95th Anniversary of Founding of China Academy of Art: Series of Academic Events Kick off on its Launch Day

Get Firsthand Knowledge from the Masters, Follow the Footsteps of the Great

HANGZHOU, China, April 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — On its 95^th Anniversary Day, Gao Shiming, President of the China Academy of Art, announced a series of academic events to be held for this particular occasion and declared that starting from this year, April 8 will be the day of the annual event CAA Launch.

The CAA Launch Brings forth a Creative Festival, Launching “1 School, 2 Platforms and 2 New Things” for the First Time

CAA kicked off a series of academic events to mark the 95^th Anniversary of its founding on April 8^th, 2023, its Launch Day.

Starting from this year, CAA has designated April 8 as the CAA Launch Day each year. The CAA Launch will become a festival for the creative circle, a public platform for all art creators, a creative festival for the society, and an “artistic engine” that drives social innovation.

It happens to be the Academy’s 95^th anniversary. The Academy has prepared three items for the first CAA Launch.

First, it establishes the CAA School of Calligraphy In 1963, artists and educators, such as Pan Tianshou, Lu Weizhao, Sha Menghai set up the first calligraphic education major in Chinese higher education. As calligraphy art continued to develop, a major adjustment was made by the authorities in the classification of artistic disciplines in 2022, and the discipline of Fine Arts and Calligraphy has hence become a first-level discipline.

Second, it establishes two academic platforms, namely China Cinematic Arts Institute and the School of Social Aesthetic Education to shoulder the responsibility for creating public culture and promoting social aesthetic education. Building on the CAA’s profound artistic foundation, China Cinematic Arts Institute is dedicated to further elevating the status of Chinese movies in the world, enhancing their international influence, and promoting the development of dynamic image technology, striving to become a new engine for artistic innovation of Chinese movies. The School of Social Aesthetic Education carries on the original aspiration Cai Yuanpei proposed at the opening ceremony of the National Academy of Art (now China Academy of Art), that we should transform people’s hearts with the heart of beauty so that they could obtain a true life. It advocates all-round and lifelong education, promotes traditional Chinese culture and nourishes the souls of the general public. The School will collaborate with other institutions of higher education, government departments, enterprises and industry associations to realize the integration, investment and transference of quality resources and deliver aesthetic education results throughout society.

Third, it releases two new things, the CAA Cosmos and Meta Art Academy. CAA Cosmos is an online art community that allows real-time multi-person interaction. Users can learn, socialize, and play games by creating their own digital identities, sharing their original artworks, and organizing and participating in art activities. CAA Cosmos builds virtual spaces and social scenarios with infinite possibilities, providing an innovative and interactive platform for artists, designers, and creators around the world. Meanwhile, by continuously exploring and applying AI and other new technologies, CAA Cosmos will bring a more wonderful meta social app full of imagination to its users. Meta Art Academy (MAA) is a mixed reality interface for single-person immersive experience. With hyper-immersive theme world courses, realistic audio-visual exhibition and performance sympathetic theater and mixed reality entrances transcending every dimension, MAA creates a virtual art academy that offers one multiverse to each person, and one thematic world for each lesson.

With the Gate of Classic Chinese Art Debuting by the Xianghu Lake, the CAA’s Xianghu Campus is Launched

A ceremony on the debut of the Gate of Classic Chinese Art and the launch of the CAA’s Xianghu Campus kicked off on the morning of April 8, as this year marks the 95th anniversary of the founding of the CAA.

Situated in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Xianghu Campus will have an overall schooling structure to carry forward China’s fine traditional culture and inherit classical Chinese art, based on the CAA’s expertise and talents, as well as bountiful culture and resources of Xianghu Lake in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. The “Gate of Classic Chinese Art” is built by drawing on the merits of the Imperial Painting Academy of the Song Dynasty, traditional Chinese academies and modern academies of art, thus nurturing outstanding talents with “mastery in art and science, skills and practices” and building the most influential cultural hub of China’s fine traditional culture.

The CAA Xianghu Campus aims to lead the innovative development of Chinese painting and calligraphy, gather distinguished scholars of humanities and art and develop student training paradigms. It puts the most effort into postgraduate and doctoral programs. Based on its first-class majors of Chinese painting and calligraphy, Xianghu Campus is composed of “four organizations, three museums and four centers” to carry forward China’s fine traditional culture and inherit classical Chinese art.

Among them, “four organizations” refer to the Advanced Institute of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, Xianghu Academy, Advanced School of Art and Humanities and National Institute of Art/Education, embracing talents of classic Chinese art, drawing inspiration from fine traditions of ancient academies, and helping integrate Chinese painting and calligraphy with classical academics; “three museums” are the Classic Chinese Art Museum, Xianghu Museum and Ancient Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Museum, housing CAA’s abundant collections of Chinese painting and calligraphy works and crafts, and bringing together domestic and international collections, based on the scenery and long-lasting culture of Xianghu Lake; “four centers” mean Chinese Character Research Center, Landscape Research Center, Philosophy and Technology Research Center and Landscaping Research Center, aimed at carrying forward the China’s fine traditional culture by carrying out special research projects on Chinese cultural elements. Besides, a lab of Chinese calligraphy and painting materials, a cluster of master offices and a research center of the global art history will be set up on the campus, to unveil the unique style of Chinese art from a great viewpoint of the global history and create the “visual classic Chinese art” for the Chinese people.

