A HISTORY OF THE NANYANG ACADEMY OF FINE

ARTS
(1938 – 1990)

ONG ZHEN MIN

(B.A. (Hons.), University of Melbourne)

A THESIS SUBMITTED

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2006
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to my supervisors A/P Maurizio Peleggi and
Mr. T. K. Sabapathy for their patience and guidance in helping me shape this thesis.

I further wish to express my appreciation to the staff in the Department of History for
their assistance in different areas. The Department has generously funded my research
trip to Malaysia through the History Graduate Research Fund, making it possible for
me to search for materials overseas. I am also indebted to Ms. Kelly Lau for her
valuable advice in dealing with administration issues.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the graduate community at the
History department, and all other university friends, who have enlivened my time at
the National University of Singapore. To Seng Yu Jin and Wang Zineng especially; I
have profited greatly from our discussions on Singapore’s art scene.

I am grateful to my family for their support during the writing of this thesis.

The most enjoyable aspect in writing this thesis was the opportunity it provided to
meet artists and listen to their stories of the past. Many artists have been most
generous with their time spent talking to me and listening to my questions. It is my
hope that this thesis may in some way contribute to the overall record of their artistic
contributions.

ii
 CONTENTS

Summary..................................................................................................................... iv

Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

1.1 The background of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts .................................. 5
1.2 Understanding the role of the Academy in Singapore art................................. 8
1.3 Thesis Framework........................................................................................... 16

Chapter Two: China and the emergence of artistic training in Singapore (1920s
– 1930s)....................................................................................................................... 20
2.1 The Rise of Modern China: new patterns of movement in the art world ............. 23
2.2 Early training grounds for art: the formation of art studios and art schools in
Singapore .................................................................................................................... 30

Chapter Three: The establishment of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts ........ 38
3.1 The founding of the Academy: various perspectives of its origin ........................ 39
3.2 The start of the Academy: a gathering of like-minded artists............................... 48
3.3 The outbreak of war and its impact on the Academy ........................................... 60

Chapter Four: An overview of the curriculum and staff of the Academy (1950s –
1960s).......................................................................................................................... 65
4.1 The Academy and its teaching staff...................................................................... 67
4.2 The Academic departments and curriculum: an overview ................................... 72
4.3 Pedagogy............................................................................................................... 77
4.4 Styles and Influences ............................................................................................ 80
4.5 The Academy and the Nanyang Style................................................................... 85

Chapter Five: Reformation and the Academy in the post-independence years

(1970s – 1980s)........................................................................................................... 94
5.1 Artistic training in Malaysia: the late sixties and seventies.................................. 96
5.2 Changing notions of art and education ............................................................... 100
5.3 Looking to the future: the reformation of the Academy ..................................... 105

Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 118

Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 123

Appendix: List of Names ........................................................................................ 139

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 SUMMARY

This thesis proposes to study the historical development of the Nanyang Academy of

Fine Arts in Singapore as a way of understanding the Academy’s institutional growth

from the 1930s to the 1980s. By focusing on the Academy’s mission, organizational

structure and enrolment, activities and pedagogy, this thesis aims at producing a more

detailed and coherent picture of the Academy’s development than previously

available. In addition, it is hoped that by charting the history of the Academy, an

alternative view of Singapore’s history of art will be provided. Such a view would

provide new insights into key events and figures of Singapore’s art scene, the

expansion of the field of art education, and the establishment of the art scene.

The thesis is organized into four chapters that examine the development of the

Academy. The chapters document the period of growth of the Academy from its

establishment as an art academy in 1938 up to its reformation into a broad-based arts

institution in the 1980s. Chapter One deals with the art scene of Singapore in the early

twentieth century and the arrival of art schools and studios in Singapore. This chapter

discusses the emergence of the field of modern art education in China, and how the

concept of the art academy was transmitted to Singapore by immigrant Chinese artists.

Chapter Two uses the establishment of the Academy as a case study of the conditions

in which early artistic training took place in Singapore. Issues of the Academy’s

establishment and early history will be addressed here. Chapter Three focuses on the

role of the Academy as an institution of art training; this chapter discusses the internal

organization of staff and students, teaching methods and the curriculum adopted by

iv
the Academy, as part of the attempt to understand the Academy’s art education

strategy. Chapter Four examines the reformation of the Academy in the late seventies.

The chapter discusses the impact of Malaysia’s and Singapore’s independence on

their respective art scenes and the position of the Academy in the wider growth of the

field of art education in Singapore and Malaysia. The chapter further considers the

various factors leading up to the Academy’s reformation, including the influence of

industrialization on the art academies in both Malaysia and Singapore.

v
 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

When I arrived in Singapore four years ago, I did not know of the existence of
the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, the only art school of its kind in the whole
of Malaya. It is only when the Chinese Artists’ Association of Singapore told
me that it was giving a tea jointly with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts to
welcome another artist and myself that I first heard of its name. Immediately I
decided to visit it and what a pleasant surprise greeted me on arrival at 11 St.
Thomas Walk, a sympathetic old house surrounded by old trees in secluded airy
surroundings. There I met Mr. Lim Hak Tai, the principal who showed me the
place. The easels scattered around in the two of three classrooms
downstairs…reminded me of my student days in the academies of New York
and Paris…Here indeed was a place where students could study, draw, or
paint…to their hearts content 365 days a year…for it’s even open on Sundays
and its doors virtually never close.1

(Georgette Chen, as taken from “Some thoughts on Nanyang, Art,

and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, 1962.)

In the history of art development, the art academy is considered as the quintessential

example of an artistic training centre. This notion of an art academy, however, only

appeared in the past five hundred years or so. Art historians have pointed out how

ancient human civilizations such as Egypt did not use different classifications for art

and craft in their cultures. 2 Painting, sculpture, carpentry, metalwork and also

architecture were activities which involved the labour of hands, and were therefore

placed in the same overarching category of craftsmanship and craft training. Scholars

who study the origins of artistic training often chronicle the emergence of artistic

training to the Italian Renaissance in which the separation of the fields of art and craft

first started. In his estimable work Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and

1
Georgette Chen, “Some thoughts on Nanyang, Art, and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, in
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Class of 1957, [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts, 1957), unpaginated.
2
See Stuart MacDonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (London: University of London
Press, 1970), pp. 17-39.
Architects, Giorgio Vasari remarked that the ability to render an anatomically correct

human figure did not equate art, for technical skills were merely the mechanics of

drawing.3 For the work to have a purpose, draftsmanship has to be endowed with a

sense of aestheticism. Vasari’s view is an example of how art in this period came to

be viewed as a pursuit for perfection in life, and therefore a subject that concerned the

elevated concerns of the mind. Through this line of reasoning, art was imbued with a

higher sense of purpose, and its education over time diverged from craft training into

a specialized field of study and teaching.

During the period of the Italian Renaissance, aspiring artists undertook

apprenticeship in the workshops of prominent artists, slowly working their way up the

internal hierarchy of the workshop and honing their techniques until they gained

recognition as independent, practicing artists. Such workshops later gave way to the

formation of the artist’s studio, also known as atelier in France, where art students

gather at the studio of a well known artist to study from the master.4 Compared to

workshops and ateliers, an art academy represents a different level of approach to

artistic training. An academy is defined as an ‘association or school of artists

organized as a professional institution with a view to providing training, theoretical

debate and exhibiting opportunities’.5 The establishment of art within the boundaries

of academy emphasizes the teaching methods of art, and on the way artistic

knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation. As a place of learning, the

3
Giorgio Vasari, “The Lives of the Artists”, in Art History and its methods: a critical history, ed. Eric
Fernie (London: Phaidon, 1998), pp. 39-41.
4
Apprentices of workshop primarily received their training through working on the workshop master’s
projects, but studios and ateliers afforded greater freedom to its students to work on their own artworks.
5
See Humphrey Wine, “Academy”, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Macmillan,
1996), pp. 106-108.

2
academy also focuses on the discussion and research of artistic problems, providing a

theoretical basis to the students’ training. Through the institutionalization of art

instruction in the setting of an educational facility, and often working with official

support, the art academy conferred academic recognition on its graduate artists that

separated them from the independent, self-taught artists. The height of the academic

system can be seen in nineteenth century France, where academic artists formed a

major force in the French art scene. However, as a result of the popularization of the

Romantic notion of an artist and the increasing emphasis on personal artistic vision

and creativity, the academic system became criticized as overly formalized and

restrictive in its educational approach. By the twentieth century, the position of the art

academy was overtaken by the rapid growth of art and design schools.

Scholars have shown increasing interest in recent years towards studying the

way artistic training develops in different situations and locations. This focus is often

generated out of a greater need in the field of art history towards understanding the

complexities that underlie the development of art and its relationship to human

agency. One branch of study in particular is concerned over how certain type of

artistic discourses are replicated and transmitted from one location to another. In the

area of artistic training, a common theme for study is the spread of the European art

academic system to other parts of the world. Numerous studies exist on the

relationship between American and European art academies, and how American

artists studying in France at the end of the nineteenth century brought back the

knowledge of the art academy to the American art scene. Scholars studying East

3
Asian art have also chronicled the movement of European artistic knowledge and the

academic model into East Asia, and the resulting fertilization of the modern art scenes

in China and Japan. In Southeast Asia, the concepts of Western art practice were

often passed through colonialism. Two strong cases can be seen in Indonesia and the

Philippines, where art academies were set up as part of the colonial cultural

indoctrination process to introduce Western art to native artists. How the concept of

an art academy and artistic training has been developed to suit such particular

locations is thus an intriguing question for research.

This thesis proposes to study the history of the Nanyang Academy of Fine

Arts in Singapore as a way of charting its institutional evolution through the period of

the 1930s up to the 1980s. The Academy’s presence over the past sixty years has been

critical to the establishment and growth of the Singapore art scene, and its function in

educating generations of artists in artistic skills and knowledge makes it an important

subject of research. Through analysis of its aims, institutional structure and enrolment,

activities and teaching methods, it is hoped that greater understanding of the school’s

growth will be achieved, and consequently an appreciation of the Academy’s impact

on the development of art and art education in Singapore. At the same time, a second

aspect of the study revolves around the relationship of the Academy with the wider

art scene. In many ways, the Academy’s growth has also paralleled the evolution of

the Singapore art scene. By examining the chronicle of the Academy’s journey as a

focused study of the wider developments occurring in Singapore’s art scene, this

4
thesis should present new perspectives of the various key events and historical figures

in Singapore’s history of art.

1.1 The background of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

The founding and early history of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was

triggered by a series of events that can be traced back as early as the start of British

colonization of Singapore. From the late nineteen century onwards, the Southeast

Asian region became the settling ground of thousands of Chinese immigrants coming

in search of work. The British colonial possessions of Malaya and Singapore were

two favoured destinations; Chinese laborers were attracted in droves to the tin and

rubber industries which sprung up during the efforts of extracting resources from the

Malayan Peninsular in the British Forward Movement. The wave of Chinese

immigrants had a heavy impact on many Southeast Asian societies, and for locations

such as Singapore, the total percentage of the Chinese came to outweigh those of the

indigenous population’s. The flow of immigrants continued well into the first half of

the twentieth century, as those fleeing unrest in China escaped to Southeast Asia in

search of a new home. The Nanyang, translated literally into English as the ‘South

Seas’, became the Chinese denomination of the Southeast Asian region. 6 Taking its

compass direction from the position of China itself, the Nanyang lay to the south,

encompassing the areas in which the Chinese traded with: Thailand, Indonesia,

Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Although the term ‘Nanyang’ is rarely used

nowadays, replaced as it is by newer national definitions of territory, its history can

6
Long Thien-Shih, “Nanyang Style and the French Influence”, in Pont des Arts: Nanyang Artists in
Paris 1925 – 1970, [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1994), p. 30.

5
be seen in the many institutions that continue to bear its name, including the Nanyang

Academy of Fine Arts.

Singapore, with its status as a British free trade port, came into direct contact

with wider trends occurring on the global stage during the early twentieth century. It

was through these links that the formal entrance of Western art historical knowledge

first took place, introduced by way of the Chinese artists, arriving with the Chinese

immigrants during the 1920s and 30s.7 Unlike earlier periods of immigration waves,

which predominantly consisted of laborers and businessmen, the period of the

twenties saw the beginning of the movement of the Chinese intelligentsia into

Singapore’s society, as the Chinese population stabilized enough for a self-sustaining

culture. Political figures such as Kang Xi and Sun Yat Sen both visited the Overseas

Chinese at the beginning of the twentieth century to garner support for activities back

in China. They set the path that many other similar figures would take during the

Singapore anti-Japanese movement in the mid-1930s, eminent artists such as Xu

Beihong came to Singapore in order to raise funds for China’s war effort through

sales of their works.8 Many Chinese artists also immigrated to Singapore and Malaya

in this period.

Prior to the 1950s, the British maintained a relatively quiescent presence in

the Singapore art scene, one factor that has resulted in the domination of Singapore’s

7
Redza Piyadasa, “The China ‘connection’ in the story of Modern Malaysian Art”, Art Corridor
2(2001), pp. 6-11.
8
See Au Yeung, Hing Yee, Beihong zhai xing zhou (Beihong in Singapore) (Singapore: Yi Shu Studio,
1999).

6
early art scene by Chinese artists. The contribution of the Chinese artists can be seen

in many areas, including that of artistic training. Existing records in newspapers of

the time document the emergence of early art schools by the Chinese artists in this

period. 9 The Academy was one of several art schools to start up under these

conditions, but it is the only known establishment to have survived the Japanese

Occupation (1942 – 1945). When Lin Xueda first arrived in Southeast Asia during the

late 1930s, he, like so many other immigrants before him, was struck by the new and

alien tropical surroundings and the rapidly evolving Southeast Asian societies. He

believed that the area had great potential for the foundation of a new art scene, which

would be based on the blending of the various cultures present in Singapore and

Malaya. It was in this spirit that he first started a small art academy in a two-storied

house at 167, Geylang, opposite Gayworld Amusement Park.10 Founded in 1938, the

Academy’s initial student population consisted of only fourteen students, and the

school had three full time teachers on its original staff – Lin and fellow teachers Gao

Peize and Zhong Mingshi. In its early days, the school premise was also used as a

place where visiting Chinese artists would stop at to give lectures. The Academy

became an important centre of artistic activity in Singapore, a position that it

continued to hold in the art scene after the Second World War, reaching its height of

activity during the 1950s and 1960s. On 9 August 1965, Singapore separated from

Malaysia (formerly Malaya) to become an independent nation, and the Academy’s

9
For more detail on the early artistic activities in Singapore, see Yeo Mang Thong, Xinjiapo zhanqian
huaren meishushi lunji (Essays on the history of Pre-war Chinese painting in Singapore) (Singapore:
Singapore Society of Asian Studies, 1992) and Zhong Yu, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi (1900 –
1965)[The History of Malayan Chinese Art (1900-1965)] (Kuala Lumpur: Chung Chen Sun Art &
Design Group, 1999).
10
Redza Piyadasa, “The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, in Pameran retrospektif pelukis-pelukis
Nanyang, [Muzium Seni Negara] (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Seni Negara, 1979), p. 25.

7
position in the Singapore art scene was transformed. Over the next twenty years, the

nation’s industrialization drive had a profound impact on the institutional makeup of

the Academy, and triggered its shift from an academy of the fine arts to an arts

institution that taught not only the fine arts, but also other visual and design related

subjects. Currently, the Academy is one of two arts institutions in Singapore

providing artistic training at the tertiary level.11

1.2 Understanding the role of the Academy in Singapore art

While Singapore now has over forty years of independence behind it, the

problem of a Singapore identity in art is still a major issue in current discourse.

Through its location in Southeast Asia, a region that over the past centuries has seen

various waves of cultural influences added to its own indigenous cultures as a result

of trade and colonization from India, China and Europe, Singapore’s art scene has

been the recipient of many different artistic influences.12 It is partly due to this fact

that the act of analyzing stylistic changes remains a core part of discussion on the

formation of Singapore art, as researchers attempt to pinpoint the precise moment of

transition between imported art styles and the formation of Singapore art. It is also

unsurprising, given both these conditions and the relatively youthfulness of

Singapore’s field of art history, that researchers over the past years have been

generally occupied in mapping out the biographies of the artists and the developments

of art styles in Singapore in order to establish the parameters of the terrain.

11
Parvathi Nayar Narayan, “A Broad Perspective”, Asian Art News, 8, 5 (Sept/Oct 1998), pp. 44-45.
12
See O. W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies , 1982).

8
 This thesis, however, shifts away from such studies of styles in visual works,

and aims towards providing greater contextualization of the development of art in

Singapore through the study of the Academy. The thesis works towards dealing with

a problem often seen in the study of Singapore art – the lack of detailed historical data

pertaining to the early development of artistic activities. Art historian T.K. Sabapathy

has described how discussions on Singapore art are not always grounded in strong

historical information, an issue that affects the advancement into new intellectual

territories.13 This issue is often compounded by the fact that the earlier the subject

under discussion, the less information exists on it. There have been few attempts in

the past in studying the growth of institutionalized art activities in Singapore, or the

establishment and development of the art scene. We know little of how Singapore

artists have operated in the art scene, the effects of art patronage, and how the general

art market, important art institutions such as schools and museums, and art societies

came to be established. Such venues are crucial in regulating the professional life of

an artist. If we are able to gain a stronger understanding of the historical development

of the art scene to support discussion, perhaps new light can be shed on the overall

development of Singapore art.

Up to now, research works on art institutions such as the Academy remain

relatively rare in the field. Researchers who have dealt with the Academy as part of

their research includes Joseph MacNally in his Proposals for the Malaysian School of

Fine Arts Based on a Study of Demographic and Cultural Factors; Yeo Mang Thong

13
See Liu Kang and Ho Ho Ying, Re-connecting: selected writings on Singapore art and art criticism,
eds. Cheo Chai-Hiang and T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore:
LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts, 2005), preface.

9
in his Xinjiapo zhanqiao huaren meishushi lunji (Essays on the History of Pre-War

Chinese Painting in Singapore) (1992), and Zhong Yu in her Malaixiya huaren

meishushi 1900 – 1965 (A Brief History of Malaysian Chinese Art 1900-1965) (1999).

One of the earliest writers to comment on the value of art education in Singapore is

Marco Hsu (who also goes by the Chinese pen name of Ma Ge) in A Brief History of

Malayan Art (1963); the Academy is listed here under the section on art education.

