Conceptualizing ‘Chinese surrealism’ through translation: a case study of the China independent fine arts association’s cultural identity and its translation of surrealism in 1930s

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the questions of cultural identity in the surrealist related translation practices led by the China Independent Fine Arts Association (CIFAA) around 1935. It was the first time in the history of modern Chinese art that a group of artists translated ‘surrealism’ together and that an art association independently translated a modern Western art genre into China. Accordingly, the CIFAA’s work evidences that translation has played a vital role in the modernization of Chinese art. In this translation movement, the young artists-as-translators expressed their pioneering art concepts through translation, expressing their desire to be both ‘reformers’ of Chinese art and ‘mediators’ of Chinese and Western modern art. As reformers, the artists attempted to innovate Chinese art by introducing surrealism, while as mediators they sought to reconcile the contradiction between their desire for innovation and the mainstream left-wing Chinese expectations of realistic art by adding ‘realism’ to the Chinese semantic meaning of ‘surrealism’. This paper thus argues that the CIFAA’s translation of surrealism reflects a complex relationship between translation and the artists’ cultural identity, which ultimately conceptualizing an unprecedented ‘Chinese surrealism’ that is very different from the original Western surrealism.

KEYWORDS:

• Modern art translation
• China independent fine arts association
• cultural identity
• surrealism
• translator

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the General Project of Humanities and Social Sciences Research of the Chinese Ministry of Education (中国教育部人文社会科学基金一般项目) [19YJA760006]; the Art Project of National Social Science Fund of China (中国国家社科基金艺术学项目) [23BF080]; and the Beijing Normal University Introduction of Talent and Research Start-up Fund (北京师范大学引进人才和科研启动经费) [29100-310432103].

Notes on contributors

Qing Chen

Qing Chen is Associate Professor at the Department of English, Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China). Her research interests include translation history and art history.

Hanting Pan

Hanting Pan is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai, China). Her research interests include translation practice and theory, discourse analysis and intercultural communication.