Central Academy of Fine Arts 中央美术学院
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
The Central Academy of Fine Arts (or CAFA) is the only art institution of higher learning operated by the Ministry of Education. It was founded in Beijing in April, 1950, when the National Beijing Art College and the Fine Arts Department of Huabei University were transformed into a single institution. Since then, CAFA has been renowned for nurturing some of the most prominent artists of the PRC.
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[edit] History
The Central Academy of Fine Art traces its roots back to the National Beijing Art College, which was the first modern fine arts institution in China. Founded in 1918, at the behest of the well-known educator Cai Yuanpei, the National Beijing Art College has also been headed by such renowned artists as Xu Beihong, Jiang Feng, Wu Zuoren, Gu Yuan and Jin Shangyi. Numerous name changes began in August, 1925, when the National Beijing Art College changed its name to the National Beijing Art School. In 1927, it became the Beijing University Art Department and in 1928, the Beijing University Art College. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the school moved to Chongqing and then, in August, 1946, back to Beijing (where President Xu Beihong hired such well-known oil painters as Qi Baishi and Wu Zuoren as professors).
CAFA's Mission Statement proclaims its main objective to be the cultivation of world-class art professionals. The current President of CAFA is the painter and art historian Pan Gongkai, the current Director of the Academic Board is artist Jin Shangyi, and Yang Li directs the Executive Committee. Admission is highly competitive due to the school's longstanding tradition of academic excellence, experimentation, and multi-disciplinarity. The campus boasts first-rate libraries and studios and in addition to training and educating artists, CAFA publishes two esteemed periodicals: Art Research and World Art.
[edit] Organization
CAFA comprises seven schools and colleges: the School of Fine Art, the School of Chinese Painting, the School of Design, the School of Architecture, the School of Humanities, the College of Urban Design, the School of Continuing Education, and the Affiliated High School of Fine Art.
[edit] Disciplines
CAFA boasts more than 100 concentrations spanning several disciplines. Subjects areas include: painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, animation, and design. Within these concentrations CAFA offers narrower courses of study; for example, an undergraduate studying painting might concentrate in oil painting, printmaking, mural painting, Chinese painting, calligraphy, or experimental art. While many associate CAFA primarily with painters and sculptors, its curriculum also incorporates graphic design, product design, fashion design, digital media art, environmental art design, art and architectural history and theory, design history and theory, intangible cultural heritage, art administration, design management, museology, and numerous other diverse subjects. AFA also offers places each year to post-doctoral researchers.
[edit] Schools and Colleges
[edit] School of Chinese Painting
The School of Chinese Painting grew out of the Chinese Painting Department, which was founded in 1958. The department was reconstructed into the larger School of Chinese Painting in 2005. Predicated on the concepts underlying traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy, drawing, art history and theory, the School of Chinese Painting adopts a studio system. Its teaching approach is structured into a "mixing-up of imitation, drawing and creation." A student may choose courses among such electives as imitation, drawing and sketching, calligraphy, seal-stone engraving, and creation. The school provides its students a choice of realism and abstraction, landscape and figuration, traditional calligraphy and modern brushstroke. Within the school, there is a research center where calligraphers and painters can compare and share their techniques.
[edit] School of Fine Art
In the School of Fine Art, freshmen undertake the Foundation Year Program Department. They may then proceed to study in specialized departments such as oil painting, printmaking, sculpture, and mural painting. The Foundation Year Program focuses on cultivating the students' comprehensive ability to produce fine art. Combining various techniques and concepts from both Eastern and Western traditions, the Foundation Program's professors aim to deepen their students' understanding of art expression and to ensure their professional adaptability.
The Oil Painting Department represents one of the earliest teaching bases for oil painting in China and was founded in 1918. It offers five studios, each of which is rooted in the primary specialty of its corresponding teachers and artists.
The Printmaking Department, founded in 1954, became the first department dedicated to printmaking in China. Studios for woodcutting, etching, lithography and silkscreen printing were set up to house basic courses like drawing, color application, and printmaking.
The Sculpture Department was founded in early 1950s, and is now the biggest platform for sculptural instruction, research and creation in China. It concentrates on both clay sculpture and modern material techniques.
The Mural Painting Department, founded in 1978, was the first of its kind in China's higher art academies. Since its founding, the Department has been committed to revitalizing the traditional Chinese mural painting genre, drawing upon examples of modern mural painting and public environment art in other countries.
The Experimental Art Department began as the Experimental Art Studio, which was founded in 2005. The department concerns itself primarily with a student's practical experience of modern art, encouraging his experimentation with various local and global visual languages. Besides their elementary teachers, the department employs many world-renowned artists to run workshops. Furthermore, the department offers specialized research grants to particularly outstanding artists, providing them with digital apparati and new art media such as advanced video.
