Following on from my post about Wallis staying at the Palace Hotel on the Shanghai Bund in autumn 1924 the phenomenal Old Shanghai picture researcher (& newly minted Old Shanghai Phd) Katya Knyazeva sent me this gem from 1924 reminding me that the trams ran right outside along the Bund and that, already, it seems the plot to the north of the Palace, across Nanjing Rd, was cleared and would eventually be Victor Sassoon’s Cathay Hotel in 1929….
In 1924 Wallis Simpson arrived in Shanghai and stayed at the Palace Hotel on the Bund (the city’s best at the time). Many biographies have her erroneously at the Astor House, across Suzhou Creek, & indeed she did dine there several times. But the Palace was home, for a few weeks anyway. Both run by Shanghai Hotels Ltd….
Came across this catalogue for Ling Shu-hua’s exhibition of her collection of Qing era paintings in 1967 – it was held at the Arts Council Gallery at #4 St James’s Square (which is now The In & Out Naval and Military Club). Incidentally, some of the works were gifted to her, as she mentions in the introduction to the exhibition below, at ‘her father’s house’ in 1923 (that house being on Shih-Chia/Shijia Hutong – now the hutong museum and just along from where Wallis Simpson would stay at #4 in 1925 – small worlds.
Anyway, attached as it may be interesting – the catalogue cover etc, along with Ling Shu-hua’s introduction to her collection and a short commentary by Quentin Bell (showing the Bloomsbury connections remained strong!)…
“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.
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Writing in Cha journal on Shanghai surrealism, avant garde art movements/artists in Shanghai, the role of Liu Haisu’s Shanghai Academy of Art & Lauren Walden’s new book (from HKUP) on it all….click here to read…
Lauren Walden’s Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai focusing on China’s interwar surrealists now in English from Hong Kong University Press & still in French as Le surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai from Institut Giacometti….
