The Paper's reporter Lu Linhan
In the 1990s, Taiwanese singer Zhang Xinzhe became popular across the Taiwan Straits for his popular song singing, and was known as the "Prince of Love Songs". Last year, he returned to the public eye as a collector and exhibited his treasured Shanghai Old Moon Brand and Ancient Qipao in a special exhibition in Shanghai, "Min Chao - Rare Paintings of the Moon Brand and Fashion Trends of the Twentieth Century".
Recently, Zhang Xinzhe held a lecture in Shanghai on the Shanghai school culture such as the moon card, and talked with Gu Zheng, a scholar of photography research. In an interview with the Surging News Art Review (www.thepaper.cn), Zhang Xinzhe shared the reasons for his collection of art, compared the similarities and differences of related collections in various countries, and talked about the trade-offs between collections. Zhang Xinzhe believes that "looking back at the development of art in different periods is actually a reflection on traditional culture, and then re-finding the symbols that belong to the current era." ”
At the lecture scene in the picture above, from the left, it is the host Shen Yi; the singer and collector Zhang Xinzhe; and the professor Gu Zheng of the School of Journalism of Fudan University.
Zhang Xinzhe's album cover of that year
Zhang Xinzhe's original moon card collection, Xie Zhiguang created a beautiful portrait with actor Hu Die as a model
The Shanghai monthly plaques of the first half of the 20th century were hand-painted advertising paintings, posters that combined early advertisements, trademarks and calendars. Monthly brand painters, such as Zheng Mantuo, Xie Zhiguang, Hang Xiaoying, Hu Boxiang, etc., use their brushes to capture the fashion lifestyle, spread advertising paintings to ordinary people's families, and become a model for people to chase modernity. Zhang Xinzhe was born in Xiluo Ancient Town, Yunlin County, Taiwan. After more than 30 years of debut, in addition to the identity of a well-known singer, he is also a collector. In the past 30 years, he has collected many home, monthly posters and original manuscripts, as well as cheongsam costumes from different eras.
Zhang Xinzhe was born in Xiluo Ancient Town, Yunlin County, Taiwan.
On September 17th, singer and collector Zhang Xinzhe, Professor Gu Zheng of the School of Journalism of Fudan University and guests hosted Shen Yi's lecture on "Famous Artists New Works Series" at the Shanghai Library, interpreting Shanghai's urban cultural symbols and their significance to today through different perspectives such as collecting monthly cards, monthly card images, and photography. After the lecture, The Paper spoke with collector Zhang Xinzhe.
According to Zhang Xinzhe, out of his love for the city of Shanghai, he began to collect printed copies of the monthly cards, and then by chance, he found the existence of the original manuscript of the monthly cards, so he gradually began to collect and study the category of monthly cards. In October 2020, he initiated and organized the exhibition "Minchao - Rare Paintings of the Moon Brand and Twentieth Century Fashion Trends" at the Aurora Museum in Shanghai. In conjunction with the exhibition, the book "Minchao - The History of Monthly Card Images" was recently published, which systematically sorted out and interpreted the monthly cards in his collection, and compared the monthly cards and cheongsam in the same time dimension, so as to show the cultural trends of the first half of the twentieth century.
Zhang Xinzhe at the aurora museum "Min Chao" exhibition site
"Minchao - The History of The Image of the Moon Card" Zhang Xinzhe Zhang Yi'an, eds., Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House
The symbol of Shanghai culture represented by the month card
At the scene of the dialogue, Zhang Xinzhe said that "from primary school music, love art, crazy like movies", the month card that began in Shanghai gave him a shock and impact. The city of Shanghai is both strange and familiar to him in his childhood, in 1998 to Shanghai to do concerts, that is his early arrival in Shanghai, the city streets brought him an impression and childhood imagination has a huge gap, is a positive gap, "Shanghai is a very important cultural symbol, full of possibilities, my father is a priest, I grew up in the east-west integration environment, Shanghai's urban scene is like an amplification of the living environment when I was a child." ”
"The formation of such a special painting as the Moon Card actually began in Shanghai, and it is unique to Shanghai." At the lecture site, Zhang Xinzhe started from a picture of the monthly card with the movie star Ruan Lingyu as the character in the painting, talking about the origin of the monthly card, what kind of social background the monthly card had when it was popular, which industry masters were born, and what new development the monthly card had later. In Zhang Xinzhe's view, the month card is an early representative of China's advertising art, and the artist who creates the month card is the pioneer of Chinese advertising painting and advertising commercial art, "Although the way they do it is different from now, the way of presentation is different from now, but they are from the concept to the final finished product, this process is now an advertisement." ”
1920s Monthly brand Hu Boxiang painted
Inner page of "Minchao - A History of Moon Card Images"
