The Golden Key: Modern Women Artists and Gender Negotiations in Republican China (1911-1949)

The first monograph devoted to women artists of the Republican period, The Golden Key recovers the history of a groundbreaking yet forgotten force in China’s modern art world. Through its detailed examination of the lives and careers of six female artists-Guan Zilan, Qiu Ti, Pan Yuliang, Fang Junbi, Yu Feng, and Liang Baibo-this book argues that women were central to the emergence of modernist art in early twentieth-century China and to the nation’s larger modernization project. Amanda S. Wangwright’s analysis of a wealth of primary sources demonstrates how these women constructed public personas, negotiated space within art societies, applied feminist thought to their artistic praxis, and surmounted obstacles to their careers-wielding art as the golden key to professional advancement and gender equality.