ABSTRACT
This chapter will discuss some preliminary thoughts about a possible research agenda on modernist undercurrents in socialist art education. Its point of departure is an interview that the author conducted with Jin Yide (b. 1935), retired professor of the oil painting department at the China Art Academy (CAA). After his graduation in 1959, Jin first served as assistant to Ni Yide (1901–1970), and later was one of the students in the training class of the Romanian painter Eugen Popa (1919–1996) from 1960 to 1962. Both of these older painters emphasized aspects in their teaching that differed from the Soviet model in art education and painting methods and that linked back to early to mid-twentieth century modernism. The experiences of Jin Yide show that besides the implementation of the Soviet model, other more expressive and individualist modes of painting and sketching were still practiced at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the CAA). The chapter will discuss how the influences and teaching methods of pre-war modernists such as Ni Yide and Guan Liang (1900–1986) and of Eastern European painters such as Eugen Popa can be used to de-center the history of socialist oil painting in China.