Gu Zheng, a professor at Fudan University, is engaged in image research and published the book "Urban Expressions: Urban Photography from the 19th Century to the 21st Century" last year, which presents the urban photography practices of photographers from all over the world. At the lecture site, Gu Zheng talked about the common significance of the month card and photography from the perspective of a scholar. In Gu Zheng's view, like the month card, the photographic works also reveal the image information of urban change and trend development. What the photos and the monthly plaque have in common is that they are constantly attracted by new trends and cultures, and the background of the elements that led the fashion on the streets of the city at that time, including furniture, clothing, architecture, streets, etc., are recorded in the picture. "The moon card is generally a painting, a comprehensive construction of art, the painter in the painting from a variety of ways to absorb the material, such as their own life environment, or photographs as material, or the city streets leading the fashion elements into the picture." Therefore, the moon card is a distillation of the life and trends of the era by the painters and advertisers of the time. The monthly card is to sell happiness and advocate lifestyle, and photography is to quickly capture the urban space and become the creative inspiration of the monthly card. Compared with the clarity of photography, the 'soft focus' brush stroke of the month card has cast a sweet veil over the life at that time. ”
Turban, 1948, Saul Leyte
Gu Zheng said, "In the last century, a newspaper of the Republic of China translated the English word 'fashion' as 'renovation', whether it is a month card or photography, which is a visual treatment and presentation of various things in the daily life that is constantly renovated, in its own unique way." ”
For the female image in the monthly card, Gu Zheng believes, "From these female images, we can infer what kind of ideals and imagination people had for women at that time." And the month card is indeed a successful local practice of advertising art. ”
In Zhang Xinzhe's view, before and after the prevalence of the monthly card, it is also the period when the aesthetics and life of the Chinese have changed most dramatically. "At that time, The beauty of Shanghai went from the traditional state of wearing a robe under the blouse and wrapping her small feet, to slowly exposing her ankles and exposing her arms, becoming a fashionable girl wearing Western-style leather shoes. So it's actually a lot of fun, and a lot of flipping ideas are constantly moving forward from generation to generation. ”
Zhang Xinzhe on collecting: from tradition, looking for contemporary cultural symbols
The Paper: Can you talk about what aspects of your collection are? How do these collections relate to your life experiences?
Zhang Xinzhe: For me, collecting has a lot to do with my life experience. I grew up as a child with too many interests, and all beautiful things attracted me. I also studied music, I also studied painting, and I also liked the natural sciences, and I also collected various plant and animal specimens.
My father was a priest, my grandfather was a carpenter, and when I saw some of the furniture scraps that had been torn down, I would take them back, and my father would teach me how to deal with these things, how to repair and organize them, and I felt that these processes were special exchanges with my father. Furniture and wood things are the focus of my collection, especially taiwanese folk furniture, because it contains too many of my family's emotional factors in it.
Zhang Xinzhe and his father
I started weaving embroidery things related to my maternal great-grandmother, who I remember dying when she was almost 100 years old. My impression of her was that of a little old lady dressed in black with her feet wrapped around her feet, and she didn't talk much. When she died, my grandmother began to sort out her things, looking for her embroidered wedding dress at the bottom of the box, and her little shoes. I just found out that I had never seen these things before. These beautiful colors of clothes, beautiful embroidery are made by the great-grandmother herself. According to custom, these things were originally intended to be burned to the elderly, but they were "intercepted" by me. I find these beautiful clothes interesting and it should be a collectible item that can continue to be followed.
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the silk of the color was embroidered with the dragon pattern python robe of the cloud Zhang Xinzhe collected
The collection of monthly cards is as I said in the lecture, which is related to coming to Shanghai. When I came to Shanghai to shoot the MV, I would go to the flea market, I saw a lot of posters of the monthly brand, I think this thing is very Shanghainese, the clothes they wear, the environment they are in, and the very strange style they show are very beautiful. Later, by chance, I saw a real manuscript manuscript from a collector's side, so I began to search for and buy these manuscripts.
The Paper: In the lecture you talked about the impact of the monthly card. Born in Taiwan, have you seen any advertising paintings affected by the monthly sign in Taiwan?
Zhang Xinzhe: The radiation of the monthly card is actually greater than everyone thinks. Overseas Europe and the United States, as well as The South Asia at that time, is Southeast Asia, as long as there are Places where Chinese gather, there will be monthly cards retained. The month card also had an impact on Taiwan, where I was born. In the early days of Taiwan, there were also a number of painters who painted the moon card, although their works were not as foreign as Shanghai, but they would paint some traditional beauty images of Taiwan as propaganda. Everyone loves to wear cheongsam. In the whole development of the month card, it is mainly divided into two creative bases, one is Shanghai and the other is Guangzhou. Guangzhou's monthly cards will affect Hong Kong and the Nanyang area. But as far as the overall impact is concerned, it is still mainly Shanghai.