For a chronological listing of events pertaining to the establishment and development

of the Academy, Chi Ching I has written an article on the Academy’s history for its

sixtieth commemorative issue Nanyang yishu xue yuan liushizhounian jinian

(Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Sixty Years Commemorative Issue) (1998). On

sources dealing with the growth of the Academy from the 1940s onwards, the

Academy itself publishes an annual graduation catalogue that includes short essays

and visual plates of graduate work. The Academy catalogues are useful in tracking

year to year changes in staff, student and other administrative issues. The Academy

also manages a number of art publications. The school publishes the Chinese art

journal Xue Da (Shyue Dah Annual Magazine) which began in 1986, and Nanyang

Yi Shu (Nanyang Arts), published from 2000 onwards.

In its conceptualization, this thesis addresses three different areas of research.

At a basic level, an art academy can be considered as the subject for a study of

institutional history. The categorization of art institutions commonly includes

workshops, art schools, art academies, associations and societies, etc. Institutional

history represents a way of understanding organized art activities. An example is

10
Nikolaus Pevsner’s Academies of Art Past and Present (1940), one of the earliest

research works on institutionalized art education. In it, Pevsner examines various

European art academies from the Renaissance until the twentieth century as a way of

tracing the evolution of the academy and the impact of academic training on art. He

identifies the academy as an institution of historic significance within the

development of art, and thus establishes the art academy as a research subject in its

own right. The study of the institutional organization of the Academy provides an

understanding of how artistic institutions in Singapore were established, and further

provides information on the key figures, events and activities that have shaped the

Academy’s growth over time. Such information is critical in light of the fact that

certain portions of the Academy’s past remain obscure. Until now, some writers still

make the mistake of designating the Academy as the earliest school of art to be

established in Singapore. The Academy, while forming the oldest school of fine arts

in the area, was not the earliest; a number of other schools including the Overseas

Chinese Art School predate its founding.14 These misconceptions indicate the general

lack of awareness of the early art institutions present in Singapore. Past studies of art

institutions often resolves itself to solely dealing with the Academy and its later

counterpart, the SIA-LaSalle College of Arts. We have little information on art

academies and other art training institutions in the past, such as the Singapore Arts

Academy, or the art schools and studios that were established before the Second

World War; there has yet to be a study undertaken that comprehensively surveys the

14
See Ye Zhong Ling, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishuxueyuan chuangbanshi (The Founding History of the
Overseas Chinese Art Academy)”, Zhongjiaoxuebao, 22 (1996), pp. 96-101.

11
different institutions involved in artistic training in Singapore’s art scene from the

past till the present.

Another field of study that studies the development of an art academy, albeit

for different reasons, is that of art education. ‘Art education’ is an umbrella term that

covers a wide range of activities. Although primarily concerned with the education of

artists and other art professionals, in recent times and with schools increasingly

adopting the art subject in their curricula, the field of art education has evolved to

include such areas as the training of art teachers, the study of art policies in schools,

social and psychological impacts of art in education, and developing teaching

methods in art. The emphasis remains, however, in the aspect of education and in

examining the various issues tied in with the teaching of art. The Academy is

involved in the field of art education in two ways: as an institution involved in artistic

training, and also as a training ground for art educators (the Academy is the first

known school in Singapore to provide a diploma course in art education). Despite the

Academy’s role, there are few references to the Academy in writings on art education

in Singapore. In general, treatments of the history of Singapore art education are

skewed towards the analysis of the art subject as taught in normal school curricula;

wider-ranging studies of the historical growth of Singapore art education, and at a

tertiary level, have been mostly neglected. The role of the Academy in the

development of the art education field is also not commonly discussed; the possible

exception to this is Joseph MacNally’s Proposals for the Malaysian School of Fine

Arts Based on a Study of Demographic and Cultural Factors, an in-depth critique of

12
the growth of art education in Malaysia, with commentaries on the Academy in

Singapore. Studies of art education in Singapore often do not include the Academy as

a subject within their study focus for two possible reasons: (1) the Academy is a

private institution, whereas most recent studies are generated by the Ministry of

Education and thus directed towards government schools; (2) the Academy is a

tertiary education institution, which leaves it out of the surveys that mainly deal with

primary and secondary school level art education. Using an art educative approach in

questioning the Academy’s history, however, may still prove useful in providing

insights to how art curricula in Singapore schools were established. A study of the

Academy can highlight the development of art curricula at different levels in

Singapore and thereby promote a greater understanding of how educational

approaches have altered over the years. This thesis thus seeks to provide an in-depth

analysis of the Academy’s curriculum, educational philosophy and pedagogy.

In a different frame of reference, the critical analysis of the Academy and the

general study of art schools and art education may be located within one of the most

important trends in the field of art history during the later twentieth century. The

social history of art is an art historical approach that studies the social conditions

underlying artistic production as a way of questioning stylistic change. 15 Style, as

Meyer Schapiro defines it, represents ‘the constant term—and sometimes the constant

15
Craig Clunas, “Social History of Art”, in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert S. Nelson and
Richard Shiff (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 465-478. See also the
introduction by Jonathan Harris in Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art: Volume III Rococo,
Classicism and Romanticism (London & New York: Routledge, 1999).

13
elements, qualities, and expression—in the art of an individual or a group’. 16 In

conventional art history, a work of art is studied separately and independently from

the society that produces it. Hence, the conventional system of art history employ

concepts such as stylistic changes and periods, in effect internalizing the development

of art and separating it from the overall development of society. The work of art holds

the paramount position in analysis, followed by artistic intention, then historical

circumstance. The social history of art, on the other hand, redistributes the order of

significance. Social historians of art attempt to interpret the formation of art styles by

studying the society in which the artworks are produced, and the social factors that

influence a specific aesthetic inclination. Moreover, since social historians of art often

understand social conditions as delineating the parameters by which art is able to

progress in history, the study of historical causality which instigated art to develop in

a certain path takes on a more prominent position as compared to traditional studies

of art development.17

By viewing the Academy through the lenses of the social history of art, we are

able to draw a more detailed picture of how the Academy has shaped the development

of art in Singapore. Social historians of art take particular interest in the environment

of the artists, and in which artistic activities are ordered. On the primary level, social

historians of art often look at production methods such as the tools used by the artists,

16
Meyer Schapiro, “Style”, in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi
(Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 143.
17
“I am not interested in the notion of the work of art ‘reflecting’ ideologies, social relations or
history”, writes Clark. “Equally I do not want to talk about history as ‘background’ to the work of art –
as something which is essentially absent from the work of art and its production, but which
occasionally puts in an appearance.” (Timothy J. Clark, quoted in Clunas, “Social History of Art”, p.
467.)

14
his training, and his various interactions with the art scene at the given period.

Integrated with this on the secondary level are the prevailing trends in society that

have an influence on the psyche of the artist and the way he works. The use of such

approaches adds a new level of complexity to the discussion of the Academy’s role to

Singapore art. Important to this thesis is the work of Erwin Panofsky, who sets out a

three-level approach to interpreting art by focusing on the relationship between

society and an artist in his ‘Iconography’.18 Panofsky argues that the interpretation of

art necessitates an understanding of how certain actions in a cultural milieu of the

artist are coded; he illustrates this point through the example of the action of hat-

raising, and the cultural significance such an action engenders in European society.

What Panofsky proposes in his writing is that the understanding of an artwork cannot

be based on visual observation of the artwork alone, but needs to be supported by a

wider knowledge of the circumstances that govern the artist and shaped his world-

view. Without such knowledge, it is impossible to read the original meanings which

the artist has consciously or subconsciously included in his work as a result of his

conditioning. Another way of interpreting the situation is Timothy J. Clark’s 1974

article “The Conditions of Artistic Creation”, in which he focuses on the study of the

art scene in which the artist works,

We need facts – about patronage, about art dealing, about the status of the artist,
the structure of artistic production…what exactly were the conditions and
relations of artistic production in a specific case? Just why are these particular
ideological materials used, and not others?19

18
See Erwin Panofsky, “Studies in Iconology”, in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art
of the Renaissance, Erwin Panofsky (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 3-17.
19
Timothy J. Clark, “The Conditions of Artistic Creation”, in Art History and its Methods: A Critical
Anthology, Eric Fernie (London: Phaidon, 1998), pp. 251-252.

15
Clarke discusses the circumstances which affect artistic production, and why certain

types of ideological materials are used over other available materials. More

importantly, he questions if there are there factors that influence these preferences. He

listed issues such as patronage and audience reaction as among the various pressures

which shape artistic production. 20 Similarly, some of the answers to the Clark’s

questions can be found through examining the background of training artists have

received. The information provided by this thesis will contribute towards

understanding the type of conditions in which artists operate. By studying the

historical role the Academy has played in the field of art education in Singapore, we

not only gain immediate knowledge of the way art education has developed, but more

importantly, we are able to better grasp the impact the Academy had on the Singapore

art scene and the Academy’s role in the overall development of Singapore’s history of

art.

1.3 Thesis Framework

This thesis takes the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts as its subject of study.

Through focusing on the Academy’s mission, organizational structure and enrolment,

activities and pedagogy, the thesis aims at producing a detailed and coherent picture

of the Academy’s development over time. It is also hoped that by charting the history

of the Academy, an alternative view of Singapore’s history of art and art education

will be provided. Such a view would provide new insights into key events and figures

of Singapore’s art scene, and the interactions between the Academy and the art scene.

The thesis is organized into four chapters that examine the period of growth of the
20
Ibid., p. 252.

16
Academy from its founding in 1938 up to its metamorphosis into an arts institution in

the 1980s.

Chapter Two deals with the art scene of Singapore in the early twentieth

century and the establishment of art school and studios in Singapore. This chapter

examines the changing circumstances of the art world overseas in Europe and China,

and how China’s reformation strategy in creating a new modernized Asian nation,

ultimately led many Chinese artists to adopt Western art as a way of forging a modern

identity in art. The new academies set up in China during that period for teaching

modern art adopted a double approach in education in which Western art and Chinese

art were taught side by side, a teaching approach which was also adopted by the art

schools set up by the Chinese artists in Singapore prior to the Japanese Occupation.

This line of analysis is continued in Chapter Three, which studies the founding of the

Academy in terms of the conditions in which early artistic training occurred in

Singapore. This chapter provides a detailed history of the establishment and early

years of the Academy, and also examines how key events such as the Sino-Japanese

War (1937-1945) in China affected the Singapore art scene and the development of

the Academy as an art centre.

Chapter Four addresses the role of the Academy as an institution of artistic

training, and its continued function at passing on artistic knowledge to a new

generation of artists. This chapter details the internal organization of staff and

students, teaching methods and the curriculum adopted by the Academy. The chapter

17
also discusses the issues of stylistic influence between teachers and students, and the

Academy’s role as a centre in the dissemination of Nanyang art. Chapter Five

examines the Academy in the post-independence years of Singapore from the late

1960s to 80s. It studies in particular the various contributing factors leading to its

development from a fine art academy into an art school offering training of different

fields of arts. The chapter first discusses the Academy against the general background

of the growth of the field of art education in Singapore and Malaysia, and how the

Academy became a model for the new wave of art academies built in Malaysia during

the late 1960s. It further considers the impact of industrialization on the art academies

in both Malaysia and Singapore, focusing on the introduction of design and

commercial art subjects to the curricula. Finally, the chapter examines the response of

the Academy to the internal needs of its organization, which ultimately led to the shift

into an art institution.

Before commencing the discussion, some issues of names and terms used in

this thesis will be clarified here. The Chinese names of artists discussed in this text

are transliterated into the hanyu pinyin system. For example, Lim Hak Tai is written

as Lin Xueda. A reference list of the dialect names of Academy teachers is provided

in the appendix. Also, the term ‘Academy’ will be used throughout this thesis to refer

to the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. It must be noted that the Academy adopts

different names at various points in its history. The Academy’s English name has

remained consistent; the Academy uses the name ‘Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts’ in

all its English-language documents. This is also the title most commonly seen in

18
existing research works. Its Chinese name, however, has undergone a number of

changes over the years. The Academy initially opened under the initial name of

‘Nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao’ (Nanyang Specialized School of Fine Art)’ (the

school is also referred to informally in Chinese as ‘Nanyang meizhuan’). 21 It has

subsequently experienced two further changes to its name. In 1982, the name was

officially changed to ‘Nanyang meishu xueyuan’ (Nanyang Academy of Fine Art).22

In 1989, the portion of ‘meishu xueyuan’ was dropped in favour of the current

‘Nanyang yishu xueyuan’ (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts), emphasizing the shift

from a school of fine arts to an art school with a new curriculum encompassing the

different fields of visual and performance arts.

The use of the terms ‘Singapore’, ‘Malaya’ and ‘Malaysia’ in this thesis will

also be clarified here. Historically, the term Malaya encompasses both the areas of

peninsular Malaya and Singapore; the category of Malayan artists used in this thesis

therefore refers to the artists residing in Singapore and Malaya. In 1963, Singapore,

Sabah, Sarawak and the Federation merged to form the entity Malaysia; Singapore

later separated from Malaysia on 9 August 1965 to form an independent nation.

Accordingly, the terms ‘Singapore’ and ‘Malaysia’ will be used for references to

events taking place after independence.

21
Tan Tee Chie, “Sixty Years of The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, in Imprints on Singapore Art:
Works of 40 NAFA Artists 29 August – 11 October 1998, [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore:
Singapore Art Museum, 1998), pp. 13-16.
22
Chi Ching I, “A Brief History of NAFA”, in Nanyang yishu xueyuan liushi zhounianji (The Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts 60th Anniversary), [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts, 1998), p. 26.

19
 CHAPTER TWO:
CHINA AND THE EMERGENCE OF ARTISTIC TRAINING IN
SINGAPORE (1920s – 1930s)

When the British first started to colonize Malaya, their land surveys turned up native

plants and wildlife that they had never encountered before. In the spirit of scientific

inquiry, the British commissioned numerous sketches and paintings of these Malayan

flora and fauna for study and record-keeping.23 The labour involved in creating these

artworks was often fielded out to the Chinese artists living in Malaya. Existing

colonial accounts indicate that professional Chinese artists have been working in the

communities as early as the start of the nineteenth century. Apart from this detail,

information of these artists’ lives and activities remains largely obscure.

Surviving records make it clear that many of the early Chinese artists were to

be found around the port areas where the Overseas Chinese immigrant population was

located. What little is known suggests that Penang, one of the oldest colonial port

settlements in Malaya and with a sizable Overseas Chinese community, was among

the earliest locations to develop some measure of artistic activity during the period of

British colonial rule. In his survey of early Penang artistic developments, Koh Wee

Khian describes the presence of a small artistic community by the mid-nineteen

century in Penang; he lists portraitists, calligraphers and commercial artists as

23
For more information on Malaya’s history of natural history drawings, see Karen Taylor, “The
Farquhar Collection: Natural History Drawings of Malacca”, Arts of Asia, 23, 5(Sept-Oct, 1993), pp.
123-125; and L. L. Forman, “The illustrations to William Hunter’s ‘Plants of Prince of Wales Island’,
Kew Bullentin, 44, 1(March, 1989), pp. 151-161.

20
practicing during the time.24 He further writes that some of the Chinese schools in

Penang had began basic artistic training within their syllabus, though focusing on

craftworks rather than on fine art subjects such as painting. By the early twentieth

century, the continued strong growth of the Chinese population throughout Malaya

resulted in new groups of Chinese artists immigrating to the Nanyang region.

Singapore and Penang, with their large Overseas Chinese communities, emerged as

prominent art centres for the Chinese artists in Malaya.

Literature on Singapore’s history of art development commonly traces the

genesis of the country’s modern painting activities to the growth and expansion of its

Overseas Chinese artistic community from the 1900s onwards. Although some

measure of Western influence of art did come from the presence of the British

colonizers in the Malayan Peninsular, it was limited to areas such as Penang and

Kedah, where a tradition of landscape painting survives in local art practice.25 The

activities were also restricted to the private settings of small clubs and groups. Overall,

official British involvement in the area of art was surprisingly small, and colonial

administrators also showed little interest in the contemporary artistic life of the other

races residing in the Malayan society. Among the few reasons forwarded for this

attitude, one explanation is that the British were generally more interested in

24
[Penang Art Society], Penang Art Society: 50th Anniversary (Penang: Penang Art Society, 2003), p.
18.
25
Laura Fan, “Controversy and Change: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Landscape Paintings
in Indonesia and Malaysia”, in Visions & Enchantments: Southeast Asian Paintings, [Singapore Art
Museum & Christie’s Singapore] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum & Christie’s Singapore, 2000), p.
22-27.

21
archaeology than art, and focused their attention towards unearthing the remains of

the old Southeast Asian trading empires.26

Another rationale that should not be dismissed is how the British had already

expended much effort previously in cultivating the arts field in India, through the

formation of art schools designed to train indigenous artists in Western art

techniques. 27 The colonial administrators were therefore unwilling to commit any

more resources for doing the same in Singapore, and no overture was ever made in

forming specialized schools of art. Unlike the early Dutch cultural experiment in

neighboring Indonesia, where systematic indoctrination of native artists in Western

art ideals was undertaken via the setting up of government sponsored art schools, the

British only started to provide official art education in Singapore during the 1920s.

The Singapore colonial administration brought in Richard Walker as Art Inspector of

Schools in 1923 to oversee the introduction of art as a subject to be taught at normal

school level. The late date at which the British started attempts at art education

indicates that the British colonizers were not the key parties behind the introduction

of modern artistic knowledge into Singapore, and that a different source point was

present within Malayan society.

26
Until the mid-twentieth century, Southeast Asian art history was typified by attitudes within
archaeology to which it was linked. The subject was rarely considered as an individual and distinct
cultural study by itself, but was often listed together with Indian or Chinese art historical studies. The
emphasis given in research was upon the derivative nature of Southeast Asian art, and in establishing
linkages between the art and monuments found regionally with the art styles of the surrounding
civilizations of India and China. (John N. Miksic, “ Evolving Archaeological Perspectives on
Southeast Asia, 1970 – 95”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 26, 1(March, 1995), pp. 46-47.)
27
Kwok Kian Chow, “Notes on Nanyang Style/Regionalism for Discussion”, [report], 30th August,
1994, Private Collection of the Singapore Art Museum, p. 1.