[edit]
School of Humanities
The School of Humanities, established in 2003, was preceded by the Art History Department of CAFA, founded in 1956. This school has made considerable academic and research achievements in fields such as: the history of Chinese religious art, the history of Chinese scholarly painting, ancient Chinese painting theory, the history of modern Chinese art, ancient Chinese painting and calligraphy identification, the history of Chinese folk art, Chinese art philology, Chinese and foreign art exchanges and comparison, the history of modern and contemporary Western art, restoration of ancient Chinese painting and calligraphy, art administration and curation, cultural heritages, the history of archeology, and so on. In recent years, the school has made advancements in newer areas such as the research of visual cultures, the history of western Feministic art, the history of New Chinese art, and the history of oriental art. The School of Humanities comprises four departments: Art History and Theory, Art Education, Arts Administration, and Cultural Heritage, the last of which is supplemented by a non-material cultural heritage research and information center. The school has preserved a long-standing academic exchange and communication with many renowned universities such as University of California (Berkeley), Stanford University, Princeton University, New York University, Harvard University, Heidelberg University in Germany, SOAS of University of London, University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, University of New South Wales in Australia, Institut National du Patrimoine (National Cultural Heritage Institute in France) and Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Russia.
[edit] School of Design
The School of Design was established in 2002, and was grown out of the Design Department, originally founded in 1995. The school positions itself as a place of "artistic, experimental, visionary and international" teaching, aiming to cultivate sensual, imaginative and decisive designers. At present, it offers six majors: visual communication, industrial design, digital media, photography, fashion design and jewelry design. Each of these concentrations incorporate the basics of natural form, abstract form, construction, material experiment, sense training, thinking training, and comprehensive training in their foundation courses. Like the other schools and departments, in order to promote a comprehensive development of teaching and research, the School of Design pursues international cooperation in an active way.
[edit] School of Architecture
The School of Architecture, when founded in 2003, became the first architectural institute in China to combine a strong fine arts academy with a large-scale institute for architectural design. This conjunction aimed to advocate the need for close cooperation between the fields of art and architecture. By highlighting architectural art and culture as well as science in engineering and design courses, the school conveys its commitment to cultivating architects and designers who possess artistic qualities as well as mathematical understanding. As a result of the one-to-one ratio of teachers to students, a burgeoning talent will have the chance to receive edification from a professional architect from the very beginning of his or her specialized course. At present, the School of Architecture offers three majors: architecture, landscape design, and interior design.
[edit] School of City Design
The School of City Design, established in 2002, became the first professional college to be located outside CAFA's primary campus. This decision fed into a larger initiative towards probing a multiple schooling model. Now the college comprises four departments: urban information design, urban image design, urban fashion design, and urban video design. Supplementing these departments are a publishing design studio and an animation creation center.
[edit] Facilities
CAFA provides state-of-the-art teaching facilities to its students and teachers. Each school of CAFA possesses specialized teaching resources as well as its own studios and workshops. There also exist public teaching facilities on campus that are shared by all the departments, such as multi-media classrooms, language labs, and lecture halls.
[edit] Library
CAFA's Library has a long and rich history. As one of the largest professional libraries in China, the CAFA library contains the most comprehensive collection of art books in the country, boasting a collection of 360,000 books and paintings. Its special collection includes historic wood-block New Year pictures, ancient editions of string-bound illustrated books, rubbings from stone-engraved portraits dating back to the Han Dynasty, and first hand copies from antiquated engraved seals. The library's collection extends beyond Chinese subjects to art books and high-quality prints of original artworks published in Europe, America and Japan.
The library offers individual reading rooms for art books, social science books, magazines and multi-media reading, respectively, all of which are open or half-open to visiting readers. Furthermore, the library provides access to online academic resources like CJFD and CDMD of CNKI, e-books on Shushing website, National Palace Museum-Online, Taiwan Doctor/Master Dissertations Database, and its own fine arts reference database. Dissertation names are stored in core journals collected by CAFA, which are in turn made publically accessible in the library.
[edit] Museum
Set up in the early 1960s, the Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts was formerly named the CAFA Gallery, and was located at Xiaowei Hutong in downtown Beijing's Wangfujing Street. Its rich collection of some 13,000 works covers a wide variety of genres and styles, including representative works by ancient and modern Chinese masters as well as student works (since the incorporation of the Academy in 1950). The collection spans such diverse categories as: Chinese painting, oil painting, print, sculpture, folk art such as New Year pictures, embroidery, minority ethnic costumes and objects, Chinese relics in bronze, pottery, engravings, and rubbings.
Designed by renowned Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, the new CAFA museum covers 14,777 m2 of a 3,546 m2 lot, with four floors above ground and two floors below ground. The museum launched in September 2008, together with its new collection warehouse, permanent and temporary exhibition halls, and supporting facilities such as artist studios, lecture and conference rooms, a cafeteria, and a bookstore.
