This thesis is purposefully limited to examining the status of China’s professional guohua (Chinese national painting) painters and their relation to the Party-State. It tackles the above subject by studying the contents of important official documents issued by the party-state, by retelling the interactions between professional guohua painters and the party-state in several crucial social-political contexts, and by analysing the experiences, opinions, observations and critiques of four professional guohua painters. The time span of this study extends from 1949 to the late 1990s, while acknowledging the year of 1978, when China officially launched its reform program, as a critical dividing juncture for comparative reasons. This thesis finds that a new favorable partnership was forged between the party-state and the professional guohua painters in the reform era. This was due to the impact of China’s political culture, changes in the ideology and policies of the ruling elite, the commercialization of art, and an emerging need to preserve guohua that is more instrumental to promote China’s cultural heritage and national soft power. It argues that the sustainability of such a partnership has been reinforced through a conscious differentiation between categories of art -- elite and non-elite, official and non-official, high and popular, public and non-public -- by Chinese cultural authorities as well as the artists themselves. This thesis further asserts that the significantly improved economic conditions and the social status that professional guohua painters enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s did not reflect on their cultural and political autonomy. Most of them consciously chose to be part of the institutional establishments under the party-state and showed limited aspiration in the quest for cultural and political autonomy. The “organized dependence” of professional guohua painters prior to the reform era was replaced by “conformity” of these artists towards the party-state. Finally it suggests that, although China’s changing political environment will eventually give way to economics and the scale of ideological movements and cultural control will continue to decline, many professional guohua painters are likely to stay within the ideological and aesthetic boundaries set by the party-state and to be part of official arts agencies and institutions.

This thesis is purposefully limited to examining the status of China’s professional guohua (Chinese national painting) painters and their relation to the Party-State. It tackles the above subject by studying the contents of important official documents issued by the party-state, by retelling the interactions between professional guohua painters and the party-state in several crucial social-political contexts, and by analysing the experiences, opinions, observations and critiques of four professional guohua painters. The time span of this study extends from 1949 to the late 1990s, while acknowledging the year of 1978, when China officially launched its reform program, as a critical dividing juncture for comparative reasons. This thesis finds that a new favorable partnership was forged between the party-state and the professional guohua painters in the reform era. This was due to the impact of China’s political culture, changes in the ideology and policies of the ruling elite, the commercialization of art, and an emerging need to preserve guohua that is more instrumental to promote China’s cultural heritage and national soft power. It argues that the sustainability of such a partnership has been reinforced through a conscious differentiation between categories of art -- elite and non-elite, official and non-official, high and popular, public and non-public -- by Chinese cultural authorities as well as the artists themselves. This thesis further asserts that the significantly improved economic conditions and the social status that professional guohua painters enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s did not reflect on their cultural and political autonomy. Most of them consciously chose to be part of the institutional establishments under the party-state and showed limited aspiration in the quest for cultural and political autonomy. The “organized dependence” of professional guohua painters prior to the reform era was replaced by “conformity” of these artists towards the party-state. Finally it suggests that, although China’s changing political environment will eventually give way to economics and the scale of ideological movements and cultural control will continue to decline, many professional guohua painters are likely to stay within the ideological and aesthetic boundaries set by the party-state and to be part of official arts agencies and institutions.

La pratique picturale de He Jaiying nous place face à un paradoxe esthétique : en dépit de sa dimension hétérotopique celle-ci peut-elle être considérée comme une œuvre contemporaine ? Ainsi cette première réflexion nous a –t-elle engagé à interroger la position et le rôle de l’héritage culturel dans les pratiques picturales d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Nous avons également dû nous intéresser à la question du monde de l’art et de son rapport à une production artistique dite « contemporaine ». Or, en quoi consiste au fond le contemporain ? Le contemporain n’est pas une chose que l’on montre. Il se montre lui-même dans les présences qu’il habite parce qu’il échappe justement à la représentation. De fait, il est une expérience et se vit comme telle. Dans sa quête de spontanéité, nous en faisons l’expérience dans un présent toujours en fuite. De sorte qu’en dehors du temps, ou temps d’entre les temps, il relie les différentes temporalités qui construisent la continuité chronologique. En cela, il n’y a rien de caché. Ou plutôt, ce qui se dissimule dans les œuvres est ce quelque chose que l’on ne voit pas mais à quoi on est sensible. C’est le trouble que nous renvoie la sensation étrange d’un temps hors du temps. Le contemporain est l’expérience que nous faisons du présent dans l’actualité de son événement. C’est un état de suspension. C’est pour cette raison que la présence y prend un caractère total, holiste. Contemporaine au sens où ce qu’elle met en lumière « ne quitte jamais le moment où il naît » (Jean-Luc Nancy), l’œuvre de He Jiaying est un intensificateur de présence et en cela, elle nous rapproche de la sensation absolue d’être-là. / He Jiaying’s pictorial practices leave his viewers with an aesthetic paradox: can his work be considered as contemporary art, despite its heterotypic dimension? A continuity of this initial reflexion from this leading lights of the gongbi artistic genre, leads the viewer to further question the position and the role of cultural heritage in the pictorial practices of today and yesteryears. But what is the link between the world of art and a work of art defined as “contemporary”?What does the contemporary consist of? The contemporary is not something that an artist can show. It reveals itself within the presence it inhabits because it escapes, fittingly, from such representation. It is a de facto experience and is lived as such. In its pursuit for spontaneity, we experience it in the ever-eluding present, so that that it is outside of time, or a time between time, linking different temporalities that make up chronological continuality. In that, nothing is hidden, or more to the point, the thing that is dissimulated in a work of art is that something that we do not see but that we recognise and are sensitive to. It is the discord that gives the viewer that strange feeling of time outside of time. The contemporary is the experience that we have of the present within the actuality of its passing. It’s a state of suspension, and it is for this reason that its presence takes on a total holistic character.Contemporary in the sense of the visible as “it never leaves the moment in which it was born” (Jean-Luc Nancy), the works of He Jiaying is an “intensificator” of presence and therefore, brings us closer to the absolute sensation of just being.