22
 The introduction of modern art education came, in fact, from the rather

unexpected source of the Chinese immigrant community. Although Chinese artists

have been present in Singapore since the nineteenth century, a dramatic change in

China’s political and social structure at the turn of the twentieth century proved to

have significant impact on its domestic art scene. The shift consequently affected the

type of Chinese artists arriving to Singapore’s shores from the twentieth century

onwards. These artists were part of the first wave of modern Chinese artists to travel

out of China into Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. Settling in Singapore

and other parts of Malaya from the 1920s, the artists attempted to transplant their

view of art to the region; the transmission of formal artistic training into Singapore

and Malaya was also precipitated by the arrival of these Chinese artists. The

significance of these artists’ backgrounds and the uniqueness of their contributions to

Singapore are best understood against the wider context of change occurring in China

in the period. This chapter will discuss some of the key developments to occur in

China during the early twentieth century that shaped the model of the new Chinese

artist and the Chinese concept of modern art education; finally, the chapter will

analyze the various impacts these changes had on the formation of Singapore’s art

education scene leading up to the formation of the Academy.

2.1 The Rise of Modern China: new patterns of movement in the art world

China at the turn of the twentieth century was experiencing a turbulent period

of social change. Having suffered a long line of military defeats and severely

weakened from the loss of territories through forced concessions, the empire lay at

23
the brink of a crisis. Desperate to remedy the situation, the Qing Dynasty authorities

adopted a variety of reforms, most famously Kang Youwei’s Hundred Days Reform,

but little headway was made in dealing with the crisis. When the new Republican

government came into power in 1912, the administrators found themselves dealing

with the same unresolved problem. Many believed that if China was to ever become

strong enough to compete on the world stage, it would need to modernize itself on a

massive scale following the earlier example of Japan. The early twentieth century is

therefore often characterized in Chinese history as the period of reformation, during

which wide-scale assimilation of Western knowledge took place as part of the

national effort to strengthen China.

Scholars of modern Asian art have come to recognize that the massive

changes which the Chinese society experienced in this period had significant impact

on the way Chinese art was to be conceptualized and practiced for the remainder of

the twentieth century. Since the time of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese art world

evolved in isolation with very little foreign stimuli from outside the Middle

Kingdom.28 Toh Lam Huat described this scenario as ‘a closed-system’.29 Under the

old system, a typical student of Chinese art was often someone who came from a

scholar-elite class background. If a child from a scholar-elite family expresses his

desire to take up art, he would be sent to a painter for instruction in painting and

28
Julian F. Andrews, “A Century in Crisis: Tradition and Modernity in the Art of Twentieth-Century
China”, in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-century China, eds.
Julia F. Andrews & Shen Kuiyi (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1998), pp. 2-9.
29
Toh Lam Huat, “The Love of Ink and Brush – A Hundred Years of Chinese Painting”, in 20th
Century Chinese Paintings in Singapore Collections, [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore
Art Museum, 2003), p. 24.

24
calligraphy. This method of transmitting artistic knowledge, however, changed in the

early twentieth century with the breakdown of the traditional art society. Part of the

reason for this change can be traced to the opening up of the treaty ports in China,

where an influx of Western goods made their headway into the Chinese market and

through which the Chinese artists were introduced to a greater variety of ideas and

artistic materials such as oil paints.30 Apart from this, the deepening social crisis of

China meant that various aspects of traditional life, including art, were undergoing

reevaluation at this point in time. Many artists believed that Chinese art, locked into a

cycle of antiquated restrictions and guidelines, had reached a state of stagnation.

Western art – then perceived by the Chinese artists as a logical way of approaching

art and a discipline closely related to science – was considered the ideal solution to

the predicament. Thus began the Western Art Movement of the twentieth century, in

which Chinese artists undertook the restoration of Chinese painting (renamed as

guohua or national painting) by grafting Western art concepts and techniques into the

practice of traditional Chinese art. 31

The metamorphosis of the art field was in fact driven by a series of

transformations occurring concurrently within the field of education. During the

Republic’s early years, education was identified as one of the fundamentals in driving

the modernization process; the Chinese people had to receive training in order to form

30
John D. La Plante, Asian Art (Massachusetts: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1992), p. 179.
31
Also known as the New Art Movement (xinxing meishu yundong). For more information, see Kao
Mayching, “Reforms in Education and the Beginning of the Western-Style Painting Movement in
China”, in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-century China, eds.
Julia F. Andrews & Shen Kuiyi (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1998), pp. 146-
161.

25
the necessary manpower to support the new economy. Cai Yuanpei [1867-1940], the

first Minister of Education under the new Republic, became the key figure

responsible for the reformation of the Chinese education system. Lauded as one of

China’s most important educators of the twentieth century, Cai’s ministry changed

the landscape of Chinese education through widespread reforms aimed at expanding

and upgrading the curricula. Through his efforts, Cai also ultimately reshaped the

definition of Chinese education and what such an education should comprise. Like

many of his contemporaries, Cai believed that the only way in which China could

become strong was to reinvent itself with the aid of Western knowledge. Cai’s most

significant contribution in the formation of the new modern educational system was

his promulgation of a Chinese-Western synthesized educational approach. Under his

direction, the systematic integration of Western knowledge into the Chinese

education system was undertaken on a national basis and Western educational

techniques became a mainstay of the new schooling system.

Cai Yuanpei was a firm believer that the two most important forces shaping

the modern Chinese mind are science and culture.32 He was a prominent advocate for

a new progressive Chinese culture, which he felt could be achieved through the

intense study and selection of elements from Western and Chinese cultures for fusion

into a new modern culture for China. To attain this goal, however, people capable of

theorizing and implementing the new model of Chinese culture were needed. Art

education thus quickly became one of the fields which Cai fought to modernize by

introducing the Western system of academic art education. This reformation process
32
Li Chu-Tsing, Trends in Modern Chinese Painting (Zurich: Artibus Asiae, 1979), p. 6

26
came to be known as “meiyu jiuguo (using art to save the nation)”, an approach which

helped define the role Western art and art education played in the early years of the

Chinese modernizing process.33 Although the introduction of Western art education

had already taken place prior to Cai’s ministry – the first art school to teach Western

art was a Qing government academy that employed Japanese teachers in 1906 to

teach oil painting – the assimilation of Western artistic knowledge occurred at a rapid

pace under Cai’s sponsorship. 34 In 1917, Cai delivered his keynote speech titled

“Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education” to the Shenzhou Scholarly Society on

the issue of how the teaching of art education could be severed from its Western

foundations, and be transformed for the uses of China. The later May Fourth

Revolution of 1919 was also a crucial factor in the emergence of modern art

education, through its attempt to inculcate Western ideals within the Chinese cultural

system. In trying to promote a modern sense of art, more and more Chinese artists

became acquainted with the Western artistic trends. Shen Kuiyi writes of the situation,

During the 1920s and 1930s many Chinese students embraced the culture of the
West as China’s destiny…to many of that generation, modern art and Western
art was synonymous; and they believed that, by adopting Western forms, China
might create an art in keeping with its new domestic and international
situation.35

33
Christina Chu, “The Lingnan School and its Followers: Radical Innovation in Southern China”, in A
Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-century China, eds. Julia F.
Andrews & Shen Kuiyi (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1998), p. 69. See also
Liu Haisu, “Wei jiuguo, chuang meizhuan (To save the nation; the formation of an art academy)”, in
Liu Haisu in Singapore, ed. Lin Xiang Xiong (Singapore: Wei Hua Publishing, 1987), pp. 3-8.
34
Chang Tsong-zung, “Art of the Progressive Intellectual”, in Quotation Marks: Chinese
Contemporary Paintings, [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1997), p. 12.
See also Lawrence Wu, “Kang Youwei and the Westernization of Modern Chinese Art”, Orientations,
21, 3(March, 1990), pp. 46-53.
35
Shen Kuiyi, “The Lure of the West”, in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of
Twentieth-century China, eds. Julia F. Andrews & Shen Kuiyi (New York: The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, 1998), p. 172.

27
 Under Cai’s active support for the reformation of the artistic training system,

modern academies of art were established across China. Modeled upon the European

and Japanese art schools, the new Chinese schools became the driving force of the

artistic revolution within the country. Most of these schools operated at a tertiary

education level, taking in students from all strata of society. The first national art

school to be established by the Republican government was the Beijing Art School in

1918 (later renamed National Beijing Art College).36 Cai was also responsible for the

later formation of the National Art Academy (subsequently renamed Hangzhou

National School of Art) in 1928.37 These two schools occupied a central position in

training the new batch of modern Chinese artists. Other schools which were founded

in the 1920s period include Suzhou Art School and Wuchang Technical School of Art.

Shanghai in particular, as the most cosmopolitan of the Chinese cities, became the

site of many important art schools such as Xin Hua School of Art and Shanghai Art

University. The well known Shanghai Art School was also started by Liu Haisu in

1912.38 By the late 1920s, many of these schools had produced their first batch of

graduates, who often went on to take up teaching jobs at other art academies, or in

normal schools where the implementation of aesthetic education as part of the new

36
In 1950, the National Beijing Art College merged with the Department of Art, Huabei University to
form the Central Academy of Fine Arts. See Wen Lipeng, “Review of One Hundred Years”, in
Chinese Oil Painting in the 20th Century, vol. I – 1, [Art Department of the Culture Ministry of the
People’s Republic of China & Chinese Oil Painting Society] (Beijing: Beijing Publishing House, 1999),
p. 20.
37
Hangzhou National College of Art changed its name six times thereafter, so the school is also known
by the following popular names: National College of Art, East-China Campus of Central Academy of
Fine Arts, Zhejiang Art Academy of Fine Arts. In 1993, the school came took on its current name of
China Academy of Art.
38
For more information on the founding of the Shanghai Academy of Art, see A Drop in the Ocean –
Art Life of Liu Haisu, [Liu Hai Su Art Museum] (Shanghai: Shanghai Shiji Publishing & Shanghai
Education Publishing, 2005).

28
standard curriculum had opened up many job opportunities as art teachers. Those who

chose to take up art as a professional career, however, often went abroad for further

study, and thus the early twentieth century period is also distinguished by the greater

mobility of the Chinese artists overseas. Artists such as Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu and

Lin Fengmian studied at European art centers with Cai Yuanpei’s encouragement and

support. Upon their return, many of these artists took over directorship of the art

schools, thus securing their positions as the new leading forces on the Chinese art

scene.

The program of these new schools featured a mixed curriculum of Western

and Chinese art subjects, mostly divided into separate departments of study. 39

Chinese art subjects remained unchanged from the classical times; students were

expected to copy the works of old masters in calligraphy and ink painting. The

instruction of Western art subjects, on the other hand, usually focused on realist

issues such as perspective and study of structure and composition. Common subjects

for Western art subjects include sketching and painting in various mediums such as

pencil, oil, ink and charcoal. Plein air art, portraiture and life drawing were also

introduced as part of Western art subjects (the Shanghai School of Art became a

landmark case where life drawing with nude models was introduced at the school in

1914). Students usually took subjects from both areas of Chinese and Western art to

expose themselves to the different forms and philosophies of art. The adoption of this

two-pronged approach in training was designed to allow students to gradually and

naturally develop an amalgam of the two areas, one which would fit the prescribed
39
Li, Trends in Modern Chinese Painting, pp. 6-7.

29
model of the new Chinese culture. The image of the modern Chinese artist thus came

to be regarded as one who was at equal ease with the aesthetic concepts and practice

of both Eastern and Western art. This equilibrium, however, was rarely achieved in

reality. Since Western art and its logical components were often deemed as the easier

taught of the two types of art, many schools started their courses with Western art

techniques to provide the necessary foundation for their students. Traditional Chinese

art, which was believed to require greater abstraction of thought and consequently

harder for the students to grasp, was reserved for study at the advanced levels. Hence,

students often ended up mastering only one area, usually Western art, upon

graduation. Kao Mayching notes that a consequence of this methodology was the

formation of a new generation of Chinese artists who were increasingly distanced

from traditional Chinese art.40 It is therefore unsurprising that one of the key issues to

emerge form this period of change was the complex question of what constituted the

identity of the new Chinese art. Chen Jiazi best sums this situation,

The artists of the 20th century can no longer be classified in the conventional
mode…It is true they were involved in the same philosophical debates and were
concerned about issues of fusing the east and west… However, at the same time,
each artist was also engaged in finding his own path and style. Each artist
carved his own niche out of differing backgrounds.41

2.2 Early training grounds for art: the formation of art studios and art schools in
Singapore

By the mid 1920s, many young Chinese artists were moving abroad to

Western art centers such as Paris and London in pursuit of further education. When

making the return journey from Europe to China, they would often stop in Southeast

40
Kao, “Reforms in Education”, p.158.
41
Chen Jiazi, “Realism and the Guohua Revolution”, in 20th Century Chinese Paintings in Singapore
Collections, [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2003), p. 13.

30
Asia to search for new patrons among the Overseas Chinese communities and to carry

out exhibitions. Singapore, as the main transit point for artists traveling between

Europe and China, was gradually drawn into this new pattern of movement and the

island became a crucial dissemination center and market for Chinese art outside of

China itself.42 The artist-patron relationship between the eminent artist Xu Beihong

and the Overseas Chinese businessman Huang Manshi is perhaps the most well

known of these exchanges; Huang, who befriended the artist in France, became one

of Xu’s most important patrons and contact in Nanyang for the artist’s many trips

through Singapore.43 Many Chinese artists like Xu only stayed briefly in the Nanyang

region before moving on, so their contacts with the Singaporean Overseas Chinese

community were sporadic. This situation, however, changed during the 1930s, as the

continual growth of the Overseas Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaya

started to attract artists to settle permanently in Singapore, and in contributing their

talents towards developing Singapore’s modern art scene.

In the newly developing Overseas Chinese communities, there was an

opening for artists in the field of education where help was often needed in art

education. Since many early Overseas Chinese schools followed the education system

of China, these schools also adopted the art subject as a part of the new mainstream

curriculum. In response to this situation, a number of Chinese artists first arrived in

Singapore to take up positions as teachers at the schools. The absorption of the artists

42
Toh, “The Love of Ink and Brush”, p. 26.
43
For more information on Xu Beihong’s activities in Singapore, see Huang Huoruo, “Sojourn in
Nanyang: Works by Xu Beihong”, in Sojourn in Nanyang: Works by Xu Beihong, [National Heritage
Board & Asian Civilisations Museum] (Singapore: National Heritage Board & Asian Civilisations
Museum, 1998), pp. 11-13.

31
into the educational field goes towards explaining why during the twenties and even

earlier, although there were Chinese artists coming to Singapore and across Malaya,

the actual count for professional artists and the development of an art scene appears to

have been stagnant until the early thirties. As Zhong Yu notes, these artists often did

not practice art as a full-time profession after arrival.44 Once they became familiar

with Nanyang environment, they started to move into different professional fields.

Education was the common choice; another popular job was the emerging graphic

industry which had sprung up in conjunction with the printing press. For these

immigrant Chinese artists, the profession of art teachers also represented a source of

steady income, especially when considered against the insecurities of venturing out

and operating as a professional artist in a fledgling art scene. Many artists took up

positions in schools as art teachers, or opened private teaching studios and art centers

to help subsidize costs. A number of early artistic activities were thus related to the

field of education, and the Chinese school network became an important way for

these artists to meet new contacts and move between the various Overseas Chinese

communities in Singapore and Malaya.

According to Ye Zhongling, the earliest known center for artistic training in

Singapore was a private studio by the name of Su Bin Ting Art Centre. Started up in

1906 by well known photographer Su Binting, the studio aimed to provide art lessons

for the Overseas Chinese living in Singapore.45 Charging a rate of fifteen dollars a

month, the studio specialized in the teaching of mostly Western art media such as oil

44
Zhong, malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 15.
45
See Ye, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishu xueyuan chuangbanshi”, pp. 96-101.

32
painting and charcoal sketches. Following this, a proliferation of small scale studios

appeared across the span of the 1920s and 30s. These studios became the first venues

to provide rudimentary training in art. One of the more detailed narratives on the

formation of early private art studios in Singapore can be found in Zhong Yu’s work

on the pre-war art scene in Singapore and Malaya.46

Apart from the range of small studios mentioned, a further eight schools have

been identified as having existed in the pre-war period. These early schools

represented the beginning of professional attempts at artistic education in Singapore

and Malaya, and functioned differently in many ways from the studios. Art schools

operate on a larger scale than the private studios, and the students are taught to work

with a variety of media and subject matter. They also receive training from more than

one teacher, thus allowing them to study different styles and techniques. In the case of

the Nanyang Academy of the Fine Arts, graduates of these schools also gained a

measure of public recognition as school competitions results and graduation lists were

often reported in the newspapers. The earliest known of these schools was the

Overseas Chinese Art Academy (Hua Qiao Art Academy), founded by Chen

46
From between the period of 1921 to 1929, Zhong writes that five studios were in operation in
Singapore: Wei Guan Art Studio opened in 1922 by Yang Mansheng (later renamed Man Sheng Art
Gallery); Min Sheng Art Studio in 1923 by Cheng Minsheng; following these in 1929, Yang Zhiai’s
Tan Mei Art Studio, Zhang Ruqi’s Ru Qi Art Studio and Zeng Fankai’s Shi Quan Art Studio were all
started up in the same year. Zhang Ruqi also went on to open a second studio in a partnership with his
brother-in-law Zhuang Youzhao during the 1930s; this studio was called Peng Te Art Studio. Zhong
also traces another six studios that opened in the 1930s. Of the six, three studios have unknown
commencement dates, but were noted as being in operation during the 1930s. These studios are Le
Tian Art Studio by Liu Wencai; Xin Dao Art Studio by co-founders Huang Zunsheng and Lin
Ruozhou; and Man Tian Art Studio by Lian Aitong. The two remaining studios, Zhong Ming Shi’s
Tianshi Art Studio (the studio was renamed after the Second World War as Tian Shi Art Company)
and Fu Yongnian’s Kai Nian Art Studio are dated as having begun operations in 1937. In 1939, Jin Qi
Art Studio was started up by artist Wu Shushan. In 1941, Da Ying Art Studio was formed by Xu
Junlian and Lin Daoan. (Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 13.)

33
Bingzhen in 1922.47 This was followed by Lin Youfei’s Mei Gui Arts Academy in

1929 and the Nan Xing Specialized School for the Arts which opened in 1931. The

late 1930s is considered to have been a flourishing time of the arts; this claim is borne

out by the fact that there was a sudden increase in the number of art schools being

established at this point. Five schools were built in two years alone – from between

1937 and 1938, there were Lin Junde’s Bai Lu Art Academy, Jiang Xiuhua’s Xi Nan

Art Academy, Deng Siyi and Chen Daju’s Xi Hu Art Academy, Lin Xueda’s

Nanyang Specialized School of Art (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts), and an art

academy started up by a Russian by the name of “Mengya Sigen” (as transcribed in

Chinese). Part of the reason for this sudden surge in activity can be attributed to the

situation in China; as written earlier, the late 1920s and 1930s was the period of

graduation for the first crop of students in the Chinese art academies, which led to

increased movement in the arts field both in China and overseas. During the late

1930s, many of these artists also moved to the Nanyang region in order to avoid the

escalating Sino-Japanese War in China. Of the eight art schools, only the Nanyang

Academy of Fine Arts is recorded as having survived the period of the Japanese

Occupation.

