On View | 胡昀参展法国瓦西列夫公馆潘玉良：沉默的旅程

潘玉良，这位现代主义画家、艺术教育工作者的艺术生涯和与民国时期的政治文化运动息息相关，她的履历映证了从新文化运动和“新女性”的诞生，到国共两党早期的革命与社会改革运动、中国现代文化民族主义思潮的兴起，以及一次世界大战尾声到1937年日本侵华期间的种种关键时刻。相比与她同时代、受西方教育熏陶的男性知识分子在公开场合就政治文化、社会议题发声，并进入甚至书写主流历史，反观之下，无论是潘玉良对自己生活中的重大转折和决策的诠释，还是个人艺术创作的自述，都无从寻觅。这种哑然和沉默，在她1937年重返巴黎后依然持续，就她主导的“中国现代艺术家四人展”（巴黎赛努奇亚洲艺术博物馆，1977年），潘玉良并未留下有关展览构想的只言片语。这个1977年的四人展缘起于潘玉良受邀举办个展，她将这个个人展示的机会，转化为与另外三位同样使用传统媒介创作的海外中国女性艺术家共同展示的平台。

受潘玉良1977年展览的启发，本次展览邀请了艺术家胡昀、黄静远、王之博及艺术史学者于渺组建一个研究小组，成为一个集合性的主体中介。展览无意建立新的关于潘玉良的权威性叙述，也并非要通过一个展览为潘玉良正名。相反，不同的创作主体被投射进由潘玉良生平及其身后的转化和再现之中，并在展览中呈现这些主体间的位移和交互轨迹。展览模糊了每位艺术家专属空间的界线，参展成员间则互为主客，研究与展览组成一场复调的交响，与潘玉良在传统与现代中国间的走向形成共鸣，也将她被建构的生平和艺术成就置入当代性的动机、迂回与秩序之中。

The social network of Pan Yuliang’s (1895-1977) early career as a modernist artist and an art educator in the period of the Republic of China resonated with larger social-political movements at that time: from the cultural construct of ‘New Woman’ and the New Culture Movement, to the revolution and reform launched by the Nationalist Party and early Communists and the rise of modern nationalism in China, and from the end of World War I to the Japanese Invasion in 1937. While many of her male peers and acquaintances with western educational background advocated their social, political, and cultural visions in public, and made their way into mainstream history, Pan Yuliang’s own accounts related to major decisions on changes in her life and her artistic motivation are nowhere to be found. The silent journey continued beyond her return to Paris in 1937, and she left no written commentary regarding her concept for Quatre artistes chinoises contemporaines, which opened in 1977 in Musée Cernuschi in Paris. For this particular exhibition, Pan Yuliang extended the solo invitation to include three other woman artists, who worked in traditional art forms and were all part of the Chinese diaspora.

Inspired by Pan Yuliang and her decision to expand the exhibition of 1977 to others, Hu Yun, Huang Jing Yuan, Wang Zhibo, and Mia Yu are invited to form a research group functioning as a collective subjective agency. Departing from the idea of representing Pan Yuliang by claiming new territories of authority, various subjectivities are displaced in the constellation of Pan Yuliang’s past life, and her incarnation in our time as well as in the room of Villa Vassillief. Defying the usual autonomous area of individual work and artist, all of the participants in the exhibition are hosts as well as guests of each other’s contributions. The research and the exhibition form a polyphonic orchestra that not only echoes Pan Yuliang’s unique trajectory between modern and traditional China, the national and the transcultural, but also situates her constructed biography and artistic achievement within contemporary motives, detours, and universe. 

