In 2021, Feng Mengbo, a professor at the Department of Printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, learned that there was a batch of comic strips in the library of the Academy of Fine Arts that had not yet been sorted out and cataloged. Having been interested in comic strips since childhood, he contacted the library and asked it to sort them out. Half a year later, he was very surprised by the results of the collation, and the library had a collection of more than 10,000 comic strips published from the Republic of China period to the end of the 1980s. Feng Mengbo went to the library many times to read and take notes one by one, and selected important works for the library to scan and archive. After learning that we had a strong interest in the selection of comic strips, he invited Associate Professor Li Yousong of the Beijing Institute of Printing and Printing to browse the photos of the collection of comic strips at his home. As artists and teachers, the two professors talked about how to reactivate the vitality of comic strips and return this once-popular art to the palm of ordinary people.
This article is from B04-B05 of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly's March 4 feature "Rediscover Comic Strip".
"Theme" B01丨Refining comic strips
Theme b02-B03 | Indelible memories
"Theme" B04-B05 丨 Long talk about the art of comic strips
"Thoughts" B06 | Adorno: A Reflection on Heidegger's "Jargon as Fantasy"
"Child" B07 丨 Ping An Piglet: J · K Rowling magnifies the truth with "magic"
Theme B08 | Appreciation of the works of the master comic strip artists
Written | Beijing News reporter Gongzi
Feng Mengbo was born in Beijing in 1966. He is currently a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Li Yousong, born in 1968 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, is currently a professor at the Beijing Institute of Printing.
01
The influence of Jiangnan publishing industry
Beijing News: The comic strip in this form that we are holding in our hands now probably dates back to when.
Li Yousong: The source of the comic strip is very related to the way Chinese tell the story. Chinese has its own image narrative method, starting from the illustrated books of Ming and Qing novels, in Suzhou and Nanjing, Chinese-style image reading and publishing have been vigorously developed. When entering the late Qing Dynasty, Western capital entered China's publishing industry, like Shanghai's "Declaration" has a supplement called "Dianshizhai Pictorial", which mainly shows the Chinese people the Western scenery, new things from the West, and new phenomena in the modern metropolis. There are also many anecdotes that have happened in China, but its publishing method is different from the previous bookstores in Suzhou and Jinling, and it is a new way of capital operation. So I think if you want to discuss the origin of comic strips, Shanghai is an important town or a beginning, in the history of Shanghai art, comic strips should have a place, and Shanghai publishers and painters have influenced the way citizens read images. Then it will affect all of China through this modern city.
Beijing News: What are the major changes in comic strips after the Republic of China?
Li Yousong: In the early 1950s, comic strips ushered in a period of vigorous development, because if the state wanted to let the people know the policies of the new regime, it was necessary to carry out ideological transformation and break the old and establish the new, but at that time, there were still many illiterate and semi-illiterate people in China, and they had obstacles to obtaining information through writing, which required the published reading text to be simple, and mainly rely on pictures to disseminate. In this way, the characteristics of comic strips in image dissemination, the needs of the times and their own characteristics have created a great development of comic strips.
The illustrations are from Feng Mengbo's comic strip "Childhood". Courtesy of respondents.
02
A mutation in the art of comic strips
Beijing News: Many people will feel that the creation of comic strips in the Republic of China period should be the peak period, because the cultural atmosphere of Shanghai is relatively open.
Feng Mengbo: I had high hopes, but after browsing, I found that this was not the case. The comic strips of the Republic of China period were very narrow in subject matter, the painting method was relatively monotonous, and the overall quality was not high. Probably because comic strip creation and publishing were too commercial at that time, its only purpose was to make money, and there was no sense of social responsibility and cultural self-awareness.
Beijing News: So it will be painted almost the same, because only by painting a certain shape can you make money?
Feng Mengbo: The key is to be fast, fast to seize the market, and large amounts to make money. At that time, the content of comic strips was mostly based on classical Chinese dramas and novels, and there were also some popular foreign movies or Chinese movies. It is said that every bookseller controls one or two such painters, and when a new movie or a play comes out, he sends him to see it, and after reading it, he comes back to tell his apprentices, and takes the apprentices to perform their duties, immediately paints, rushes to work day and night, and prints and distributes a small book in the fastest three or two days. At that time, comic strips were fast moving consumer goods, fresh subjects everyone wanted to buy, if you are slow, the money will be earned by others, you must seize the opportunity. The biggest requirement for the publication of villain books in this period is fast, and its main readers are ordinary people with limited cultural and educational levels and consumption power, and the requirements are not high. Shoddy production is inevitable, and even reuse previous manuscripts to recharge, so some villain books will deliberately write "all new pictures" (laughs). Of course, some of the authors of the villain book of the Republic of China are very talented and diligent, and these people's works are of outstanding quality, and they also cherish their reputation, becoming star authors, and a comic strip has the signatures of these people, that is, advertising.