From the above list of schools, one interesting case is the Overseas Chinese

Art Academy (Huaqiao meishu xueyuan). Formed in 1922 by a group of artists, this

academy is noted by Ye as an early attempt to create a modern institution for the

teaching of art.48 This school is strongly connected to Duan Meng School and the

47
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 34.
48
Ye, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishu xueyuan chuangbanshi”, p. 97.

34
Overseas Chinese education field; the principal of Duan Meng School, Shen

Fengchou, sat on the art academy’s committee board and many of Duan Meng’s

teachers also taught at the academy. Another important committee member was

Nanyang Overseas Middle School’s Principal Xu Kaixing. The Overseas Chinese Art

Academy aimed to promote art and produce talented figures among the Overseas

Chinese community.49 On the 26 September 1922, and again between the 28 to 30

September 1922, the Chinese newspapers Le Bao published a series of advertisements

announcing the opening of the new art academy. On describing the school, Head of

Education at the academy Sun Peigu commented,

The character of this school is different from other ordinary schools. It is an

academy specially devoted towards the research of art. This is a unique opening
in the field of education, and something that the Nanyang Overseas Chinese
have never had before…This academy is comparable with the National Art
Research Academy instituted by Cai Yuanpei at Beijing University, and the art
academy formed by Liu Haisu in Shanghai. The future development of
Nanyang art will no longer be a lonely walk for fellow companions practicing
art within this country.50

In explaining the nature of the school, Sun highlighted the newness of the concept of

art school to the audience of Overseas Chinese. His statement also pinpoints the idea

of how an art school is integral to the long-term formation of a strong arts community.

The Overseas Chinese Art Academy played an important role on the pre-war art

scene. In terms of scale and the level of education offered, Ye describes the Overseas

Chinese Art Academy to be on par with the later Nanyang Academy of the Fine

Arts.51 Students at the school were trained in both Western and Chinese art through a

49
The address of the school is listed in the advertisement as No. 22, Qin Tou Bridge, at the foot of
Singapore’s Huang Jia Mountain. See Ye, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishu xueyuan chuangbanshi”, pp. 97-
101.
50
Sun Pei Gu, as quoted in Ye, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishu xueyuan chuangbanshi”, p. 99.
51
Ye, “Xinjiapo huaqiao meishu xueyuan chuangbanshi”, p. 99.

35
series of compulsory subjects and electives. The subjects taught included the

fundamentals in sketching and painting in a variety of mediums. The Overseas

Chinese Art Academy registered thirty odd students for its opening ceremony; by the

second month of operation this had swelled to fifty odd students. When compared

against the fourteen students that Nanyang Academy of the Fine Arts admitted in its

opening year, the founding of the Overseas Chinese Art Academy can be considered a

major achievement. More importantly, the presence of a school on the scale of the

Overseas Chinese Art Academy indicates that the local art scene had started its

development earlier than previously assumed by some historians. Yeo Mang Thong

described Singapore’s art scene to be devoid of activity prior to 1927; for him 1927

represented the starting date since it was the earliest known art exhibition to be held

in Singapore, organized by Chinese art students who had studied in France and were

passing through Singapore on their way back to China.52 Yeo also uses the artist Xu

Beihong’s comment that Singapore in the 1920s was a cultural wilderness as an

indicator of the lack of activity. 53 The formation of the Overseas Chinese Art

Academy at the beginning of the 1920s, however, shows that this may have not been

entirely the case.

Writings on the history of Singapore art scene often delegate the pre-war

period to a brief and basic account, and there has been very little research work to

date in studying the early art activities of these immigrant artists, and towards

52
See Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, Chpt. 1.
53
The artist was in Singapore in 1939, when he made this comment of Singapore’s artistic situation in
the 1920s, saying “…Singapore at that time, although not yet a desert, can also be called a wilderness;
where is the art?” (Xu Beihong, as quoted in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, p. 2.)

36
understanding how the artists operated in their new Southeast Asian environment

after leaving China. This chapter puts forth the view that the Singapore pre-war art

scene was an active and complex scene that linked the artists living in Singapore to a

wide network of contacts between Malaya, China and Europe. The chapter has

opened up discussion on the topic of pre-war art in the Singapore Chinese community

by examining how these connections first came to be established, and the influences it

had in the formation and development of the early Singapore Chinese art scene. By

further addressing the issue of changing Chinese notions of art and art education in

the early twentieth century, and how this impinged upon the foundation of Chinese art

schools in Singapore, it offers a comprehensible view of the circumstances under

which the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was founded.

37
 CHAPTER THREE:
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NANYANG ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS

On 7th July 1937, the Japanese captured the Marco Polo Bridge (Lu Gou Bridge) in

Fengtai District, Beijing as a bid for strategic positioning of their troops stationed in

China. This incident sparked off the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), an event that

would subsequently prove momentous for the Overseas Chinese communities in

Southeast Asia. Historical accounts of Singapore’s early art scene often cite the

Marco Polo Bridge incident as the trigger for the first great wave of artists

immigrating to the Nanyang, and therefore the definitive episode that shaped the

development of Singapore art. As China became embroiled in anti-Japanese

resistance for the next eight years, numerous Chinese artists escaped to Southeast

Asia seeking refuge, bringing with them their own networks of contacts from China

into the Overseas Chinese communities. These artists transplanted aspects of the

modern Chinese art scene into Singapore and Malaya as they attempted to recreate a

new Overseas Chinese art world to replace that which they had lost to the war in

mainland China.

In the official history of the founding of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts,

the Marco Polo Bridge incident is likewise listed as the starting event of the

Academy’s history, since among the tide of refugees was Lin Xueda, the man

credited with the founding of the Academy.54 In the many accounts written on the

history of the academy, Lin Xueda’s name is often synonymous with the creation of

54
See Tan Tie Chie, “Historic sketch of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, in Nanyang Academy of
Fine Arts: 40th Anniversary Souvenir Magazine, [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore:
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1977), pp. 19-21.

38
the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He is described as the person who initiated the

idea of building an art school and then determinedly built up the Academy by himself.

While Lin is undoubtedly a key figure in the formation of the Academy, such an

account represents a simplified version of the events, and gives very little

consideration to the other figures involved in its history. The account ignores the fact

that the formation of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was a joint effort of many

members within the Overseas Chinese art communities in Singapore and Malaya,

who pinned their hopes of starting a flourishing art scene for the region on this school.

Thus, while taking into account Lin’s contributions towards the school, one must also

assign greater significance to the other key actors on the scene in order to achieve a

more comprehensive and balanced view of historical events. This chapter will explore

some of the issues currently present with the founding story of the Academy, before

dealing with the different actors involved in the founding and operation of the

Academy in its early years.

3.1 The founding of the Academy: various perspectives of its origin

Among the various articles surrounding the events leading to the founding of

the Academy, one of the most important articles is Lin Xueda’s “Benxiao chuangban

jingguo de huiyi (Reminiscing on the Past Founding of our School)”. Lin writes,

This school was founded in the spring of the 27th year of the Republic of China.
Prior to this, Jimei Overseas Student Association planned a school that would
also function as the centre for the alumni’s service to society. During this
period, there was an initiative for forming an art school in order to solve the
urgent task of Overseas Chinese education, but due to various reasons this was
never fulfilled. Coming down south to escape unrest after the July 7 incident,
while passing through Singapore I had a conversation with Mr. Chen Jue Xiang.

39
 Mr. Chen told me about the matter, and asked that I remain in Singapore to help
in its completion…55

Published in 1946, Lim’s memoir is the earliest known piece of writing concerned

with the historical formation of the school, and it gives a useful insight into the

situation, motivation and various parties behind the formation of the Nanyang

Academy of Fine Arts. In the above passage, the figure of Chen Juexiang is

introduced. Chen Juexiang was an Overseas Chinese businessman based in Singapore,

and a former graduate of Jimei High School in Xiamen, China.56 He was also one of

the founding members for the Jimei Overseas Students Association (listed in some

texts as Jimei Alumni Association), a group whose aim was to reconnect those former

Jimei students living in Singapore. Outside of the group’s duty to its own members,

among the many other activities that the Jimei Overseas Students Association

participated in was the promotion of Overseas Chinese education and the building of

Chinese schools. It was in this capacity that the group first became involved in the

founding process of the Academy.

However, it is also with regard to the involvement of Jimei Overseas Students

Association that the recounting of the Academy’s history diverges into several

different accounts. One contentious point lies in the degree of involvement by the

55
See Lin Xue Da’s “Benxiao chuangban jingguo de huiyi (Reminiscing on the Past Founding of our
School)”, in Nanyang meishu zhuankexuexiao fuban niankan (Commemorative Magazine for the
Restoration of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts), [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore:
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1946), unpaginated.
56
Jimei High School (Chi Mei School) was founded by Overseas Chinese businessman and noted
philanthropist Tan Kah Kee, to serve his hometown of Jimei, Xiamen City. The Jimei school
organization ranges from kindergarten level up to university level. In 1913, Jimei High also started
taking in students from the families living in the Overseas Chinese communities, who sent their
children back to China for education. For more information, see entry under ‘jimei xuexiao’ in
Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas: Volume of Education, Science & Technology (Beijing: Chinese
Overseas Publishing House, 1999), pp. 117-118.

40
group in the building of the school. Lin’s writing is ambiguous about this point; he

writes that the Jimei group wanted a school as a way of contributing socially to the

Overseas Chinese community and that there was an initiative for forming an art

school. The precise role of the group in the process is not mentioned. It is uncertain

whether the group had specifically taken charge of organizing the building of an art

school as a project for itself, or was just adopting a passive role as a sponsor and

leaving the decision-making to Lin. The situation is also made problematic by the

presence of a second group on the scene, the Singapore Society of Chinese Artists,

which helped out with the founding process of the Academy. Some clarification is

thus needed here on the respective roles of the two parties.

Chen Shiji, in his official history of the Academy for the fortieth

commemorative school catalogue, takes the stance that it was an art school that Chen

Juexiang specifically wanted when he first approached Lin during the latter’s visit to

Singapore.57 In his account, Chen Shiji writes that Chen and his Jimei colleagues had

already formulated the building of an art school. The only problem was that they

lacked the skilled manpower needed to run it so the project was shelved until the

fateful meeting with Lin that again brought up the possibility of an Overseas Chinese

art school. In Chen’s writing, the Jimei Overseas Students Association plays the

central role in the founding, with no mention of the Society of Chinese Artists.

57
Tan, “Historic sketch”, pp. 19-21.

41
 Yeo Mang Thong, who also writes on the subject, has a different opinion on

the subject.58 Yeo believes that the Jimei group did not have a formal plan over what

type of school they were going to build. According to him, the initial impetus for the

building of an art school came from within the art community, to which Jimei

Overseas Students Association became involved as a financial backer for the plan

only much later. Instead, Yeo points at Penang artist Yang Mansheng to be the

progenitor of the concept for an art school for the Overseas Chinese; a fact which he

says is commonly overlooked in articles dealing with the founding of the Academy.

In 1920, Yang Mansheng was transferred by the Singaporean bookstore where he

worked to its Penang branch. The artist stayed on permanently in Penang, and quickly

rose to prominence as the leading influence within the Penang art community. In

1936, Yang became the vice-president of the Penang Chinese Art Club (also known

as the Yin Yin Art Society), a group in which he also had a hand in forming. From his

position in Penang, Yang continued to maintain close ties with the Singapore Chinese

art community for many years. In late 1937, he wrote a letter from Penang to the

Society of Chinese Artists based in Singapore with the suggestion to his fellow

society members for the formation of a school that specialized in the teaching of fine

art.59 Yang's suggestion was duly approved by the executive committee, and on 23

Dec 1937, the newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh published an article announcing that a

58
See chapter on the founding of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren
meishushi lunji, pp. 71 – 80.
59
The Salon Art Society was founded in mid-1935 as an alumni art society for the graduates of the
Shanghai Art School, Shanghai Xin Hua Arts Academy and the Shanghai Arts University. The society
was subsequently renamed the Society of Chinese Artists on 17th November 1935, and opened up its
membership to artists from all backgrounds. The society was formally registered on 20 Jan 1936. For
more information, see See Hiang Tuo and Tan Tee Chie’s work on the history of the society in [The
Society of Chinese Artists], 65th Anniversary Exhibition Art Works of the Society of Chinese Artists
(Singapore: The Society of Chinese Artists, 2000), pp. 31-50.

42
panel of grassroots members had been formed during the Society of Chinese Artists’

twelfth executive meeting to deal with matters pertaining to the founding of an art

school.60 Five members were nominated to the panel: Yang Mansheng, Li Kuishi, Liu

Kang, Zhang Ruqi and Xu Junlian. After this, Yeo writes that Lin, who joined the

society a month later, heard about the proposal and from this point on became the

central figure in carrying out the school’s planning.

The key question that arises from Chen’s and Yeo’s view of the events

leading up to the founding is how the two protagonists in the story – the Jimei

Overseas Students Association and the Singapore Society of Chinese Artists – were

related to each other and the issue of the Academy’s founding. The answer to this

seems to be in the text of a third writer, Zhong Yu, in which an intriguing and more

complex account of the Academy’s beginnings can be found. In contrast to the

accounts given by Chen and Yeo, Zhong suggests that there were multiple proposals

for an art school in operation then, and that the development of these proposals were

occurring almost parallel in time to each other.61 To substantiate this claim, Zhong

reaches even further back into time; she identifies the formation of the Xiamen

Specialized School of Art as the originating point for the unfolding of events in

Singapore and Penang. Founded in 1922, the Xiamen Specialized School of Art (to be

referred to in the remainder of this text as ‘Xiamen Art School’) was formed out of a

merger between two former art schools: the privately ran Xiamen School of Art

60
See “Huaren meishu yanjiuhui mingri huanying zhengke – jue zhukai ban meizhuan xuexiao qicao
weiyuanhui (The Society of Chinese Artists holds a welcome session tomorrow with the decision to
start a committee for the formation of an art school)”, Sin Chew Jit Poh, Thursday, 23 Dec, (morning
edition), 1937, p. 7. See also Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.
61
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi, pp. 34-35.

43
founded in 1918 by artist Huang Suibi, and Wang Yiyun’s Xiamen Private Academy

for Drawing. Lin Xueda, who had been a former teacher under Huang at Xiamen

School of Art, became the co-founder of the newly merged school, and also spent

time there as a teacher.62 During the early 1930s, Huang visited France, and on his

return journey to China made the customary stopover in Singapore. During his stay,

he met up with a number of Overseas Chinese artists such as Zhong Baimu and

Zhong Mingshi to discuss the possibility of starting up an art school in Singapore.

When he returned back to China, Huang sought out Lin to ask whether he was

amiable to the idea of going south to Nanyang to open up an art school there.

The second time Lin was approached with the idea of starting an art school

was in Singapore during the late 1930s. In mid 1937, due to the outbreak of the Sino-

Japanese war, the Xiamen Art School was forced to cease operations. Lin and a

number of his former colleagues and students from the Xiamen Art School fled to

Nanyang to avoid the escalating conflict. As a former teacher with Jimei High in

China, Lin met up with the Jimei Overseas Student Association representative Chen

Juexiang while he was transiting briefly in Singapore. At this point in time, the Jimei

group was already involved in a series of activities towards promoting Overseas

Chinese education. Zhong writes that there was, in fact, a plan for the institution of an

art school.63 However, this proposal was one among various other proposals on the

62
See “Meishujia duoren zhushemeishu xuexiao: jingpin Gao Peize deng wei jiaoshou (A number of
artists have formed an art school, and are now hiring Gao Peize as professor.)”, in Nanyang Siang Pau,
Thursday, 10 Feb, (morning edition), 1938, p. 8.
63
Zhong, malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 34.

44
possible types of schools suitable for the promotion of Overseas Chinese education.64

To this end, Chen was canvassing for skilled individuals to run a school, and

discovered that Lin, as a graduate of Fujian Advanced Teaching College in the Arts

stream and also equipped with teaching experience at Xiamen Art School, was an

ideal figure for the running the project of an art school. He thus asked Lin to stay and

help the group in forming the school. Since starting a school had been Huang Suibi’s

aspiration, Lin acceded to the request. He moved permanently to Singapore, and took

up the post of mathematics and art teacher at the Overseas Chinese Middle School

while he carried out the necessary preparations for the new art school.

In the meantime, the Jimei Overseas Students Association chaired a meeting

of school alumni and members of the art community to discuss the founding of the

new art school. An organizing committee of six members was formed out of this first

meeting: Zhou Liansheng was made president of the committee, Chen held position

as the treasurer and the role of the accountant was taken up by Lin Jianbang. Lin and

two other artists, Gao Peize and Qiu Yingkui, were nominated to the committee as the

planning arm.65 Lin and Gao would later go on to become the nucleus group in the

running of the new art school. Looking at the members of this new committee, it can

be said that the Jimei group was playing an active role in directing the proceedings;

their presence goes beyond the simple role of financial sponsor. The committee

became responsible for finding suitable premises for the school, seeking authorization

from the British government for the building of the school, and formalizing the

64
See [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts], Soaring to New Borders (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of
Fine Arts, 2003).
65
Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.

45
recruitment procedures for students and staff. The name for the new school was also

brought up by Lin at this juncture. As the mid to late 1930s was a period in which

increasing interest was taken by Overseas Chinese intellectuals into the relationship

between the Nanyang environment and the formation of a localized Overseas Chinese

culture, Lin became similarly inspired and desired a school that would reflect its

tropical surroundings and location in a multicultural society. 66 He felt that the

inclusion of the word ‘Nanyang’ in the name would be apt for the new school to be

located in Singapore, and hence the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was born.

On 13 Jan 1938, Lin was formally accepted as a member of the Singapore

Society of Chinese Artists.67 His admission to the society is possibly the bridging

event between the Jimei group and the Society of Chinese Artists. Artist Zhong

Mingshi also joined the society on the same day. By the time of the artists’ entry into

the society, Yang Mansheng’s preparations for an art school had already been in

operation for at least half a month. This plan for an art school was originally separate

and different from the proposal put forward by Lin with the Jimei group. Despite this,

it appears that in the final tally, it was Lin’s proposal for an art school founded on the

Nanyang spirit that made it to successful fruition. The list of new members and

proceedings of the executive meeting were published in the newspaper Sin Chew Jit

Poh, along with the announcement stating that the planning of an art school for

66
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 34.
67
See “Huaren meishu yanjiuhui xinjiao huiyan minjiao huiyan mingri lianhuan: meizhuan xuexiao
zhengzai jihua zhong (The Society of Chinese Artists will be holding a meeting tomorrow for new
members; the planning for an art school is currently underway)”, Sin Chew Jit Poh, Thursday, (evening
edition), 13 Jan, 1938, p. 3.