胡昀 “无题（我是法国人，不过...）“ , 2017

”Hu Yun, ‘Untitled (I’m-French, — but...)’, 2017

潘玉良，1895年6月14日生于江苏扬州，1903年双亲相继去世，由舅父收养，十岁时被卖入安徽妓院。这段经历产生了关于潘玉良的种种戏说和虚构解读。可以确定的是，她后来遇到了潘赞化，一位与革命运动联系密切的海关官员。1913年，她成为潘赞化的第二位妻子，改姓潘，名世秀。直到第一次前往法国时，她才开始使用“潘玉良”的名字。1916年，潘氏夫妇定居上海，潘玉良也学会了读书写字。1917年，潘玉良从师洪野，学习绘画，并于1920年成为上海美术专科学校首批招收的女生之一。此后潘玉良潜心学画，1921年获得里昂中法大学奖学金，成为该校中国留学生中少有的几位女性之一。

来到法国后，潘玉良先入里昂国立美术学院求学，1923年又入巴黎国立高等美术学院，师从吕西安·西蒙和帕斯卡·达仰-布弗莱。留学期间，她与旅居巴黎的华人艺术群体多有往来，结交了徐悲鸿、张道藩、常玉等友人。1925年，从巴黎美院毕业的潘玉良又获奖学金，进入著名的罗马美术学院，进行雕塑的创作和训练。在罗马的三年深造之后，潘玉良于1928年返回中国。与同时代受西方美术教育的中国艺术家一样，在现代艺术在中国的传播中扮演了重要角色。潘玉良先后在上海美专和南京国立中央大学担任西画系教授，对许多艺术团体的创立和组织做出了极大贡献。尽管成功举办了多次画展，她的早年经历和以女性裸体为主的绘画创作至今仍然产生着许多争议和误解。

1937年，潘玉良再度赴法参加巴黎世界博览会，此后再未能踏上故土，直到去世。二次世界大战和文化大革命都是造成她无法回国的原因。1956年，潘玉良曾试图返回中国，然而中法外交关系的破裂意味着她必须放弃在巴黎的创作。这是她拒绝接受的。

潘玉良的作品持续在“秋季沙龙”、“独立沙龙”、“春季沙龙”等颇具声望的展览上展出，1953年还曾于巴黎奥赛画廊举办个展。她在创作中展现了油画等西方技法与中式水墨画的空前融合，时至今日依然无法被简单划分。尽管如此，潘玉良作为一位中国女性和女性创作者，要在巴黎获得艺术地位和成就上的承认依然困难重重。

关于潘玉良在法国的生活，我们所知甚少。在巴黎，潘玉良获得的认可主要来自同时代的旅法中国艺术圈——譬如她在1945年起担任中国留法艺术学会会长——以及专攻亚洲艺术和古董收藏的巴黎赛努奇博物馆。1977年，在她去世前不久，潘玉良应赛努奇博物馆馆长瓦迪姆·叶理绥之邀策划了“中国现代艺术家四人展”。1952年，叶理绥曾委托潘玉良为她熟识的已故前馆长勒内·格鲁塞创作半身像。尽管如此，潘玉良始终难以卖出作品。据知情人称，她晚年生活十分拮据，收入几乎完全依靠法国政府的微薄补贴。

1977年7月22日，时年82岁的潘玉良在巴黎去世。临终前，她嘱托友人王守义将她的遗作运回中国。潘玉良画室中留存的4000余件作品和个人物品先被运往巴黎中国大使馆，1984年被安徽省博物馆收藏，直至今日。

Pan Yuliang was born on June 14, 1895 in Yangzhou, China. In 1903, after having lost her parents, she was taken into the care of her uncle who sold her as a maid in a brothel in the Anhui province at age ten. This unclear period in Pan Yuliang’s life has given rise to many interpretations that are more or less fictionalized. However what appears to be certain is that she met Pan Zanhua, a customs official close to the revolutionary movement. In 1913, she became the second wife of Pan Zanhua and adopted the name of Pan Shixiu – she will take the name Pan Yuliang upon her first visit to France. In 1916, the couple settled in Shanghai where she learned to read and write. At this time, Shanghai was the Chinese city where foreign influences were the strongest and it was here that Pan Yuliang discovered Western art. In 1917, she began her studies in painting with Hong Ye, her neighbor who was a painter and professor at the Shanghai Academy of Arts, and her passion and interest in the composition and study of colors was borne. In 1929, she revealed that while she has always loved music, painting and sculpture, it was her love for colors that impelled her to devote herself to the study and practice of painting. 