[edit] Leadership
[edit] Director Executive Committee, Yang Li
Yang Li, born in 1951, graduated from the Chinese Department of the People's University of China, where he received a master's degree in Fine Arts and Chinese Literature. After arriving at CAFA, he served as the Principal Staff Member of the First Division of Higher Education under the Ministry of Education from 1986 to 1989. He was the Deputy Chief under the Bureau of Social Science Research and Art Education of the Ministry of Education from 1989 to 1993. He then became Director and Deputy Director-General of PE, Health and Art Division from 1993 to 2001. Since 2001, Yang has been the Director of CAFA's Executive Committee?a standing committeeman on the Arts Education Committee of Education Ministry, and a delegate of the Ninth and Tenth Beijing Party Congress of the CPC (Communist Party of China).
[edit] President of Academy, Pan Gongkai
Professor Pan Gonqkai, born in 1947, earned his master's degree from the Chinese Painting Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. Following his graduation, he served as a teacher in the Chinese Painting Department from 1979 to 1984. From 1984 to 1992, he served as the Director of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts and as the Director of the Chinese Painting Department. In 1992 he was offered an honorary doctorate degree by San Francisco Art Institute. From 1994 to 1996 he served as the Director of the Research Department at the China Academy of Art, (the name to which Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts was changed in 1993). From 1996 to 2001 he was the President of the China Academy of Art. In 2001 he came to CAFA as President and remains in this office today. He doubles as the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Artists? Association, a member of the National Committee of CPPCC, a Chinese painter in the traditional style, an art historian, a doctorate supervisor, and an examiner of Humanities and Social Science research projects for the Ministry of Education.
[edit] Vice-president, Dong Changxia
Dong Changxia, born in 1957, graduated from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in 1982, where he earned his bachelor's degree in Economics. From 1982 to 1989, Dong worked as an economist for the Planning Department Bureau of Capital Construction under the Ministry of Education. From 1989 to 1997, he served as the director of the Planning Department of Division of Institute directly under the Ministry of Education. From 1997 to 2000, he received training in London, attended a Management Engineering post-graduate course at Tongji University, and spent some time working in Hong Kong. From 2001 to 2002, he served as Deputy Director of the Office of University Management under direct administration by the Ministry of Education. Since 2002, he has served as Vice President of CAFA.
[edit] Vice President, Tan Ping
Tan Ping, born in 1960, received his bachelor of Fine Arts from CAFA, where he majored in print-making. From 1984 to 1989, he served as a lecturer at CAFA. In 1989, he began his master's degree program in the Free Art Department at Berlin University of the Arts. In 1994, he began teaching at CAFA, first in the Printmaking Department, then in the Design Department, until 2002, when he was promoted to the position of director of the School of Design. Since 2003, Tan has served as Vice President of CAFA.
[edit] Vice-president, Xu Bing
Xu Bing's family originated in Zhejiang Wenling, a coastal city 300 km south of Shanghai. Xu was born in 1955 farther inland in the Chongqing municipality. He began studying engraving methods during his years at the Beijing Central Academy of Art. He graduated in 1981, and went on to become a teacher there. He received his master's degree from the same school in 1987, and a year later won the Young University Teacher 1st Prize from the State Education Commission and Huo Yingdong Education Fund. In 1990, he moved to New York as an honorary artist visiting at the invitation of the University of Wisconsin. Xu stayed in the United States until 2007. In July of 1999, Xu was awarded the MacArthur Award for Genius by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition to receiving this honor, Xu won the 14th Fukuoka Asian Culture Award in 2003, the first Artes Mundi International Visual Art Award in 2004, and the 96th Youth Friends Award from the New York City Board of Education and High School Education Art Committee the same year. He was listed among the 15 artists featured in Art in America's 2004 edition of "People in Review." In 2007, the US National Engraving Artists Society awarded Xu a Lifetime Engraving Achievement Award. His works have been shown and collected by many famous museums worldwide, and written about in many international art history textbooks.
[edit] Renowned CAFA Faculty and Associates
Such renowned artists as Xu Beihong, Li Kuchan, Hua Tianyou, Teng Gu, Jiang Zhaohe, Liu Kaiqu, and Li Hua teach on the faculty at CAFA.
[edit] Campus Map
South Campus
1. Administrative Building
2. Library
3. Art Museum
4. Exhibition Hall for Plastic-cast Replicas
5. Main Teaching Building
6. Sculpture Teaching Building
7. School of Design
8. Dining-hall and Activity Center
9. Students' Dormitory
10. International Student and Experts
Dormitory
11. Multipurpose Building
12. Heat Supply Center
13. Students' Dormitory
North Campus
14. Teaching Building
15. Library
16. Basketball Gym
18. North Auditorium
19. Dining-hall and Logistic Building
21. Student Dormitory
22. Faculty Dormitory
[edit] References
http://www.cafa.edu.cn/
http://www.1art.com/
http://www.cafacds.com/bbs/
http://baike.baidu.com/view/8683.htm
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE%E7%BE%8E%E6%9C%AF%E5%AD%A6%E9%99%A2