46
Nanyang art was currently underway. 68 According to Yeo, this article holds the

earliest known reference to the new school.69 It is uncertain whether the ‘Nanyang

School of Art’ referred to at this point in the article was the proposed school

forwarded by Lin or by Yang. However, it is a fact that after Lin’s entry into the

society, only one proposal became supported by the Society of Chinese Artists – that

of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Zhong believes that the Society had given up

their own plans for a new school, and turned their focus towards assisting Lin’s group

instead.70 It is highly likely that Lin’s better formed proposal, one which was already

financially supported by the Jimei group, may have replaced that of the society’s own

proposal, with the new proposal receiving the endorsement of the society. If this is the

case, Yang Mansheng’s proposal, while historically important, cannot be rightfully

regarded as instrumental towards the founding of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts;

the credit still belongs to Lin Xueda and his Jimei partners. The situation also goes

towards explaining a second point: why all the key positions on the organization

board of the newly completed school were later held by the members of the Jimei

Overseas Students Association, and not the members of the Society of Chinese Artists

– an issue that will be discussed again later in this chapter. Although the Society of

Chinese Artists had given their support to the cause, it appears that the creation of the

new school was a project which remained under the jurisdiction of the Jimei group.

Having said this, the presence of the Society of Chinese Artists was still invaluable to

the early years of the Academy’s founding. While the Jimei Overseas Students

Association created the structure for the school administration and provided the

68
Ibid.
69
Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, p. 71.
70
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p.34.

47
funding for realizing the dream of the school, it became the Society of Chinese

Artists’ role later on to provide the people with the necessary skills and knowledge

for the school to become a true success.

3.2 The start of the Academy: a gathering of like-minded artists

As the planning of the school moved towards completion, news of it was

spread through a series of articles in Chinese newspapers.71 Seeking out adequate

premises to house the new art school proved to be one of the bigger challenges

faced by the planning group when they first started out on the project.72 As an art

school, factors such as space, ventilation and lighting were naturally of great

concern. The building in question also had to conform to the health standards

imposed by the British colonial government. Apart from these considerations, Lin

further mentions in his memoirs that the group was seeking a building with an

imposing exterior that would befit a school of art and be able to contain the

anticipated large number of students. Unfortunately, many of the available housing

during the search were unsuitable for the purpose of the school. In order to open

the school semester in time for the new academic year starting in Spring, it was

hurriedly decided that the group would rent the second and third story – the ground

floor in this building was already occupied by another group – of a new colonial-

71
On 10th Feb 1938, Xing Zhou Daily News published a clip, “Confirmed rental of the art school's
address”: Many Chinese and Western schools have arisen in great numbers on this island in recent
years, resulting in the proliferation of cultural institutions. Likewise, the organising of artistic activities
has been born out of the times. Recently, a number of artists, with the aid of passionate advocators for
art education, have proposed the formation of an art school that will cultivate youths with artistic
ambition. It has been heard that the preparations have already started. The organization is all set and
the new multi-storey building at Geylang has been rented to be the school’s temporary premises.” See
“Meishu xuexiao xiaozhi zhuding (Confirmation of the art school’s address)”, Sin Chew Jit Poh,
Thursday, 10th Feb, (morning edition), 1938, p. 10.
72
Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.

48
style mansion in Geylang located opposite Gayworld Amusement Park to be the

premise for the art school. 73 The organizers however were worried that the

building would be unable cope if a suddenly overwhelming number of students

applied, so preparations were made for the possible renting of neighbouring

buildings should circumstances dictate it, and which would also serve as a hostel

for foreign students. Early photographs of students at work in the drawing studio

within the main building show a room featuring a pair of massive shuttered

windows to let in air and light, and an area size with the ability to seat a group of

at least eight to ten students with their easels. The school later shared the building

with the Society of Chinese Artists for a number of years, leading to a mutually

beneficial relationship.

During the search for a premise, another issue of concern cropped up – that of

co-education. 74 The British colonial government’s regulation for primary and

secondary schools prohibited the teaching of coeducational classes for students above

the age of twelve. Although the Overseas Chinese Art Academy had previously

overcome this problem by separating male and female students into different

classrooms, such a teaching method posed many problems. The organizers for the

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts sent a number of petitions to the government for the

lifting of the restriction for their circumstances, pointing out that art schools were a

specialized case and should not be treated as the normal educational schools.

Approval was finally granted by the government, and the group proceeded to print

73
Shi Xiang Tuo, “Wo zhai meizhuan sanshiyi nian (My 31 years at the art academy)”, in Xiang Tuo
Cong Gao, Shi Xiang Tuo (Singapore: Wan Li Book Publishing, 1989), p. 10.
74
Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.

49
their recruitment advertisement. On 26 Feb, the Nanyang Business News published

the school's advertisement for admitting male and female student candidates to the

school. The content is as follows:

(1) Recruitment Quota for Student Enrolment

Department of Western Art, Department of Sculpture, Department of Art
Education, Department of Applied Arts. 15 student positions open for each
department.

(2) Qualifications for Entrance

Good behaviour record; healthy in both body and mind; to have graduated
from junior middle school or to possess similar qualifications; to have an
interest in the arts.

(3) Test Subjects

Chinese, English, Drawing, General Knowledge (Oral Examination)

(4) Schools Fees for Departments

Department of Western Art, Department of Sculpture - 5 dollars a month
Department of Art Education, Department of Applied Arts - 4 dollars a
month

(5) Date of Application

25 Feb until 7 March (Western Calendar)

(6) Application Procedures

Fill in the application form, to be submitted with an application fee of 1
dollar and two 2-inch upper body photos

(7) Location for Application

At the school, Qian Yi Company, Nanyang Book Store, Bai Lu Company

(8) Date for Examination

8 March 9pm (Western Calendar)

(9) Opening Date for Semester

10 March (Western Calendar)

(10) School Address

167, Geylang Rd 75

75
See “Nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao zhaokao nannusheng guanggao (Advertisement for student
admission into the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts)”, in Nanyang Siang Pau, Saturday, 26 Feb,
(morning edition), 1938, p. 16.

50
The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was designed to be a tertiary educational

institution, with a diploma at the end of its three-year long course. The school had a

formal admission system that required more than the ordinary skills in drawing; as

listed above, students needed to have at least a junior middle school level of

education and display language proficiency in both English and Chinese. From this

early advertising of the curriculum, it can also be seen that the school’s initial

program was heavily weighted towards Western visual arts. This was most likely a

reflection of the particular skills of the initial staff members such as Gao Peize who

was trained in France. By 1940, however, the emphasis on the Western arts was

balanced off with the introduction of classes on Chinese art (known then as guohua or

‘national art’ in reference to China), a change that occurred as more teachers from a

diverse background of skills started to teach at the school.

Notice of the teaching staff to be hired for the school was first announced in

the Nanyang Siang Pau on 10 Feb 1938 under the article “A number of artists have

formed an art school, and are now hiring Gao Peize as professor.”76 Following this,

Nanyang Siang Pau again published another article and advertisement on 2 March,

titled "Local Art Scene Figure establishes Nanyang Specialized School for Fine Art,

school premises to be established at Geylang No. 167":

The figures of the art world, in order to promote aesthetic education and for the
purpose of cultivating people with artistic talents, have specially formed the
Nanyang Specialized School for Fine Art, the address being situated at Geylang,
No. 167. The teaching staff are Lin Xueda (School Principal), Qiu Yingkui,
Guo Yinglin, Zhong Mingshi, Xie Touba, Gao Peize, Lin Junde, etc. These

76
“Meishujia duoren zhushemeishu xuexiao”, p. 8.

51
 figures have previously rendered service to the art world of our nation or
possess teaching experience through holding positions as professors at school.77

As seen from the above article, the original members of the Jimei planning committee

were all reinstated within the new school administration. More importantly, the

method by which the remaining staff members of the new school was selected reveals

much in the way of the networking within the artistic community, and how external

parties became allied with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. The greatest insight

into this situation is given by Xie Touba, who comments that ‘the Nanyang School of

Art was an overseas extension of the Xiamen Art School.’78 Guo Yinglin, Lin Junde,

Gao Peize, Zhong Mingshi and Xie Touba are all former teachers of Xiamen Art

School.79 The Academy’s committee thus reveals a network of Xiamen contacts. Guo

Yinglin, in particular, had connections with both the Jimei group as well as with

Xiamen Art School. Guo was the former Library Director of the Jimei High School in

Xiamen. He undertook art study in France and was the lecturer in charcoal drawing at

Xiamen Art School. Xie Touba was educated in the Philippines and also in France at

the Julien Art Academy; Xie was previously Head of Education and Head of Western

Art at the Xiamen Art School. Lin Junde received his artistic training at the

University of Wyoming in America, and later worked as a lecturer at Xiamen Art

School in the subjects of decorative arts and ink drawing. The majority of the

founding staff members of the Academy thus hailed from Xiamen; although these

artists were now based in Singapore, many of their inter-relations appear to have

77
See “Dangdi meishujie renshi chuangban nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao – xiaozhi shefang
yalonglu yiliuchi hao (Establishment of an art academy by local artists – school address is located at
No. 167 Geylang Rd)”, Nanyang Siang Pau, Wednesday, 2 Mar, (evening edition), 1938, p. 16.
78
Xie Tou Ba, as quoted in Zhong, malaixiya huaren meishu shi, p. 36.
79
“Meishujia duoren zhushemeishu xuexiao”, p. 8.

52
earlier precedents in China. The way the networking strategy took place does not

appear to be unique, and is in fact reminiscent of the earlier formation of the Society

of Chinese Artists in 1935, which started off as an alumni group of graduates from

Shanghai Academy, Xin Hua Arts Academy and the Shanghai University of Arts. In

the growing group of Chinese artists in Singapore, affiliations of former art schools in

China are sometimes transferred to the Singapore art scene and manifested in the way

artists identify themselves. While the Academy would subsequently accept graduates

of other Chinese art academies into its teaching staff, the issue remains that for the

first few years at least, the Academy maintained a strong connection with the art

educational field in Xiamen, China.

The opening of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was widely anticipated by

the art community. The organizers had high hopes for their new school; judging by

the recruitment advertisement, the school was expecting an intake of at least fifty

students and above. It was thus a setback for everyone involved when the first intake

featured only fourteen students.80 More importantly, the low intake of students posed

an urgent monetary problem for the school. Lin did not wish to rely on external help

for finances, so in the first four years of operation, severe cutbacks were made to the

budget to save money and the quality of the facilities and equipment suffered as a

result. The financial difficulties also saw the hiring of only three permanent teachers

onto the staff for the early years of operation: Lin was principal, administrator, as

well as teacher for the subjects of water colour and oil painting, Gao taught drawing

80
See Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.

53
and sculpture, and Zhong Mingshi taught decorative arts.81 The presence of the other

staff members were on a part-time basis, and usually lasted little more than a few

semesters at school. Despite the earlier arrangements, Lin Junde never taught at the

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, but went on to form Bai Lu Art Academy instead.82

Xie Touba, who was in charge of the Western Art subject at school, stopped work

after only one semester of teaching and transferred back to the Department of Arts at

Fujian Advanced Teaching College in China. Qiu Yingkui taught language classes for

English and Chinese over two semesters, and ended his term at the beginning of 1939.

The periodic changeover in staff members is confirmed by the various

announcements of the school board, printed in the newspapers under the section for

the Overseas Chinese schools. The growth of the school can thus be compared against

the number of staff working in the school. In 1940, there appears to be an

improvement in the situation of the school, with a significant increase in the number

of staff teaching at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. By 1941, the Nanyang

Academy of Fine Arts had a relatively distinguished showing of staff members which

comprised of established artists from both the Singapore and Penang art communities.

The school was also boosted by the assistance of the Society of Chinese Artists,

whose members took up various teaching jobs within the school. Apart from this, the

increase in staff had a second reason behind it. With each passing year of the Sino-

Japanese conflict, Singapore and Malaya saw a corresponding growth in the members

of its art communities as increasing numbers of Chinese artists escaped down to the

81
Piyadasa, “The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, p. 25.
82
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu, p. 37.

54
region.83 The impact of the new entrees was not limited only to the art scene; the local

fields of music, theatre and literature were all beneficiaries of the influx of cultural

figures from China. The net result of this phenomenon was that the Academy had a

bigger pool of talent to draw from, and thus the ability to offer more diverse subject

matters at school. Outside of drawing, new subjects such as cultural studies, art theory,

music and woodcut were being offered.

Apart from the few artists such as Gao Peize and Zhong Mingshi previously

discussed, some of the newer staff members who entered the school at this point must

be noted. 84 Huang Baofang, Li Kuishi, and Chen Puzhi were all former students of

Liu Haisu’s Shanghai Art School. Their appearance on the school’s teaching staff

shows the increasing move by the school away from the Xiamen group of teachers,

and towards bringing in graduates of the other Chinese art academies. The lecturer in

Western Art, Zhang Ruqi, was one of Singapore’s most established artist in the pre-

war art scene. A graduate of the Shanghai Art School, Zhang pursued further artistic

83
Shi, Wo zhai meishuan sanshyi nian, p. 10.
84
At the start of the new academic year from July 1940, the published list of members on the teaching
staff is as listed below :
Principal - Lin Xueda, graduated from Fujian Advanced Teaching College (Arts Stream)
Head of Education - Huang Baofang, graduated from Shanghai Art School
Head of Guidance Counselling - Zhong Baimu, graduated from Beiping Art Academy
Head of Administration - Zhong Mingshi, graduated from Xiamen Art School
Lecturer in Western Art - Zhang Ruqi, graduated from the National School of Art, France
Lecturer in Western Art - Gao Peize, graduated from the National School of Art, France
Lecturer in Guohua - Li Kuishi, graduated from Shanghai Art School
Lecturer in Music - Shi Yuyi, graduated from National Music School
Lecturer in Woodcut - Chen Puzhi, graduated from Shanghai Art School
Lecturer in Literature - Wu Dexian, graduated from National Beijing Teaching University
Lecturer in Craft and for Female Student Instruction - Lin Yuzhu, graduated from Xiamen Art School
Teaching Assistants - Zheng Nong, graduated from Nanyang School of Fine Art
[See “Meizhuan xuexiao: benqi jiaozhiyan (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts: Semester Report)”,
Nanyang Siang Pau, Wednesday, (morning edition), 31st Jul, 1940, p. 8.]

55
education in France. 85 He proved to be immensely talented in oil painting,

specializing in portraiture and still life works. While returning to China via Singapore,

he was persuaded by friends to remain in Singapore. Zhang worked with an

advertising industry, as well as being a teacher with Duan Meng School.

Head of Guidance Counselling, Zhong Baimu was from the Penang art

community, arriving in Singapore to teach at the Academy. Born in Perak, Zhong was

among those Overseas Chinese who received his education in China.86 He started his

artistic training at Xin Hua Arts University in Shanghai, before transferring to the

Nanjing Central University (Arts Stream) to continue training under Xu Beihong. He

was also a graduate of Beiping Art Academy. Zhong’s talent was not only restricted

to art; he was a noted film maker, with previous working experience in Nanjing’s

filming industry. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Zhong returned to

Perak. In late 1937, he became an art teacher of Western art at an art class organized

by the Penang’s Zhong Lin Alumni Association. In 1940, Zhong was invited by the

Academy to take up the position as Head of Guidance Counselling and as a lecturer in

the subject of Western art. He left the school after only a year, and together with

former Academy student Zheng Nong went on to form Hai Xia Art Supplies

Company. Zhong’s former position as guidance counsellor does not appear in the new

list of staff published in 1941. Student Zheng Nong’s position as teaching staff is

particularly interesting. Zheng Nong was of the first batch of graduates from Nanyang

Academy of Fine Arts, having graduated in June of 1940, and thus the product of

85
See Marco Hsu, A Brief History of Malayan Art (Singapore: Millenium Books, 1999), Chpt. 10.
86
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu, p. 21.

56
education from of the school itself.87 He was hired as an assistant teacher, most likely

to deal with the increasing number of students. With the relatively small artistic

community in Singapore, it sometimes becomes necessary for former students – and

even final year students – to return to their old school to teach. Zheng is an example

of this practice.

At the start of the new academic year in 1941, the teaching staff underwent a

process of reorganization.88 The new list of staff members reflects the majority of the

teaching roles as being unchanged; however, two significant inclusions were that of

Shi Xiangtuo and Wu Zaiyan as lecturers in guohua. Shi was the former principal of

Xinya Primary School before he was appointed as a lecturer at the Academy in June

1941.89 Proficient in both Chinese ink painting as well as calligraphy, Shi is one of

Singapore’s foremost artists in Chinese painting, best known for his contribution in

producing the synthesis of Nanyang subject matter with Chinese art techniques. He

87
See 1940 list of graduating students, in “Nanyang meishu zhuanmen xuexiao juxing shouzhou biyeli
(Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts organizes its first graduation ceremony)”, Nanyang Siang Pau, Friday,
(morning edition), 21 June, 1940, p. 7.
88
The new published list is as follows :
Principal - Lin Xueda, graduated from Fujian Advanced Teaching College (Arts Stream)
Head of Education and Lecturer in Western Art - Si Tuhuai, graduated from National School of Art,
Paris, France
Head of Administration and Lecturer in Western Art - Zhong Mingshi, graduated from Xiamen Art
School
Lecturer in Western Art - Zhang Ruqi, graduated from National School of Art, France
Lecturer in Western Art - Gao Peize, graduated from National School of Art, France
Lecturer in Applied Art History - Huang Baofang, graduated from Shanghai Art School
Lecturer in Guohua - Li Kuishi, graduated from Shanghai Art School
Lecturer in Music - Shi Yuyi, graduated from National Music School
Lecturer in Chinese Studies - Wu Dexian, graduated from National Beijing Teaching University
Lecturer in Guohua - Wu Zaiyan, graduated from Shanghai Sin Hua Arts School
Lecturer in Guohua - Shi Xiangtuo, professional artist in guohua
[See “Nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao biyedianli zhisheng (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
Graduation Ceremony)”, Nanyang Siang Pau, (morning edition), 17 Dec, 1940, p. 7.]
89
[Singapore Art Museum], Shi Xiangtuo’s World of Art (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1997), p.
6.