The Paper: You have also gone to many places overseas to buy collections, and you have also bought a lot of posters of Mucha, Rockwell and others. In your opinion, what are the similarities and differences in style between European propaganda posters and Shanghai's monthly cards?
Zhang Xinzhe: Mucha was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, earlier, and was influenced by ukiyo-e, so his "new art" also laid the foundation for advertising illustration in Europe and the United States. The works of Rockwell and others, after being changed, catered to the aesthetics of the time, and the content of the works reflected the new life at that time. The Moon Brand painters in Shanghai are a kind of collection, absorbing Western elements and adding the meaning of traditional New Year paintings, and developing them into Shanghai's unique cultural symbols.
"Minchao - The History of Monthly Card Images" in the monthly card painting and the corresponding cheongsam costume
The Paper: How many original monthly manuscripts do you currently have? How much do collectors and auction houses value monthly cards?
Zhang Xinzhe: The number of monthly card posters is very large, and I have collected a lot. The original manuscript of the monthly card was collected with nearly 100 copies.
Collectors who know the monthly card and have special feelings attach great importance to this piece. However, relatively speaking, auction companies or art circles may not pay special attention to this part, and most of the original manuscripts of the monthly cards are auctioned together with illustrations and comics. Of course, this is also because the original manuscript of the monthly card was originally used for commercial purposes, and many manuscripts were not in the hands of family members, so the original manuscript was not easy to obtain. Before the auction competition was fierce, there was a batch of works about British american tobacco, and there were too many people competing in the end, and they had to give up. So I focused on the original, especially the depiction of female characters. Some works depicting landscapes and Chinese paintings had to be abandoned.
"Don't Be Late for Class" 1950s Xie Zhiguang
The Paper: You are also a collector of cheongsam. Is the collection of monthly cards helpful for the collection of cheongsam?
Zhang Xinzhe: The monthly brand of commodity advertising is various, all kinds of categories, so I did not deliberately collect related products. Compared with the monthly cards, the more systematic collection is the cheongsam. The image of the monthly card also provides a very important reference for collecting qipao, you can know what the popular costumes of each stage are? What are the popular symbols? For example, for the length of the cheongsam, the height of the collar, the waist and other cuts have references. Of course, this must be a comprehensive judgment, you need to understand the fabric, understand the development of clothing.
The Paper: Last year's "Minchao" exhibition at the Aurora Museum was your first exhibition, will you plan related exhibitions in the future?
Zhang Xinzhe: I have a lot of collections, and I am quite personal. The Monthly Card and Cheongsam are my first exhibitions, and I hope to start with these two more acceptable and resonant projects. I can also curate other kinds of exhibitions, such as the wooden furniture I just mentioned. At the same time, I also have some collections of calligraphy and paintings of the Zhejiang school in the late Ming Dynasty, which are mainly calligraphy.
Collecting is the norm for me, and when I come across something that is beautiful or I feel interested in studying it, I keep buying it. I hope that my collection can connect the missing parts of the history of art development, such as the month card and the qipao, which can make up for this part of the Republican period. Part of what I can do is collect as many physical objects as possible, and then come and do a physical research and reference. It would be better if someone dug up new data from the data and cooperated with each other to get more information.
Zhang Xinzhe's collection of cheongsam
The Paper: From the exhibition to the book publishing, to this lecture in the picture above, how do you hope these sharing will inspire or help the audience?
Zhang Xinzhe: I hope that everyone can look at this era again. The monthly card has an impact on modern Chinese thought, life and other aspects. At the same time, it also has a lot of space to explore. With these foundations, whether it is for contemporary advertising or commercial art, the development of popular culture can bring some inspiration. Because any pop culture is slowly developed under the accumulation of various lives.
The Paper: The Monthly Card was active in the first half of the last century, and now, with the reform and opening up, we have entered a new era, with new commercial and trendy art, and you yourself are in the torrent of commercial art. What do you think and compare about the commercial art of these two eras?
Zhang Xinzhe: After the reform and opening up, everyone's desire for new things is very large, and a large number of new popular cultures around the world have been absorbed. When we absorb so much stuff, where should we reflect on our own stuff? The relationship between the so-called retro and popularity, in fact, there is not much conflict. Tradition is a foundation, how do we use the current concept and the current aesthetic to make the tradition get a new life, this is what our contemporary artists and creators should do. In contrast, the artistic development of various periods is actually a reflection on tradition, and a symbol belonging to the current era is found again.
Editor-in-Charge: Lu Sijia
Proofreader: Luan Meng