In 1920, the Shanghai Academy of Arts allowed women to enrol and study and Pan Yuliang was one of the first students to attend, one of the few to teach Western painting in China and the first to offer sessions of life drawing. Upon the acceptance of women students, Pan Yuliang enthusiastically devoted herself to her studies until 1921 when she was forced to leave the Academy after her past came to light. She then successfully applied for a scholarship with the Institut Franco?Chinois de Lyon, becoming the first female artist to benefit from the program.

Upon her arrival to France, Yuliang studied French language at the Institut Franco?Chinois before attending courses at the école Nationale des Beaux-Arts of Lyon. In 1923, Yuliang moved to Paris where she studied at the école Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, notably in the studio of artist Lucien Simon and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret. During her stay in Paris, she became friends with the local Chinese art community, including artists such as Xu Beihong, Zhang Daofan and Sanyu. 

She graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1925 and received a prestigious scholarship to continue her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy where she trained in sculpture. After over three years in Rome, Pan Yuliang returned to Shanghai in 1928, and like the generation of artists who studied abroad, she played an important role in the circulation of modern art in China. Yuliang was appointed Professor of Western Art at the Academy of Arts in Shanghai and then at the National University of Nanjing, and significantly contributed to the creation and existence of many artistic associations. She exhibited her work on numerous occasions, yet despite her success, her work – which gives a predominant place to the female nude – and her past continued to cause many controversies and misunderstandings and she continued faced many difficulties in imposing herself into the still very conservative Chinese art milieu. 

In 1937 Pan Yuliang left China for Paris to participate in the Universal Exposition. She remained there until her death. It was initially the outbreak of World War II and then of the Cultural Revolution in China that seemed to have prevented her from returning to her native land – she attempted to return in 1956, but the diplomatic rupture between France and China forced her to leave her entire studio of production behind, which she refused to do.

Perhaps it was also that she found that Paris was a welcoming environment for her work. She exhibited on a number of occasions, notably at the Salon d’Automne, Salon des Indépendants, Salon du Printemps, and was the subject of an exhibition at the Galerie d’Orsay in 1953. Despite this success, she struggled as a Chinese woman and more broadly as a woman in asserting herself as a qualified artist in the French capital, even through she has realized an oeuvre of unprecedented syncretism, of so-called Western techniques – such as oil painting – in combination with Chinese techniques – like ink drawings – to create an intercontinental oeuvre that continues to challenge a simple classification today.

It is difficult today to retrace her life in France, where she left few traces. Her recognition in Paris is owing mainly to contemporary Chinese circles – including the Association of Chinese Artists in France, which she took over as president in 1945 – and from the Cernuschi Museum, which collects antiques and Asian art. Just before her death in 1977, she organized the exhibition Quatre artistes chinoises contemporaines (Four Contemporary Chinese Artists) upon the invitation of Cernuschi Museum’s director Vadim Elisséeff. In 1952, Elisséeff had commissioned a bust of the former director of the deceased René Gousset Museum, whom Yuliang had known well.

Yuliang also struggled in selling her works, several people who met her at the end of her life insisted on her very modest living conditions, her income being almost exclusively reserved to a small pension paid by the French State. Wu Guanzhong recalled that, “Pan led a fairly poor and difficult life. There was no running water in the shabby attic where she lived and you had to walk down a staircase to get water.”

She died on July 22, 1977 in Paris at the age of 82. She told her friend Wang Shouyi on her deathbed that she wanted her works to be sent back to China. The contents of her studio –more than 4000 works and personal belongings – was first transported to the Chinese Embassy in Paris before being sent to the Museum of Anhui Province in 1984 where they remain today.

瓦西列夫公馆 Villa Vassilieff

巴黎，缅因大道21号，蒙帕那斯街

21 av. du Maine 75015 Paris 

周二至周六 Tue to Sat, 11:00-19:00

 http://www.villavassilieff.net