57
later became one of the longest-serving faculty members with the Academy. The

second artist, Wu Zaiyan, is also an artist of repute in Chinese art and whose

established name is linked with the Academy. Wu is recognized both in Singapore

and overseas for his mastery of the ancient technique of finger painting.90 Another

prominent figure who taught at the Academy during this period was Li Dabai.

Described by Marco Hsu as ‘a rare one amongst artists’, Li was the ideal model of a

modern Chinese artist.91 Equally proficient in Western and Chinese art, he trained at

Shanghai’s Xin Hua Arts Academy and Hangzhou’s National Arts School. After his

arrival into Malaya, Li taught at various Chinese schools before taking up a teaching

position with the Academy.

The most obvious sign that the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was finally

stabilizing lay in the surge of student numbers registered with the school. By 1940,

the student population had more than tripled from its first intake, from the original

fourteen to fifty students.92 The large number of students determined the move from

Geylang to new premises at No. 93 Serangoon Rd. The new premises also featured a

student hostel, sited in a neighbouring house. 93 The hostel made it possible for both

teachers and students to live and work together. According to Shi Xiangtuo, hostel

life was often lively with student artistic activities pursued till late in the night.

90
See Qiu Xin Min, Zhihua dashi Wu Zaiyan (Art Master Wu Zaiyan)(Singapore: unlisted, 1995).
91
Hsu, A Brief History, p. 67.
92
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu, p. 35.
93
Shi, Wo zhai meishuan sanshyi nian, p. 10.

58
 The achievements of the school were also displayed through the activities of

its students, whose works started to appear in areas outside the confines of their

school. The first student to achieve this was Lin Yongxing, a student from the

Department of Western Art, who took top prize with his oil painting “zhuoshang

jingwu (Still Life on Table)” at the inter-school art exhibition held at St. Anthony

School (24-28 May 1938).94 After his victory, Lin’s classmates were motivated to

stage another exhibition three months later. This exhibition took place in 19 to 21

August at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and included works by both the

students and external artists.95 The exhibition featured some two hundred works in

various media. It was intended to raise funds for the dual purposes of the school and

the war-relief movement, but Lin who was a chronic sufferer of poor health, fell

severely ill during the preparation of the event and the fund-raising aspect was thus

unsuccessful. Yeo Mang Thong reports that later exhibitions were all held within the

school premises, including the ‘Second Annual Commemorative Exhibition’ of

March 1940 and the successive student results exhibitions which accompanied the

graduation ceremonies held in June and December of 1940, and in the following June

of 1941.96 An article published in 1946 also reports that the students had organized a

woodblock research society in the period prior to the war. 97 Unfortunately, all the

artworks produced by this group were lost during World War Two, so little is known

about the nature of the works.

94
Lin, “Benxiao chuangban jingguo”, unpaginated.
95
Ibid.
96
Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, p. 75.
97
See Editor’s Note in [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts], Nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao fuban
niankan (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1946).

59
 On 20 June 1940, the Academy hosted its first overall graduation ceremony. It

was a small ceremony, made up of the school staff and students, and a few invited

guests. Four students graduated at this ceremony (graduation was often staggered out

throughout the year depending on which semester the student had been admitted):

Zheng Nong, Lin Yongxin, Zhang Tanlin and Guo Chengcai. 98 In the same year

during the month of December, the school held a specific graduation ceremony for

the Department of Arts Education. The graduating students were Chen Yanru, Wang

Yanshun, Wang Yuqing, Zhong Binxin and Chen Shu. These five students were the

earliest students to graduate in Singapore with a certificate in art teaching. 99 The

school had three graduation ceremonies in all before the start of the Japanese

Occupational period. According to Yang Bangyi, a student of the 1941 graduating

class, the final graduation ceremony for the 1941 year was originally planned for 15

December. 100 A few days before the event took place, Singapore was bombed by

Japanese warplanes. The school declared an early holiday and the ceremony was

cancelled as a result.

3.3 The outbreak of war and its impact on the Academy

Although the actual Sino-Japanese war lay many geographical miles away in

China, it still provided one of the main stimuli for the production and debate of

98
See “Nanyang meishu zhuanmen xuexiao juxing shouzhou biyeli (The Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts organizes its first graduation ceremony)”, in Nanyang Siang Pau, Friday, (morning edition), 21
June, 1940, p. 7.
99
The graduation ceremony was accompanied with a three day exhibition of student works. See
Education Section in Sin Chew Jit Poh, 17 June, Tuesday, (morning edition), 1941, p. 11.
100
Yang Bangyi, “Tantan Nanyang Meizhuan de cangsang (Discussing the formation of the Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts)”, in Nanyang meishu zhi fu Lin Xueda (Father of Nanyang Art: Lin Xueda),
[Malaysia Institute of the Arts Eastern Arts Research Centre] (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia Institute of the
Arts Eastern Arts Research Centre, 1991), unpaginated.

60
artistic issues within the Chinese art communities in Southeast Asia from the late

1930s onwards. In 1940, Principal Lin Xueda made his keynote address, “Yi meishu

wei xili wuqi (Using Art as a Finely-Edged Weapon)” during the first graduation

ceremony101:

This school was founded in a time when the war resistance was simultaneously
taking place in our motherland. Gazing north towards the central plains, the
entire land is like a beacon of smoke, while I am as if born in a separated space,
concentrating on studying my art, such is true good fortune! And yet I still think
of the dire circumstances of my nation, and my colleagues and I can hardly be
observers yet not truly see, the final purpose of good art, which is not to absolve
itself from society and its objects, but must stay closely with the flow of the
times, to reflect the justice of humanity, especially in this year of war resistance
occupying our motherland. Art must possess the spirit of resistance to allow it
to become a finely-edged weapon, to establish the value of fine art, and to
further give it depth in meaning.

Lin’s declaration on the need for art to be used as a weapon for the Chinese resistance

was an outlook typical of his fellow artists. Following the attack of China by Japan in

1937, a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment swept across the Overseas Chinese

communities in South-East Asia. The late 1930s and early 1940s was thus dominated

by a series of anti-Japanese demonstrations and war-relief fundraising activities. The

Chinese art communities in Singapore and around Malaya became hotspots of

activities for the movement, and artists often donated works for fund-raising purposes.

The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was no exception, and became a participant at a

number of these events. Under the direction of the Wen Gong Organization, the

Academy helped support the cause through the production of artworks and

propaganda material. 102 The Academy’s various attempts at aiding the movement

were deeply influenced and supported by the staff members of the school, many of

101
Lin Xue Da, as quoted in Nanyang Siang Pau. For more details, see “Nanyang meishu zhuanmen
xuexiao juxing shouzhou biyeli”, p. 7.
102
Shi, Wo zhai meishuan sanshyi nian, p. 10.

61
whom were already involved in the war-funding exercise on a personal basis. Lin was

a leading voice within the artistic community on the issue of art and the Chinese

resistance. Shi Xiangtuo, who joined the school as a teacher in 1941, was another

active figure in the anti-war campaign; he held a personal show of art from between 9

to 11 November 1940 for the purpose of raising funds for the cause. In his essay on

the development of the Academy, Chen Zhenxia, who took over the teaching of

Chinese language from Qiu Yingkui, too recalls his many attempts at collecting anti-

Japanese artworks from fellow artists based in the area around North and South

Bridge Road; these works were later turned in to the resistance headquarters for

future use.103 The early years of the Academy were thus coloured by experiences such

as these.

The anti-war campaign also had a profound impact on the development of the

school. 1940 and 1941, in particular, were the crucial years in which the position of

the school as a centre of artistic knowledge became established. The anti-Japanese

movement saw the arrival of many prominent Chinese artists in the Nanyang region

in order to raise money for the war-relief fund. For those taking the route along the

Singapore and Malaya Chinese communities, these fundraising trips often made the

first stop in Singapore before proceeding up to Malaya.104 The Academy became the

organizing centre for welcoming and hosting these visitors in Singapore, even helping

out in the promotion and setting up of exhibitions on various occasions. These events

103
See Chen Zhen Xia, “You huaqiao de senghuo shuodao nanyang meizhuan de fuban (Discussing
the life of an Overseas Chinese and the restoration of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts)”, in
Nanyang meishu zhuanke xuexiao fuban niankan, [Nayang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore:
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1946), unpaginated.
104
Zhong, Malaixiya huaren meishu, pp. 44-52.

62
gave the students practical work experience, and also contact with the artists. Apart

from this, it also allowed the school to invite a number of distinguished speakers to its

premises. On 23 December 1940, Xu Beihong was invited to speak at the school

about the trip he had made earlier that year to India, and to give an introductory

lecture on Indian art.105 He also bequeathed three of his works to the school – Wild

Geese, Sorrowful Roar and Look Back in Sorrow. In 1940, Feng Lieshan gave a

lecture at the academy.106 Liu Haisu, founder of the Shanghai Art School, also visited

Singapore in 1940 to help in a fund-raising project.107 According to Yeo, Liu gave a

talk at the school on the topic of contemporary art on 1 Jan, 1941.108 The school was

thus able to gain prominence as a gathering venue for artists and supporters through

the arrival of these Chinese artists.

During the late 1930s, the continued efforts of the immigrant Chinese artists

in establishing an active art scene in Singapore were finally bearing fruit. The influx

of artists and new influences from China and Europe also gave the scene an added

dimension of complexity. By 1941, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts can be said to

have truly started to bloom. Unfortunately, this development was cut short with the

arrival of the Second World War at the doorstep of Malaya. On 15 February 1942, the

British relinquished control over Singapore to the invading Japanese army, and the

Academy closed its doors for the next three and a half years of the Japanese

Occupation. With the start of the occupation, the development of the art scene came

105
Xu Bei Hong visited India in 1940 and exhibited his works at the International University.
106
See Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, p. 77.
107
[Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts], Soaring to New Borders (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts, 2003), p. 39
108
See Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, p. 77.

63
to an abrupt stop and the art community scattered in many directions.109 A number of

the artists moved to obscure parts of Malaya and to Indonesia in order to escape the

invasion. For those who chose to remain in Singapore, some unfortunately did not

survive the war, such as artist Zhang Ruqi, who was executed by the Japanese

military for his participation in anti-Japanese activities. The pre-war art community

was thus torn apart, and many records and artworks were also lost in the strife. It

would be nearly four years later before the remains of this art community were rebuilt

and for the reestablishment of the Academy to take place.

109
The impact of war on Singapore art scene is a little studied topic. One reason for this is the scare
amount of information that exists in this area. Eyewitness reports by artists after the war remain the
main source of information; there has yet to be a systematic search of official records for relevant
material. Many clubs and societies formed in the pre-war period were disbanded during wartime, and
hence lost much of their records of members and society activities. When such clubs attempted to
reform after the war, such as in the case of the Singapore Society of Chinese Artists, they were often
unable to contact their original members, particularly those based in Malaysia. We thus do not know
the precise number of those artists who died during the war. Similarly, many artists names listed in the
teaching roster of the Academy prior to the Occupation do not appear again in any other sources after
the war. It is uncertain if these artists were killed during the war, or moved to other areas. To date, we
still do not sufficiently comprehend the full impact of the Japanese Occupation on the Singapore art
scene; such a topic would prove to be an intriguing direction for concentrated research in the future.

64
 CHAPTER FOUR:
AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRICULUM AND STAFF OF THE ACADEMY
(1950s – 1960s)

In charting the developmental time line of Singapore’s art scene, the 1950s and 1960s

is often marked out by researchers as an important time of growth and change. This

was the period in which the structural framework for supporting art was finally set in

place, through the emergence of a strong art market and the formation of major art

societies to serve the growing group of art practitioners. The two decades are also

significant as a time of increasing exploration and innovation by the artists in

developing their art techniques and subject matter. On a wider scale, the society in

which these artists worked was undergoing crucial transitions with the movement

towards independence by the British colonies of Singapore and Malaya. 110 This

situation was further complicated by the debate of identity taking place within the

Chinese community, as numerous Chinese immigrants started to settle permanently in

their new Southeast Asia surroundings. Through a process of identity change and

integration known as Malayanization, the Overseas Chinese community attempted to

sever the ties to China, and replace them with allegiances to their new homeland of

Malaya.

Since the Chinese artists formed the dominant group within the visual arts

field in Singapore at this time, it has often been assumed that the social and political
110
The post-war period is often marked in history as the struggle of Malaya towards independence
from British colonial control. The move towards independence can be traced to many different factors,
including local dissatisfaction with the British inability in staving off the Japanese invasion during the
war, and also the rise of Communism in the region. In 1957, Malaya officially gained its independence
from the British government and became the Federation of Malaya. In 1963, Singapore, Sabah,
Sarawak and the Federation merged to form the entity Malaysia; Singapore later separated from
Malaysia on 9 August 1965 to form an independent nation.

65
issues of the time would have had a strong influence on the activities of the art

community. One such case revolves around the way the Malayan concept was

adopted in the field of art, leading to a new discourse on the creation Malayan art that

would encompasses the different arts and crafts of the various communities. However,

historian T. N. Harper also warns about making such sweeping statements. In his

analysis of colonization and its impact in shaping post-war Malaya, Harper describes

the making of post-war modern Malayan culture to be largely a product of colonial

administration.111 The idea of a national culture for Malaya was first forwarded by the

government in the attempt to deal with the diverse cultures of Malaya, and primarily

to maintain social equilibrium among the main European, Indian, Chinese and Malay

communities. It was reasoned that a promotion of a general Malayan culture would be

the ideal solution to replace the old connection of the people to their own

communities, and help forge new loyalties to the state. In recent years, the concept of

race has been questioned as a method of studying social development; many scholars

discredit the use of race in study as an overly simplified way of understanding

diversity in human culture. The use of race in politics is also often viewed as a

method of control through the classification of different races. Nevertheless, Harper

argues that there is still a need to understand how the concept of race was applied in

historical situations, and that the concept of race remains significant in the way

people used it to identify themselves and others around them. He writes of the

situation in Malaya,

Although historians no longer write of the ‘Malay response’, the ‘Chinese

response’ to the constitutional proposals as monolithic blocks of opinion,

111
T. N. Harper, The End of Empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), p. 2.

66
 studies locked in the domain of high politics have failed to appreciate the
breadth of the issues that were at stake within these communities as they
confronted the constitutional dilemmas of the day.112

As the main centre for artistic training in Malaya during the 1950s and early

1960s, the Academy is traditionally linked with the formation of Malayan art.

However, given the strong Chinese background of the Academy, a question for

consideration is the extent in which the Academy actually accommodated the

Malayan vision. As this chapter will show, the Academy in fact retained much of its

Chinese background. It was an educational institution that continued to chiefly serve

the Malayan Chinese community; students of other nationalities studying at the

Academy during this period remained relatively uncommon since the Academy

teachers taught mostly in Mandarin or Chinese dialects in the early part of this period.

Methods of teaching art also remained similar to those adopted in the art academies in

China at the beginning of the twentieth century. This chapter hence addresses the role

of the Academy as an educational institution through the discussion of main members

of staff responsible for the operation of the Academy in the period of the 1950s to the

early 1960s; the teaching approaches and curriculum adopted; and the critical stylistic

influences passed from the Academy teachers to the students.

4.1 The Academy and its teaching staff

As was its practice during the pre-war period, the Academy continued to take

on its staff members in the early 1950s from the pool of immigrant Chinese artists

present in Singapore. Two new teachers in the Chinese Art Department were Chen

112
Ibid., p. 84.

67
Zongrui (1910 – 1983) and Chen Wenxi (1906 – 1991), who joined Huang Baofang

and Shi Xiangtuo. 113 Chen Zongrui was the only exception in the new group of

teachers in that he had arrived in Malaya before the war in 1931. A graduate of the

Xinhua Art Academy of Shanghai, Chen was trained in the xieyi-style of Chinese ink

painting; he was also one of the initial members of the Society of Chinese Artists.114

He started teaching at the Academy in 1951. Chen Wenxi, a former schoolmate of

Chen Zongrui and Liu Kang at the Xinhua Art Academy, arrived in Singapore in

1947 after establishing a successful art career overseas.115 Chen Wenxi also started to

teach Chinese ink painting at the Academy in 1951. Due to the disruption of the

Japanese Occupation, the Academy lost several key members of staff, including artist

Zhang Ruqi of the Western Art Department, who was executed by the Japanese

military for his participation in anti-Japanese activities. The teaching of Western art at

the Academy was taken over by a number of new teachers such as Zhong Sibin (1917

– 1983), who immigrated to Singapore in 1946. A former student of Lin Xueda at the

Xiamen Art Academy, Zhong was invited by Lin to teach at the school after his

arrival in Singapore.116 Zhong entered the Western Art Department in 1947 where he

worked until 1961; during this time, he also set up his studio in one of the rooms of

the Academy hostel.117

113
Chi Ching I, “A Brief History of NAFA”, in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts: 60th Anniversary
[Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1998), pp. 22 – 23.
114
See Ku Xingseng, “Yinyu yitan sishinian de Chen Zongrui xiansheng (Discussing 40 years of Chen
Zongrui’s art)”, Singapore Arts 10(1978), pp. 12 – 16.
115
See Frank Sullivan, “The Art of Chen Wen Hsi”, in Chen Wen Hsi: Exhibition of Paintings
[Singapore Art Society] (Singapore: Singapore Art Society, 1956), unpaginated.
116
Chi, “A Brief History of NAFA”, p. 22.
117
“Yeo Hoe Koon recalls that Cheong, who was not fluent in English, would require the help of
students to act as interpreters for the numerous Caucasian buyers of his art even in the 60s and 70s.”
See Bridget Tracy Tan, Art of the Second Generation: Beyond Fact and Fiction (Singapore: Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts, 2005), p. 8.

68
 Another artist who joined the Western Art Department during the 1950s was

Georgette Chen Liying (1907 – 1993). 118 The cosmopolite of the Academy staff,

Chen was the daughter of a high-profile Chinese art dealer. She received her

education in France, where she studied art at the Academie Colarossi and Academie

Biloul. Like Chen Wenxi, Georgette Chen was an established artist prior to her arrival

in Malaya, and had exhibited at the Salon d’Automne (1930) in Paris and in solo

exhibitions to good reviews. She took up part-time teaching in the Western Art

Department at the Academy at the start of 1954. Georgette Chen held an influential

administrative role at the Academy through her impressive multi-lingual skills – she

was fluent in English, Chinese and French, and she also started studying the Malay

language after her arrival in Malaya. During her early years at the Academy, she

became an important assistant to Lin Xueda in his campaign to promote the school

and in dealing with the government. It was also through her presence on the staff that

allowed the Academy to make some measure of engaging the multiracial Malayan

society and take on some non-Chinese students, who were often placed in her classes.

