A Local Response to the National Ideal: Aesthetic Education in the Shanghai Art School (1913-1937)

Abstract

Using the Shanghai Art School as an example, the writer examines local variability in the implementation of aesthetic education in China in the early 20th century. She highlights the transformation of the aesthetic education policy in the school's practice. She argues that the school imported educational reform based on its own requirement for survival and development, embraced various cultural visions to approach European art, and contributed to an indigenized European art scene in Shanghai that contained multicultural elements.