The CAA Xianghu campus is expected to operate in September, 2023. Notably, Xianghu Campus will be one of the venues to feast the public’s eyes with stunning art works created by young artists, designers and scholars in summer this year.

Themed Get Firsthand Knowledge from the Masters, Follow the Footsteps of the Great, the Research Project “Grand Masters of the Century” is Launched.

With a legacy spanning close to a century, the Academy has witnessed master predecessors springing up, lighting up the sky of Chinese modern art history, who constitute the CAA’s spirit and academic foundation.

The theme “Get Firsthand Knowledge from the Masters, Follow the Footsteps of the Great” implies the way to make innovations by drawing inspiration from the past. Specifically, tradition gets developed and evolved as it passes down, and thus it may lead to innovations. Since 2023, the Academy has launched its academic program “Grand Master of the Century” until the centennial of the CAA’s founding in 2028. In the second half of 2023, the CAA will host a “memorial exhibition of the 120^th anniversary of the birth of Mr. Zhu Lesan“, a “memorial symposium of the 120^th anniversary of the birth of Mr.Lin Wenzheng”, a “grand memorial exhibition of the 120^th anniversary of the birth of Mr.Wu Dayu” and other academic events. It will also hold “The Centennial Exhibition of Mr.Zhao Wuji’s Masterpieces” during the 19th Asian Games. In memory of those art masters and wise predecessors, the events dive into the history and philosophy of Chinese modern art and art education.

Since 2000, the CAA has its every “fifth” anniversary celebrated in the second half of that year. Each theme of the anniversaries is beyond the CAA’s history and revolves around frontier academic topics. In 2023, the core academic event of the 95^th anniversary of the CAA’s founding is “Inter-World-View: World Civilizations Forum”, an international art campaign comprising “teaching, creation, action and communication”. Under the framework of mutual learning among civilizations, we will go to 12 crucial historic sites of world civilizations to experience spectacular histories through the dialogue of worldview. sessions distributed in different places will be delivered and a themed short video shot to form the forum and exhibition. This event is to drive a real “Institute Campaign” in the post-pandemic era and to progress toward the centennial of “CAA’s founding”. It intends to fathom the origin of art and education from the perspective of exchange and mutual learning among civilizations by exploring the historical sources of majors and paying homage to all “pioneering” moments. Meanwhile, a present-focused mindset is emphasized. The development and potential trends of human civilization, especially science and technology in the 21^st century will be probed into. By doing so, the event provides an opportunity to cultivate young artists with a global view, historical awareness and artistic ambition.

In the second half of 2023, Liangzhu Campus, CAA will be fully opened. As the subject of design will be introduced here, “2023 Design, Start Again” is planned to be held. Progresses in the technological revolution, technology iteration and social improvement are expected. The event is to create a 21^st-century historical mission book through design. In other words, it is to rebuild design in the dialectical integration of art with technology and aesthetic with ethics. Also, it represents everyday life in the general network of “information, technology, capital and power”, thus driving social innovation.

Cai Yuanpei, a famous Chinese educator, delivered his famed speech Academies Should Be Set up Only for Academic Research on April 8, 1928 at the opening ceremony of the National Academy of Art (now China Academy of Art), in which he proposed that “the University Council (the then Educational Ministry) set up an academy of art along West Lake, to create beauty, so that people in the future could get rid of superstition, harbor the love for beauty and eventually obtain a true life.” His speech opened a new chapter of China’s higher education of fine arts. Since its establishment, the China Academy of Art (CAA) has been an academy with lofty education ideals and great artistic concerns.

95 years have flown by. The CAA has never stopped responding to the most fundamental education ideals and artistic concerns. It constructs a “Campus Realm”, advocating an outlook of building a university with an emphasis on both space and spirit. It upholds the spirit of “thinking as virtuosos, and acting as craftsmen”, and illuminates the Vision of the East with the artistic practices done with virtuosity and combining knowledge and action. The CAA has always been “driven by global and domestic vision, and empowered by culture and tech education”. The Academy’s mission is to nurture individuals who are masters in character and knowledge, in the art and the science, in the classics and the contemporary, and in everything Chinese and beyond.

95 years have passed by. The CAA has developed itself into a national institution of higher education in fine arts with the most comprehensive disciplines and the fullest scale. 95 years later, the CAA continues to promote its development as a world-class academy by trekking the pioneering journey of Chinese art, building a core site of art education and upholding the manifesto of academic ethos. It has grown into a university with five campuses and over 10,000 students and faculty:

Nanshan Campus, Hangzhou: A modern art education center that connects the contemporary and classic art between the East and the West

Xiangshan Campus, Hangzhou: A frontier public art and mass culture area open to the public

Liangzhu Campus, Hangzhou: An international design hub that bridges science, art and business

Xianghu Campus, Hangzhou: The Gate of Classic Chinese Art that passes on Chinese cultural elements to make today a better day

Zhangjiang Campus, Shanghai: An artistic design innovation hub on the international frontier, and an innovation incubator open to all CAA graduate students

SOURCE China Academy of Art