Chen later became one of the editors for the school’s annual graduating catalogues

and was responsible for the English foreword in the catalogues published from the

late fifties onwards. She was further responsible for establishing the Academy’s first

connection with an overseas art institution. Through her personal acquaintance with

Chapelain Midy, Professor of Painting at L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux

Arts in Paris and former classmate of Chen’s, the Academy and the L’Ecole

118
See Jane Chia, Georgette Chen (Singapore: National Heritage Board & Singapore Art Museum,
1997).

69
Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts were able to establish a program that allowed

many Academy students to pursue their further training in France. 119 Lai Fengmei

was the first of the Academy students to go overseas and study under Chapelain Midy

on a scholarship sponsored by the French government.

Lai Fengmei returned to teach at the Academy in 1958 after studying under an

art scholarship at the L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.120 She

was part of the Academy’s tradition of hiring former students to act as teaching staff

– Zheng Nong was the first Academy graduate to work for the Academy. This

practice was most likely due to the small art scene and the general lack of people able

to teach art outside the pool of Academy graduates. Graduates hired back by the

Academy between the 1950s and 60s as teachers include Xu Dongliang, Cai Xiuya,

Huang Yiquan, Lin Youquan (son of Lin Xueda), Lin Muhua and Chen Shiji.121 As

Academy principal, Lin Xueda continued to teach various art and art studies subjects

at his school after the war, but by the late fifties his poor health restricted him to

playing a mostly administrative role at the Academy.122

119
Yeo Hoe Koon, “The Nanyang Academy and l’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts”, in
Pont des Arts: Nanyang Artists in Paris 1925 – 1970 [Singapore Art Museum] Singapore: Singapore
Art Museum, 1994, pp. 6 – 7.
120
For more information, see Karen Lim, “Serenity, Calmness and a place of solitude…Insights to the
artist Lai Foong Moi, in Imprints on Singapore Art: works of 40 artists [Singapore Art Museum]
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1998), pp. 21 – 27.
121
Tan Tee Chie, “Sixty Years of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”, in Imprints of Singapore Art:
works of 40 NAFA artists [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1998), p. 14.
122
[MIA, NAFA, KLCA, NAFA Alumni and Nanyang Siang Pau], Nanyang meishu zhi fu Lin Xueda
(Father of Nanyang Art: Lin Xueda) (Malaysia: Malaysia Institute of the Arts Eastern Arts Research
Centre, 1991), unpaginated.

70
 The teaching staff of the Academy remained relatively small throughout the

fifties as it continued to struggle along financially. In her letters to friends and family,

Georgette Chen reports that her monthly salary was not high – she was paid only

$240 for a twelve-hour working week (she taught for two and a half days each week

in her first year at the Academy).123 In the effort to keep costs and school fees down,

Lin Xueda himself drew almost no salary.124 Many Academy teachers took up extra

teaching jobs in other schools or art societies in order to supplement their pay. The

movement of the teachers outside of the Academy was also encouraged by the

principal as a way to boost the growth of the general art scene through teaching art to

the Malayan people. The practice of teaching in outside schools had another

advantage in that it allowed the Academy teachers to reach potential students for the

Academy. In this, the link between the Academy and other Chinese schools and art

societies was crucial for its early survival. Both Lin Xueda and Georgette Chen taught

art at the Equator Arts Society, while other Academy teachers held part time jobs at

various Chinese schools such as the Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High

School.125 One example is Chen Zongrui, who taught at the Chinese High School

outside of his Academy job.126 Many of the Chinese middle schools operating during

the 1950s included art as an important component of their curriculum by maintaining

strong art programs and student art clubs; Chung Cheng High in particular had a

123
Georgette Chen was a prolific writer who kept up correspondences with numerous students and
friends from the Academy. A store of her letters currently resides within the Georgette Chen Archives
of the Singapore Art Museum. (Georgette Chen, letter dated March 19, 1954, and letter dated March 9,
1954, Collection of Singapore Art Museum.)
124
See Noni Wright, “East and West meet in a Malayan Style of Painting”, in First Painting
Collections of The Nanyang Fine Art Academy [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts, 1951), p. 33.
125
Xiao Ji, “Liuxia Xuanli lishi de chidao (The History of the Equator Arts Society)”, Redai xuebao
( 2001), p. 43.
126
Marco Hsu, A Brief History of Malayan Art (Singapore: Millennium Press, 1999), p. 75.

71
thriving art club which carried out regular student exhibitions. A number of Academy

students were formerly Chung Cheng High students, who entered the Academy

through the influence of their high school art training and the Academy teachers.

Through gradual expansion of contacts among students and art circles, the Academy

was able to sustain its growth during the fifties and early sixties.

4.2 The Academic departments and curriculum: an overview

From 1946 to 1963, the Academy maintained four major courses of study.127

Three of the courses – Western Art, Art Education and Applied Arts – were instituted

prior to the war and retained in the new structure. The last course of study, Sculpture,

was replaced by a course in Chinese Art. Each course contained general subjects that

all students were expected to take and specialized subjects that were taught within the

course (the teaching of subjects also depended on the size of student attendance at the

school, which fluctuated on a yearly basis; some subjects did not have formal classes

due to small student numbers or were taught on an individual basis).128 Following in

the tradition of the academies in China, the Academy had two separate departments

for Chinese art and Western art. Students of the Western Art course maintained a

syllabus of sketching, drawing, water colour, oil painting, and English and Chinese

language classes. The Chinese Art course subjects comprised calligraphy, ink

painting, literary history and poetic writing. According to Huang Chongxi, the

practice of seal-carving in Malaya also has its roots in the Academy; although seal

engraving was not taught as a formal subject at the school, its teaching took place

127
See Tan Tee Chie, “Nanyang meishu zhuanke xueyuan kecheng fazhan shi (History of curriculum
development at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts)”, Xueda 2(1988), pp. 19- 28.
128
Ibid, p. 20.

72
during calligraphy and painting classes, since the use of seals is considered as a

necessary component for Chinese art.129Another field of study is that of applied arts,

which emerged as a practical career choice for an art student in the post-war period.

At the Academy, the Applied Arts course was originally a two year course, but it was

later brought to line with the three years required by the other courses. Students of the

Applied Arts course were taught calligraphy, graphic design, fabric design,

illustration, and English and Chinese languages. On a general basis, the curriculum

for each course was not rigidly enforced, and students were encouraged to take up

subjects from other courses as a way of broadening their knowledge of art; it is thus

not unusual for a student of Western Art to include a few Chinese Art classes in his

study. For all courses, extracurricular classes were also offered, including music,

physical education, craftwork and philosophy of art.

Apart from the classes of the four main courses, the Academy opened an

auxiliary class termed the Research Class. Held on weekday afternoons, the Research

Class was a part-time course designed for those who were schooling or working (a

later Sunday Research Class was also opened during the sixties). This course was

open-ended in concept and allowed students greater freedom in their choice of

subjects. A general Research class course took two years on average to complete,

accompanied with a graduation certificate. Students who joined as Research students

were allowed to transfer into the Normal course at the end of their second year.

129
Huang Chongxi, “Nanyang meizhuan yu meishu fengge (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and art
style)”, in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Exhibition [NAFA Alumni] (Singapore: Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association, 1981), unpaginated.

73
 The Academy also conducted an Art Education course in the early fifties.

Students in this course were expected to choose a combination of subjects from the

Western, Chinese or Applied Arts courses; in addition, they needed to study art

history, psychology of education, and current educational issues.130 The Academy is

the earliest known art training institution in Malaya to offer a diploma course of study

in art education and the training of art teachers. Joseph McNally writes that while

some effort was made by the British colonial government in training art teachers, the

rudimentary and piece-meal training system in art education meant that there were

very few skilled art teachers in Malaya prior to the Japanese Occupation. 131 The

Academy thus holds an important position in the history of Malayan art education as

an early training center for Malayan art teachers; Art Education course graduates

worked as art teachers in numerous schools in Singapore and across Malaya.

However, this situation changed with the growing influence of Communism in the

Chinese middle schools during the 1950s, which resulted in greater regulatory action

by the government in the education field and the formation of the governmental

teaching colleges. The official training of art teachers by the government in Malaya

also became a regular practice in this period. In 1952, the Ministry of Education ruled

that only graduates of the newly instituted teaching colleges were licensed to teach at

and below the level of middle school. 132 The degree given by the Academy was

unrecognized by the government, resulting in the retrenchment of many Academy-

trained art teachers in both Singapore and Malaya (Academy graduates had to hold a

130
Tan, 1988, pp. 19- 28.
131
Joseph McNally, Proposals for the Malaysian School of Fine Arts based on a Study of demographic
and cultural factors, thesis, New York: Columbia University, 1972, pp. 76 – 77.
132
Tan, Kecheng fazhan shi, p. 20.

74
second degree from a teaching college in order to teach). Consequentially, the student

intake for the Academy’s Art Education course experienced a drastic drop and the

course of study was terminated in 1957 (it was reinstated in the 1980s as a diploma

course).133

In terms of curriculum, the teaching system for the Academy appears to have

remained largely unchanged from that used in the pre-war period. Although there are

few existing sources that detail the exact order and year level in which students take

their subjects during the 1950s and 1960s, records written by Academy graduates on

their school experience provide an insight into student life at the Academy. Before the

war, Yang Bangyi – an Academy graduate of the 1941 class – recalls a typical day at

the school as being divided into the morning and afternoon sessions (i.e. 9 am to 12

pm and 1 pm to 4 pm).134 In the morning, students had sketching classes; charcoal, oil;

watercolour and Chinese painting classes; and graphic design work. While oil

painting was also taught at the school, it was apparently mostly taught at the higher

level classes. 135 Common subjects for portrayal in art included still life objects,

Grecian busts and the occasional human models. The afternoon classes were mainly

reserved for electives and non-art subjects, including language, music, and physical
133
Chi, “A Brief History of NAFA”, p. 26.
134
Yang Bangyi, “Tantan Nanyang Meizhuan de cangsang (Discussing the formation of the Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts)”, in Nanyang meishu zhi fu Lin Xueda [Malaysian Institute of Art] (Kuala
Lumpur: Malaysia Institute of the Arts Eastern Arts Research Centre, 1991), unpaginated.
135
Apart from training students in basic drawing skills, a different motivation for the prevalent use of
charcoal and watercolour appears to be grounded in economic considerations. Although art supplies in
Singapore could be obtained from shops such as the Straits Commercial Art Company and Hai Xia Art
Supplies Company during the fifties, Lin Yuchong remembers that art supplies during the period were
expensive and students could not easily afford them. Charcoal sticks and the paper were by far the
cheapest mediums. For oil paintings, students rarely bought the commercially-prepared canvases,
preferring to make their own canvases as a more cost-effective method. This was mostly accomplished
through purchasing cheaper fabric such as linen and then priming it with a mixture of cow glue and
white paint.

75
education. Although woodcut was a subject offered by the Academy before the war,

the subject was not revived in the post-war curriculum at the Academy, possibly due

to the political connotations of the medium (the use of woodcut works were closely

associated with the left-leaning Chinese publications in Singapore during the

fifties).136

Plein-air painting was another subject encouraged by the school, and Lin

Xueda often brought his students outdoors for art classes in the surroundings

neighborhood of the Academy. Huang Baofang, who taught at the Academy prior to

the war, recalls that the ‘atap’ houses of the area around Geylang and along the

Katong coastline (prior to land reclamation in the East Coast area during the 1960s)

formed the students’ favorite sites since it was the trend during the time to paint

seaside scenes and depictions of kampong villages; this thematic interest will be

addressed later in conjunction with the issue of Nanyang art.137 The plein-air works

by the Academy students generally display an inclination towards the depiction of

city life and the seaside. A practical reason for confining subject matter to the city

areas was the lack of transportation and roads into the rural areas in the early days.138

The situation continued well into the late fifties as a result of the Malayan Emergency

136
While woodcut was not taught as a subject matter in the Academy at that time, publications on the
prints were easily found in Chinese bookstores in Singapore, such as the Shanghai Book Store at Bras
Basah. Middle school students often acquired these books and taught themselves woodcut from these
books. Susie Koay, “Singapore: Multi-cultural Crossroads”, in Visual Arts in ASEAN: Continuity &
Change. Edited by [ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information] (Kuala Lumpur: ASEAN
Committee on Culture & Information, 2001), pp. 176-177.
137
Huang Baofang, “Dui Nanyang Meizhuan ji Lin Xueda de yixie huiyi (Reminiscences of the
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Line Xueda)”, in Nanyang meishu zhi fu Lin Xueda [Malaysian
Institute of Art](Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia Institute of the Arts Eastern Arts Research Centre, 1991),
unpaginated.
138
Long Thien-Shih, “Nanyang Style and the French Influence”, in Pont des Arts: Nanyang Artists in
Paris 1925 – 1970 [Singapore Art Museum] (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1994), p. 32.

76
(1948-1960) which limited movement in the countryside areas. Plein-air painting was

an established activity in the Academy educational approach throughout the fifties

and sixties as a way of training the students’ observation skills in different

environmental conditions.

4.3 Pedagogy

At the Academy, accuracy in draftsmanship was considered vital to an artist’s

professional life; skills in drawing and observation were cultivated in the students

through a strongly structured approach to learning art. From the very start of their

time at the Academy, students are presented with an array of objects to depict in their

work; as a student progresses in the course of study, the type of objects and subject

matter studied will increase correspondingly in its level of complexity. From accounts

of the Academy graduates, it appears that the Academy also adopted a systematic

approach in the teaching of art techniques through regulating the use of the various

mediums. Charcoal was used in the first year for beginners, followed by watercolour

and oil at the more advanced levels. The mastery of technical skills was thus achieved

through gradual training.

Nevertheless, researchers writing on the Academy have often expressed

concerns over the heavily restrictive way in which art was taught there and how the

method of copying was also often employed as a way of learning. On this point,

Joseph McNally states that the Chinese background of the Academy had a distinct

bearing on its teaching methods.

77
 China was still the centre of the world for many Singaporeans [in the
1950s]…Most of the visual arts were dominated by Chinese influences – which
meant learning to copy – one had to learn the correct techniques, the correct
way to paint a line, a landscape and so on.139

In Chinese art, the act of copying old master works has always been an accepted way

of learning. However, the way in which the Academy has attempted to teach Western

art in the same manner to its students needs to be examined. Chuah Ai Mee discusses

the implications of the Academy approach, and describes the Academy’s method of

combining Western art with the Chinese manner of teaching art as deeply problematic.

She described Academic teaching as, “… a conceptual conflict between objective and

teaching methods. Western art stresses creativity and innovation. Chinese art places

importance on courting the old masters.”140

Many writers discussing the Academy’s teaching methods often argue on the

premise that Western art equates ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’, and Chinese art as

being based on tradition. This is perhaps an overly simplified view of the issue. As

Chia Wai Hon has argued, the European art academies of the nineteenth century can

be said to have precedence in their use of structured teaching methods to gradually

train their students in the acquisition of artistic skills; the practice of copying old

masters is furthermore a common way of learning at these academies. 141 Such

approaches are considered inherent to the general tradition of academic education, of

which the Academy is a part. The problem, however, is how the Academy was

139
Lee Weng Choy, “An Interview with Brother Joseph McNally”, in Looking at Culture, eds. Krisnan
Sanjay, Sharaad Kuttar, Lee Weng Choy, Leon Perera, and Jimmy Yap. (Singapore: Chung Printing,
1996,) pp. 78 – 79.
140
Chua Ai Mee, “Learning to be an artist”, The Straits Times, 8 April, 1982.
141
Chia Wai Hon, “Post Independence Art in Singapore (1959 – 84), in Bits and Pieces: Writings on
Art, ed. T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore: Contemporary Asian Arts Centre, 2002), p. 126.

78
attempting to teach non-academic art styles such as the School of Paris. Styles such as

Impressionism espouse the values of individual artistic vision and creativity; to use

copying as a method to teach such a style naturally causes the conflict in objectives

that Chuah mentions. Moreover, the theoretical issues that should be dealt with in the

teaching of art were often side-stepped through the act of copying at the Academy,

and a number of students were replicating Western artworks without understanding

the background and meanings of the different styles. 142 This is one reason why

artworks produced by Academy students of the time were sometimes accused of

superficiality.

In the case of the Academy, the students’ reaction to the teaching methods

employed is also important. In many of the Academy students’ accounts from the

period, subjects such as art theory and art history are rarely mentioned, and it is

possible that these subjects did not occupy key positions in the Academy curriculum.

The growth of the art scene during the 1950s, however, resulted in a corresponding

increase in the type of literature on art accessible on the market. Thomas Yeo has said

that it was through his books on art history that he discovered a wider world of art

discourse than what was being taught at the Academy.

Nanyang Academy was supposed to be a Western-oriented art school. Its

teachers were trained in the Chinese tradition… I felt I was learning a lot of
tricks and how to copy, but it was not enough. I wanted more. I wanted to be
able to understand what it’s [art] all about.143

The rigid nature of the Academy’s education, coupled with wide gaps in the area of

theoretical knowledge, ultimately resulted in the students’ frustration with the

142
Chia, Georgette Chen, p. 126.
143
Thomas Yeo in Chuah, “Learning to be an artist”.

79
Academy, and the reason behind the increasing numbers of Academy students who

went abroad to study after their education in Singapore from the late 1950s onwards.

By the 1960s, the Academy was no longer the final stop for an education in art, but

the springboard for students to go overseas for further studies.

4.4 Styles and Influences

Another critical aspect of Academy education is the issue of stylistic influence.

Huang Congxi has pointed out how even though the student population was divided

into various courses, in reality the curricula of the courses overlapped in many areas

and students were often taking the same classes.144 He thus argues that the teachers

played a bigger role than the curriculum in influencing the students’ development.

The strong influence of the Academy teachers is also described by Redza Piyadasa,

who writes that the relationship was similar to the ‘‘Mahaguru’ [great teacher] and his

disciples’.145 Such observations are worthy of note. In the field of art education, there

has been increasing interest in studying the personality of teachers and the type of

teaching methods they bring to their class. Such researchers believe that the influence

of the teachers is crucial in art education, sometimes even overriding the effect of the

curriculum on the student’s development.

In his article on art education, Richard Hickman writes, “… I would suggest

that the single most important factor in determining the nature of schools’ art

activities is the personal belief system of individual art teachers, notwithstanding the

144
Huang Congxi, “Nanyang meizhuan yu meishu fengge”, unpaginated.
145
Redza Piyadasa, “’Nanyang’ painters: Why they faded away”, Sunday Times, 27 May, 1973.

