Author ｜
Qing Peng
Abstract ｜
Around 1880, the word “fine arts” was introduced into China from Japan. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and others made the initial connection between the Western “fine arts”（美術）and the traditional concept of “arts”（藝術）. At the beginning of the 20th century, constitutionalism and republicanism gradually became the mainstream ideas in those days. The pursuit of constitutional government made the construction of public morality become the characteristics of this period. Starting from the ideal of new people, the intellectual elite pursued independence, truth, and public morality in fine arts. The idea of fine arts plays its social role in the public fields of industry and commerce, education, and media in the process of universality. After the May Fourth New Culture Movement, fine arts gained more aesthetic meaning and became popular. In the context of revolutionary monism, Art replaced fine arts. It means scientism and liberalism replaced constitutionalism. Finally, the materialistic aesthetic enjoyed a glorious heyday when the society turned to pursue the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ideology. The idea of “art” representing liberalism did not disappear under the revolutionary context, but became the invisible sustentation of the intellectual’s mind.
keywords ｜
fine arts, art, constitution, revolution