Andrew Wyeth and Contemporary Chinese Realism: A Study of Cross-Cultural Artistic Translation

Abstract

This article analyzes the reception and transformation of the realism of Andrew Wyeth by contemporary Chinese painters post the Reform and Opening-Up period. It puts forward an argument concerning Wei's artistic presence in China other than citing an example of stylistic influence and passive imitation. It attempts to prove that Wei's presence in China sparked, created, or initiated, a new artistic phenomenon in the Chinese and the inter- Western circle of cross-cultural Wei's presence, or Wyeth, in China. There are several formal aspects, and the thematic and contextual dimensions, in the work of the three chosen artists that prove the inter-cultural dimension, positive or negative, of the Wyeth work or Andrew Wyeth. The three contemporary Chinese artists are Ai Xuan, He Duoling, and Wang Yidong. Each one of the three artists, in Wei's presence, looked and interpreted Wei, or Wyeth's work, or Andrew Wyeth's works, from his or her own respective location, or local context, or culture, or civilization. Ai Xuan relocated Wyeth's great span of quiet solitudes and horizons in Tibet to a Tibetan, or Tibetan geographic and spiritual, He Duoling, localized the great span of Wyeth's tonal delicacy to a lyrical and, ipso facto, a more inwardly reflective realism, and Wang Yidong localized the great span of Wyeth's technical precision to an industrial, or historical and material, rural, and, ipso facto, to the rural and historical and material. The article additionally tries to examine the significance of institutional transformation, or a transformed institution, the visual reproduction, and the positive, or the productive, and negative misinterpretation in the context of the Wyeth's work or the Wyeth reception phenomenon in the Chinese artistic and, or, the very deep Chinese artistic. Wyeth's significance, in realism, in post-1980's China, the author explains, is not the immediate imitation, and, or, the immediate emulation, of Wyeth's work and, or, Andrew Wyeth's work, but the creatively re-determining, the creatively re-determining, the culturally and, the culturally re-determining, i.e. the culturally re-determining the culturally and artistically to, i.e. the culturally and artistically, to a Western modernist or contemporary realism, or the culturally and artistically to a Western modernist or contemporary realism, or the culturally and artistically fused to a Western modernist or a contemporary realism, or a contemporary realism fused to a Western modernist.