RAS Beijing – “Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai”, an RASBJ online talk by Lauren Walden about her book – 15/1/25

Posted: January 13th, 2025 | No Comments »

“Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai”, an RASBJ online talk by Dr. Lauren Walden about her book

Jan. 15, 2025 Wednesday from 19:00 – 20:00 PM Beijing Time

Surrealism in China initially gained a foothold in Shanghai’s former French concession during the early 1930s, disseminated by returning Chinese students who had directly encountered the movement in Paris and Tokyo. Shanghai surrealism adopted a dialectical form, resonating with the modus operandi of the Parisian movement as well as China’s traditional belief system of Daoism. Reconciling the thought of Freud and Marx, Surrealism subsumed the multiple contradictions that divided Republican Shanghai, East and West, colonial and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, navigating the porous boundaries that separate dream and reality. Shanghai surrealists were not rigid followers of their Parisian counterparts. Indeed, they commingled Surrealist techniques with elements of traditional Chinese iconography. Rather than revolving around a centralized group with a leader, Shanghai Surrealism was a much more diffuse entity, disseminated across copious different periodicals, avant-garde groups, and the entire gamut of political ideology, ranging from Nationalist party supporters to Communist sympathizers. Ultimately, the pervasive presence of Surrealism in Shanghai can be attributed to a wide range of factors: a yearning for national renewal, the stagnancy of the guohua genre, anticolonial protest, the rise of Western individualism, circumnavigating censorship and experimentation in search of a unique artistic voice. Dr. Walden will introduce Chinese Surrealism, using periodicals and other primary sources to reveal the mutual cultural influences between China and Western avant-garde, and broaden the scope of Surrealist studies beyond Eurocentric prisms.

Dr. Lauren Walden is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Contemporary Chinese Art at Birmingham City University, UK. She has published on many aspects of Surrealism in outlets such as Visual Studies, Visual Resources, Visual Anthropology, Photography and Culture and Dada/Surrealism. Her first book Le Surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai was published with the Giacometti Foundation in 2022, and in November 2024 Hong Kong University Press published an expanded English edition which is the basis of Dr. Walden’s presentation. She is currently working on Surrealism and the People’s Republic of China under contract with Routledge. She has also held Research Fellowships at the Centre for Creative Photography, Arizona and the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds.

TO PURCHASE SURREALISM FROM PARIS TO SHANGHAI: Hong Kong University Press has generously provided this discount code: RAS20 You can use it to order from the HKUP website until Feb. 15 https://hkupress.hku.hk/Surrealism_from_Paris_to_Shanghai

Free for RASBJ members. RMB 50 for members of RAS branches in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul. RMB 100 for non-members. Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership/ You may find paying via Alipay easier than paying by Wechat; you can also use international credit cards.

Please click “Register” or “I will Attend” no later than noon on Jan. 13 and follow the instructions. After successful registration you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.

MEMBERS OF PARTNER RAS BRANCHES: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. You will receiver several emails from RASBJ confirming registration/payment. Please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails.

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