Beijing News: Why did these painters from the Republic of China change so much after 1949?
Feng Mengbo: After 1949, the government attached importance to the role of literature and art, raised the importance of comic strips to an unprecedented position, taking Shanghai as an example, conducting a thorough survey of comic strip artists, absorbing outstanding authors into professional publishing houses, and placing them in the cultural center cinema at a general level. The theme has been greatly expanded, with special emphasis on realistic themes, workers, peasants, businessmen, and soldiers, and the script has the participation of professional writers. Outstanding comic strip artists from the Republic of China are also particularly motivated, actively participating in short courses taught by professional painters such as the Academy of Fine Arts, and learning sketching courses such as sketching and sketching. These people were originally very capable of painting, but now their social status and treatment have improved, their subject matter is broad, and they have learned to describe real life, and the results have improved by leaps and bounds. This is a bit like Hou Baolin and others, who used to be street performers, basically like those who wanted food, and became people's artists after 1949.
Beijing News: Did CGIA once have a professional comic strip department?
Feng Mengbo: The Central Academy of Fine Arts used to have a Department of New Year Paintings and Comic Strips. When I went to the Academy of Fine Arts, it became the Department of Folk Art, and a few years ago it became the School of Experimental Art. At the end of the development of the annual link, the ecology of the comic strip changed a lot. At that time, complete sets of comic strips were popular in society, except for reprinting old books that sold well, or taking out old literary scripts and organizing authors to repaint them, and the quality was generally poor. Art schools are different, deliberately opposing the tradition of comic strips, popular group painting works, paying attention to the independence of the picture itself, the main purpose is to participate in the award, or published in several pictorial journals such as "Comic Strip" and "Fuchunjiang Pictorial". In short, it is getting farther and farther away from the tradition of comic strips.
03
Printing and painting techniques
Beijing News: In terms of form, after so many years of development, why are comic strips black and white? It stands to reason that colorful ones can be more attractive to buy from the beginning.
Feng Mengbo: Comic strips are mainly line drawings, which are inseparable from the level of plate making and printing technology in that year. After the photographic plate making of that year, the use of lithography and offset printing, in such a small picture, it is difficult to restore the delicate light and shade layers. Color printing requires at least four editions and more advanced paper, which is a huge increase in cost and difficult for consumers to afford. These limitations in craftsmanship and cost determine the appearance of most comic strips based on black and white line drawing.
Beijing News: So in terms of printing, what changes have occurred in different years?
Feng Mengbo: According to my observation, the plate making and printing quality of many comic strips during the Republic of China period was very good. Both the precision of plate making and the quality of the paper ink are quite high. From 1949 to the early sixties it was very good, and the quality of plate making and printing during the three difficult periods was obviously crude, and by the seventies it was back to normal. The worst part was the 1980s, which had a lot to do with work attitudes.
Beijing News: In addition to its own development, have comic strips been influenced by other foreign cultures?
Feng Mengbo: In addition to drawing on traditions such as embroidery in classical Chinese novels, comic strips during the Republic of China period were also influenced by many foreign cultures, especially American comics and illustrations. In the early 1950s, of course, he studied the Soviet Union in an all-round way, not only in painting, but even consciously or unconsciously, he painted Chinese in the form of a Soviet. After the 1970s, comic strip artists developed their own modeling language based on line drawing, which became more and more mature.
04
The peak of comic strip distribution
Beijing News: It is said that at its peak, buying a comic strip was something you needed to grab.
Feng Mengbo: When I was a child, for example, more than a dozen comic strips were published across the country every year. I also treasured the comic strips that my family bought for me when I was a child, probably more than a hundred copies, which is a lot among my peers. I remember that "Sha Jia Bang" had just been listed, and my grandmother took advantage of the lunch break to go to the platoon and specially bought two copies, so that my brother and I did not have to rush to see it at the first time. The listing of comic strips, especially major themes, was a big deal, similar to today's blockbuster release. In the 1970s, although there were very few varieties published, the print number was particularly high, with hundreds of thousands of copies.
Beijing News: The information I found shows that more than two million copies were printed in the most prosperous year.
Feng Mengbo: More than two million ben, I think it may be quite conservative. For example, the popular "Railway Guerrilla" has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has accumulated more than 30 million copies.
Beijing News: Whether there was another problem with comic strips at that time, that is, the coordination of multi-person creation. For example, there was a version of "Dream of the Red Chamber", when many people were found to paint together, some people's lines were biased, and some were very rough, which would make a comic strip appear in different styles.
