the preparatory course before they can enter the painting and handicraft courses.
The undergraduate courses of graphic arts and crafts mainly include:
"Pedagogy: including the history of education (first taught in the preparatory course), pedagogy, subject theory, psychology, ethics, various science and education (learning) methods, educational administration, and primary school settings. About four or five hours a week, the teachers are Japanese Jiro Matsumoto and Matsuura.
Drawing: Free drawing-sketch (pencil, charcoal, eraser). Temporary painting and sketch, geometric three-dimensional, still life and plaster portrait (some are taught in the preparatory course first), monochrome plaster, pencil pastel, watercolor painting (still life, animal specimen sketch and field landscape practice), sketch, oil painting, pattern painting, etc. The teacher is Japanese, and salt meets competition.
Coupled with the Chinese painting known as "brush painting" at that time-landscape flowers. The teacher is Xiao Junxian.
Instrument painting-plane geometry painting (taught before preparatory course), orthographic projection (called "projection" at that time), isometric projection, oblique projection, far-near projection (perspective painting), descriptive geometry, etc. The teacher is Japanese, who has been in Suganosuke (for a short time) and sees things through salt.
There are more than ten hours of painting class every week (Chinese painting class is added).
Handwork (hereinafter referred to as craft and labor, developed into arts and crafts): paper joinery-including origami, paper-cutting, coarse paper, twisted paper, thick paper, knotted joinery (combined with twisted paper), bean joinery, clay joinery (molding, kiln firing-plain firing, glaze firing) and gypsum joinery (casting, carving, and mold transfer) must be done in the preparatory course first. Plus bamboo workers, carpenters, painters and windlassmen. (Spinning machine, lathe parts), metalworking (needle metalworking refers to wire metalworking, metal welding, fire welding, discoloration, etching, gold plating, forging), etc. Teacher: I was Japanese when I was a preparatory student, and I was a Japanese household cleaner when I was an undergraduate. The manual time per week is more than ten hours.
Music (omitted)
At the undergraduate level, in addition to these main courses, there are several minor courses, such as: ethics (only one hour per week), mechanics (related to handicrafts), Japanese (to increase the ability to read reference books) and gymnastics (soft and martial arts).
Liangjiang Normal College held two classes of painting and handicraft, and trained the first batch of 50 or 60 art teachers in China, including Wang Caibai, Lv Fengzi, Shen Xiqiao, Li Zhonggan, Jiang Danshu, Wu Gaiting, Li Jian and other influential figures in the history of modern art education in China. Graduates are mainly distributed in Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Shanxi, Beijing and other places. Some graduates are directly engaged in art education in primary and secondary schools, which has played an important role in the development of new art education in China. Li Ruiqing is also regarded as the pioneer and founder of modern art education in China because of his outstanding contributions.
Since then, Baoding Excellent Normal School, Zhejiang Two-level Normal School, Guangdong Excellent Normal School and "National Nanjing Normal School" rebuilt in the former site of Liangjiang Normal School have also offered painting manual classes. After the Revolution of 1911, some old normal schools, such as Beijing Normal University, Beijing Women's Normal University, Chengdu Normal University, etc., have successively set up specialized courses in picture arts and crafts. In addition, Tongzhou Normal School (now Nantong Normal School, Jiangsu Province), the earliest secondary normal school in China, also offered painting and handicrafts as its main courses.
Before the Revolution of 1911, there was no school to train painting professionals. However, during the period of 1852, the Tushanwan Painting Gallery attached to Shanghai Xujiahui Catholic Church is still worth mentioning. Although this gallery is part of a craft workshop, it is mainly for cultivating religious painting talents. The students are all China believers and the teachers are all French missionaries. Teaching adopts apprenticeship system, including pen drawing, sketch, pencil drawing, pen drawing, watercolor painting and oil painting. And the class assignments are mainly copying and copying. 1907 Gallery also published books such as Introduction to Painting and Sticker for Pencil Painting, which had a great influence and promoted the art education in China, especially the western painting education, and was even called "the cradle of western painting in China" by Mr. Xu Beihong.