Li Yousong: There will be this problem, that is, the publishing house invites many people to jointly create a set of works, whether so many people can form a unified style between them, and which theme of the painter's style is more compatible with, which is the problem that the publishing house needs to control. In addition, the development and changes of the comic strip artist in different periods have also occurred under the attention of the reader. A comic strip must not be divorced from the reader, because the important feature of a comic strip is its popular nature.
Beijing News: Later, some artists' styles were too obvious, such as using oil paintings to create comic strips.
Li Yousong: That's why comic strips flourished so much in the early 1950s, because of the people and progressive nature of comic strips. This form of illiteracy can also be understood, it is for everyone to see, it is very vivid. Later, with the development of comic strips, some painters are too pursuing personal artistic expression, and there is a tendency to be lonely and self-congratulatory, turning it into a Yangchun white snow that insiders only care about, but art needs to communicate with people outside the industry, and comic strip painters should be friends with painting, because comic strips have always been a popular art form for the people.
05
Attempts at decline and revival
Beijing News: What is the reason for the decline of comic strips after the 1990s?
Feng Mengbo: There is a saying that comic strips were facing the impact of television at that time. We had a TV relatively early in our house, and I remember when the 1978 World Cup was over, my neighbors came to my house to watch the live broadcast. After the 1980s, television programs became more and more abundant, and indeed became the main form of entertainment. But that's not enough to explain the substitution of television for comic strips. Looking at Europe, the United States and Japan, their television development is far earlier and more mature than ours, but the production and consumption of comics has always been stable.
I think the main reason may be the problem of comic strip creation and publishing itself. From a creative point of view, even the annual lianhe of the Academy of Fine Arts wants to move away from the tradition of comic strips and move closer to modern art or elitism. Looking back at this tradition now is very precious, comic strips can be said to be an independently developed art form with national characteristics in China, which was once a mainstream cultural product and had the broadest mass base. Destruction and abandonment are always easy, and construction is the hardest. The biggest contribution of comic strips from the Republic of China to 1949 was to keep pace with the times, that is, realistic themes and pen and ink rich in the spirit of the times. In the 1980s and 1990s, blindly reprinting old books or redrawing classical themes, publishing houses and painters rushed to make quick gains, and the quality dropped sharply, and decay was inevitable. The younger generation has new entertainment methods such as video games and the Internet, and the old and low-quality comic strip products are even less competitive.
Beijing News: Where do you plan to start trying to revive comic strips?
Feng Mengbo: After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1991, I have always been an independent artist, and a few years ago I was invited by the Academy of Fine Arts to go back to teach in the Department of Printmaking and opened a new studio. When designing the course, I was thinking about how to pass on my years of artistic learning and creative experience to young students. All the way back, back to comic strips. So one of the important courses in our studio is "Comic Book Creation". I myself led by example, creating a comic strip "Childhood", which was directly influenced by the Gorky trilogy that we loved to watch as children, describing the story of myself from birth to the admission to Jingshan Middle School in 1979, and then continued to create "In the World" and "My University".
After a few years of teaching, our course has been relatively mature, the students are very motivated, and they have accumulated a number of excellent assignments, with a wide range of themes and different drawing methods. The whole college elective, this course is also very popular, students in different majors are very good at drawing, I also found some good seedlings from it. I think that today's students are fully competent through learning, recognizing the excellent traditions and special laws of comic strips, supplemented by the training of sketching and line drawing. Moreover, today's society is extremely rich in content and unlimited subject matter, and the characteristics of comic strips re-narrative are very good artistic carriers. Comic strip itself has a mature consumer market, according to my conversation with practitioners, the market is warmly looking forward to the emergence of new works on realistic themes, if we start from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, consciously bring comic strip courses back to brother art schools, exchange experience, cultivate talents, and vigorously promote the creation and publication of new works, the revival of comic strips is possible.
Attached: Comic strip memorabilia
1925~1929
The Shanghai World Book Company has published five feature-length comic strips, including Journey to the West and Water Margin, which is the first time that "comic strip" has been used as the official name.
In 1952
The Shanghai "Comic Book Workers Study Class" was established, accepting nearly 200 authors.
In 1957
The 60-volume edition of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was published by the Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, making it the largest comic strip work to date.
In 1962
The 10-volume edition of "Railway Guerrilla" took 7 years to publish. It has been reprinted 20 times and printed a total of 36.52 million copies, making it the largest comic strip ever printed.
1966~1970
Stalled, almost no comic strip publishing.
In 1971
Zhou Enlai instructed "to solve the problem of spiritual food for the next generation" to resume the publication of comic strips.
In 1980
The Central Academy of Fine Arts opened a comic strip major.
In 1985
China Comic Strip Publishing House was established.
In 1986
A year of watershed. Comic strip publications fell from 810 million copies in the previous year to 130 million copies.
In 1990
The Serial Painting Major of the Central Academy of Fine Arts was withdrawn.