80
imposition of guidelines and directions from ‘above’.”146 Hickman’s point is thus that

the uniformity provided by a general curriculum is often counteracted by the

personalities teaching it. The Academy’s case suggests that there is merit to this

argument. Up to the early 1950s, the idea of self-study in art was still fairly prevalent

in Malaya. The main attraction of an Academy education, as opposed to self study,

lay in the opportunity it offered to work under the guidance of the Academy teachers,

many of whom were also established and well-respected artists in the art scene. Yeo

said, “Students are attracted to an art school because of the pillar there…When we

were at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, there were people to look up to, like Lim

Hak Tai [Lin Xueda]…”147 The presence of noted artists such as Chen Wenxi, Chen

Zongrui, Zhong Sibin and Georgette Chen on the Academy’s teaching staff was thus

an important factor in the Academy’s emergence as an artistic training centre during

the 1950s and 1960s.

On a collective basis, the Academy teachers were most influential in

introducing the School of Paris to the students. T. K. Sabapathy has explained how

the choice of the School of Paris styles was regarded as encompassing the ‘idea of the

modern’ in art.148 The teaching of such styles at the Chinese academies was often

connected to the schools’ desire to provide modern art training. During the 1930s, the

immigrant Chinese artists who arrived in Malaya brought with them the knowledge of

the various styles of the School of Paris to the art scene; many of the early Academy

146
Richard Hickman, “Meaning, Purpose and Direction”, in Art Education 11 – 18: Meaning, Purpose
and Direction, ed. Richard Hickman (London & New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 4.
147
Thomas Yeo, as quoted in Chuah, “Learning to be an artist”.
148
T. K. Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some General Remarks”, in Pameran retrospektif pelukis-
pelukis Nanyang, Redza Piyadasa (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Seni Negara Malaysia, 1979), p. 44.

81
teachers were also trained in the School of Paris, either through a background of art

education in Europe, or the indirect means of the Chinese (or Japanese) art academies.

Academy students were deeply influenced by their teachers and other prominent

artists in the art scene such as Liu Kang in their exploration of the stylistics traits of

artists such as Picasso and Cezanne.149 Styles which held the greatest influence at the

Academy up to the 1960s included Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,

Expressionism and Fauvism. The advantage of the School of Paris styles was its

emphasis on the act of painting itself, which allowed the artists the opportunity to

explore different methods of representation in art.150 The use of iconography and the

entailing ideological meanings are often reduced in these styles, making it easier for

artists of different cultures to adapt them to new cultural environments. This is most

likely the reason why classical European art was not taught at the Academy, since its

practice would assume an indepth knowledge of European culture and history. On the

use of styles, Piyadasa has also described the immigrant Chinese artists’ choice of

styles as being eclectic in nature; they borrowed and adapted Eastern and Western

styles to suit individual expressive needs. This approach to art originated in China’s

art scene and has been discussed in Chapter Two; in Singapore, this tradition was

perpetuated by the Academy teachers.

By studying the Academy teachers on an individual basis, it can further be

seen that the various teachers had different influences on the students. Academy

graduate Wu Zhongda remembers that each of these Academy teachers brought a

149
Chia Wai Hon, “Innovation and the Singapore Artist”, in Bits and Pieces: Writings on Art, ed. T.K.
Sabapathy (Singapore: Contemporary Asian Arts Centre, 2002), p. 44.
150
Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some general remarks”, p. 44.

82
particular teaching style to their classes. 151 Such observations become important

when considering the teacher-student relationship in stylistic developments. At the

Academy, Chen Wenxi was deeply admired for his technical expertise in Chinese art.

Chen Zongrui on the other hand, was perhaps the most influential among the

Department of Chinese Art teachers in the promotion of the adaptation of Western art

styles to Chinese ink painting; his innovative works which adopted the use of

Malayan subject matter have also been described as having captured the interest of

many students. Shi Xiangtuo only taught at the Academy once a week, so his classes

were usually spent on the critique of students’ work prepared outside of classes.

Students influenced by Chen Zongrui, Chen Wenxi, and Shi Xiangtuo, include Zhong

Zhengshan, Lin Muhua, and Fu Zhishan.

Thomas Yeo states that two teachers out of the Academy staff had exceptional

teaching methods. One was Georgette Chen and the other, Zhong Sibin. “Soo Pieng

[Sibin] and Georgette Chen did show us that we, as artists, could interpret our

environment in a new way, and not just by copying ‘first artist’ interpretation…”152 If

this was the case, then both artists could then be said to have had the most important

influence on the students, in teaching them alternative ways of conceptualizing and

practicing art beyond the common copying methods employed in the Academy.

However, a further examination of Chen and Zhong reveals that the two artists had

diametrically different approaches to teaching. Georgette Chen is described by Long

151
Wu Zhongda, “Meizhuan shenghuo de yixiehuiyi (Some memories of Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts)”, in NAFA: 60th Anniversary[Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts]( Singapore: Nanyang Academy of
Fine Arts, 1998), p. 108.
152
Thomas Yeo, as quoted in Chuah, “Learning to be an artist”.

83
Thien-Shih as having had the least influence on the students in terms of the

transmission of her personal style, for she always encouraged her students to be

independent and individualistic in their art.153 Chen herself once said,

… although the teachers in your school are practicing artists, each painting in
his distinctive style, they are not there to teach their own particular art; for an
academy’s task must always be the guidance of the students in the basic and
conservative laws of drawing and painting from life itself.154

Conversely, Zhong Sibin was often described by observers as possessing a

strong charismatic personality and garnered a wide following among the students.

Although Zhong was a well established artist in the art scene, it can also be said that it

was in his role as the teacher that he has made the most impact, and which made him

one of the most copied artists in Malaya. Marco Hsu remarks, “that the formation of a

distinctive Cheong Soo Pieng [Zhong Sibin] art style in Malaya has had inextricable

ties with the development of the school.”155 Zhong is well known for using innovative

techniques in art, such as his adaptation of the Chinese hand scroll to suit the easel in

pictorial composition.156 He is further considered one of the foremost artists in the

Nanyang style – an issue to be addressed in the next section – and his use of Malayan

subject matter in painting was widely emulated at both the Academy and in the art

scene. Zhong’s influence in art can be seen in the likes of Zhang Naidong and Lai

Fengmei who studied under him at the Academy.157

153
Long, “Nanyang Style and the French Influence”, p. 36.
154
Chen, “Some thoughts on Nanyang”, unpaginated.
155
Hsu, A Brief History of Malaya, p. 124.
156
Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some general remarks”, p. 45.
157
Chung Chen Sun, “Towards the Research on Nanyang Art”, in Paintings of Chung Chen Sun, ed.
Chung Yi (Kuala Lumpur: Chung Chen Sun, 1995), p. 275.

84
4.5 The Academy and the Nanyang Style

Writings on the Academy often connect it to the wide dissemination of an art

style known as the Nanyang style during the 1950s and 1960s. A brief explanation of

the Nanyang style will be provided here. In art history, the term ‘style’ is often used

to signify a set of stable qualities that is seen in artworks produced over a period of

time or spread out in a group of works. Meyer Schapiro’s definition of style is as

follows,

By style is meant the constant form – and sometimes the constant elements,
qualities, and expression – in the art of an individual or a group…But the style
is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and a meaningful expression
through which the personality of the artist and the broad outlook of a group are
visible. It is also a vehicle of expression within the group, communicating and
fixing certain values of religious, social, and moral life through the emotional
suggestiveness of forms.

Richard Wollheim also writes on how the process of art is conceptualized,

created and interpreted by the audience. In his essay “Art and its objects”, he

compares the experience of art to language. He writes,

…the total context within which along language can exist: the complex of
habits, experiences, skills, with which language interlocks in that it could not be
operated without them and, equally, they cannot be identified without reference
to it…language in itself is a set of inert marks: in order to acquire a reference to
things, what is needed are certain characteristic experiences on the part of the
potential language-users, notable the experiences of meaning and (to a lesser
degree) of understanding.158

By using Wollheim’s definition, we can thus see that the creation and interpretation

of art is linked to the idea of shared experiences of the artist and the audience;

Wollheim describes this as ‘characteristic experiences’ on the part of the users.

158
See Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects (Cambridge: Canto, 1980), pp. 104 – 105.

85
 In Singapore, a common approach to art can first be seen in the 1930s in the

increasing interest of a number of immigrant Chinese artists towards producing

artworks that reflected the tropical Southeast Asian environment. The adoption of the

new theme was a conscious attempt by the artists at establishing a diasporic Chinese

identity in art and thereby distancing themselves from mainland Chinese culture. The

new artworks commemorated the Malayan landscape, and terms such as nanyang

fengwei (Nanyang style and taste) came into frequent use to refer to the use of native

themes and subject matters. While the artists initially focused primarily on the

depiction of Malayan subject matter in their works, the range of subject matter later

expanded during the post-war years as part of the increasing sense of regionalism and

which led artists to cast wider geographical frames of references in Southeast Asia. In

1952, a four artists group traveled to Bali in search of a new stimulus for their art.

The group comprised Academy teachers Zhong Sibin, Chen Zongrui, Chen Wenxi,

and painter Liu Kang. The resulting artworks from the trip are widely recognized as

groundbreaking in both thematic content and stylistic expression; they were also

hailed as the crystallization of a ‘local’ identity in art and the new model for Nanyang

art.159

The idea of the ‘local’ can be approached in two ways; in geography, the term

‘location’ is defined as a physical location on a map or as a relative location.160 It is

159
Kwok Kian Chow, “Notes of Nanyang Style/Regionalism for Discussion”, 30 August 1994,
Collection of the Singapore Art Museum.
160
Robert P. Larkin and Gary L. Peters, Dictionary of concepts in human geography (Westport &
London: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 148-151.

86
this latter quality that is of interest to this discussion. Relative location defines its

position in relation to other areas; it is therefore of variable nature because the notion

of what the ‘local’ encompasses can change at different points in the area’s history

and it interactions with the surrounding areas. As such, ‘local’ identity becomes a

negotiable quality, and open to a variety of interpretations. It is in such explorations

of ‘localness’ that a case for style can be agued in the practice of Nanyang art, as the

common point from which the artists begin their artistic conceptualizations. This is

also what Sabapathy suggests, “The subject matter of these themes are derived from

the immediate surroundings of the artists…the “localness of the place” was

consciously adopted as a programme for activity, manifesting an aesthetic position by

all the Nanyang artists.”161

At his 1979 exhibition on the Nanyang artists, curator Redza Piyadasa traced a

strong relationship between the emergence of the Nanyang style and the role of the

Academy.162 Historically, the Academy forms one of the largest bodies of Nanyang

artists working together in a common setting. While it must be noted that not all

Nanyang artists are connected with the Academy – some of the most prominent

Nanyang artists such as Liu Kang do not fall within the Academy’s circle of teachers

and students – the congregation of many significant Nanyang artists such as Chen

Wenxi, Chen Zongrui and Zhong Sibin at the Academy as teachers gave it its

reputation as an important centre in Nanyang art practice and discourse during the

1950s and 1960s. It was also an important dissemination centre for the Nanyang style.

161
Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some general remarks”, p. 43
162
See [Muzium Seni Negara Malaysia], Pameran retrospektif pelukis-pelukis Nanyang (Kuala
Lumpur: Muzium Seni Negara Malaysia, 1979).

87
The fluid ‘local’ nature of Nanyang art made it an easily transferable art from one

location to another in Singapore and Malaya. Wu recalls that it was at the Academy

that he and other Malayan students first encountered the Nanyang style in art; after

their graduation and subsequent return to their hometowns, they brought the

knowledge of the style with them back to Malaya where they introduced it to the art

scenes there.163

The involvement of the Academy with the Nanyang style, however, also

hinges on the presence of its principal Lin Xueda. The name Lin Xueda is commonly

seen in texts dealing with the art scene, yet the man himself remains an enigmatic

personality. References on Lin are often limited to briefly describing him as the

founder of the Academy, and few detailed studies exists on him in either his capacity

as an artist, or in highlighting his work as an art educator within the Malayan art

scene. A reason for this paucity lies perhaps in the nature of Lin’s participation in the

Malayan art scene. Research practice for modern art is commonly predicated on the

notion of an artist as being the central figure in the art production process, and

researchers often pay an overwhelming attention to the artist; an approach which in

turns overshadows all other types of personalities working together with the artists

within the arts field.164 In his role as an art educator, Lin’s contributions towards the

art field have frequently been obscured by his art-practicing counterparts such as Liu

Kang and Georgette Chen in the history of Malayan art. Despite this, peers and

students who knew him well cast him in laudatory terms: a visionary in the

163
Wu, “Meizhuan shenghuo de yixiehuiyi”, p. 107.
164
T. K. Sabapathy, “Hak Tai points the way”, The Straits Times, Saturday, February 28, 1981, Leisure
2.

88
development of the arts; well-respected Chinese intellectual; a tireless art educator;

and significantly, as a ‘catalyst’ in the formation of the Nanyang style.

A little discussed aspect of Lin’s background is his role as an important

participant in the Nanyang style discourse, and a figure who provided great direction

to the way the discourse on the style proceeded. The principal of the Academy until

his death in 1963, Lin communicated his conceptualization of Nanyang art primarily

though the Academy to his teachers and many generations of students. In the years

after the Second World War, he expounded on both the topics of art and art education

through short pieces of writings, mainly published within the school annual

catalogues as essays and forewords. Articles he has written include the 1954 article

Zhanhou nanyang meishu de wojian (My Opinion of Postwar Nanyang Art)”. 165

However, his most critical piece of writing remains an untitled foreword that he wrote

the year after. In this essay, he imparts as advice to the graduating students six

directives which he felt should form the motivation of Nanyang art166:

(1) The fusion of the culture of the different races

(2) The communication of Oriental and Western art
(3) The diffusion of the scientific spirit and social thinking of the twentieth
century
(4) The reflection of the needs of the local (the Chinese term benbang is used here)
people
(5) The expression of local tropical flavour

165
Lin Xueda, “Zhanhou nanyang meishu de wojian (My opinion of Post-war Nanyang Art)”, in
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts: Special Issue of Art Exhibition, [Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts](Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1954), unpaginated.
166
In 1955, the fifteenth graduating class of the Nanyang Academy produced a special issue catalogue
titled nanyang qingnian meishu (The Art of Young Malayans) as a showcase of student works. Lin was
invited to give his customary opening remarks, and he penned an essay on the topic of Nanyang art
(this essay remains untitled as the foreword). See Lin Xueda, “kanshouyu”, in The Art of Young
Malayans [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1955), p. 1.

89
 (6) The educational and social functions of fine art167

In this list, Lin Xueda accommodated both the original qualities of Nanyang style art

and the new Malayan interest towards multiculturalism. Clauses two, four and five

represent the common motivations behind the creation of the Nanyang style,

vocalized previously by artists since the pre-war period but systematically recorded

here for the first time. Clause five, on the other hand, is a reference to the new

opinion for the formation of a Malayan art. The list of directives governing the

Nanyang style which Lin expounded in his 1955 foreword to the art catalogue The Art

of Young Malayans is the earliest known written article that clearly sets out the

various clauses pertaining to the development of the Nanyang style. It remains deeply

influential in the Singaporean and Malaysian art communities today.

Nevertheless, Long Thien-Shih writes that there are often cases seen in which

the term Nanyang style is liberally applied to any artist who has graduated from the

Academy. He thus cautions that such easy application devalues the understanding of

the term. Given the long-standing relationship the Academy has with the Nanyang

style, it is inevitable that the impression is often gained that the Academy solely

produces artists of the Nanyang style.168 The problem that is therefore addressed here

is whether there were any forms of alternate art styles practiced at the Academy apart

from the Nanyang style during the period. It is clear that the Nanyang style for the

most part held sway at the Academy, as evinced in the many Academy students who

167
Original directives found in The Art of Young Malayans; translated version as taken from Imprints
on Singapore Art: works of 40 NAFA artists, [Singapore Art Museum](Singapore: Singapore Art
Museum, 1998), pp. 26 – 27.
168
Long, “Nanyang Style and the French Influence”, pp. 31-32.

90
continued to follow in the footsteps of their mentors in propagating the Nanyang style.

Zhong Zhengsun writes that the Nanyang Art Movement of the 1950s was able to

gather momentum though a number of Academy graduates (many of whom were

influenced by Zhong Sibin) such as Lai Fengmei, Zhang Naidong, Chen Erxin, and

Zheng Zhidao. 169 Such artists as Lai Fengmei continued to address the issue of

Nanyang subject matter within their art, pairing off their explorations in subject

matter with their own distinct stylistic preferences.

At the same time, through studying the Academy it can be clearly seen that

there was a distinct second group of Academy students who were interested in

exploring a different line of thought in their art. Marco Hsu, in his categorization of

Malayan artists, separates this group from the previous batch of Nanyang artists. Cai

Mingzhi, Lai Guifang, Lin Muhua, and Lin Youquan are considered some of the

representatives from this group. A number of these students were also active in the

establishment and participation in the fine arts wing of the controversial left-leaning

Equator Arts Society established in 1956.170 Hsu describes the artworks produced by

such artists as encapsulating ‘ideas about society’ and notes of their works, “Not only

do these mark the awakening of a national consciousness, they also reveal a love and

aspiration for nation-building.”171 Unlike the Nanyang style with its longer historical

basis, Social Realism in Malayan art only emerged around the 1950s as a result of the

169
Chung, “Research on Nanyang Art”, p. 275.
170
The overt political stance taken up by some of these students has been described as causing an
unsettling tension in the student population at the Academy; Wu writes that during his time, the
Academy students were split into various camps according to their political leanings. (Wu, “Meizhuan
shenghuo de yixie huiyi”, p. 109.)
171
Hsu, A Brief History of Malayan Art, p. 102.

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turbulent political situation in the years leading up to the Malayan independence. In a

period of civil unrest and riots, it is unsurprising that many artists, both Academy-

trained and private artists, were using art as a commentary on the 1950s and early

1960s Malayan political and social issue. Artworks produced in this vein reveal a

strong interest in representing the day-to-day lives of the common populace. While

the Social Realist style and the strong nationalistic sentiments expressed in the

artworks exhibited by these Academy graduates appears to distinguish its artists from

the batch of Nanyang artists at first glance, it can also be said that both groups were in

fact two sides of the same coin. The chosen method of expression and subject matter

may differ in the two camps of artists, but their overriding interest in the theme of

representing life in Malaya has remained consistent. By the mid-1960s, both Nanyang

style and Social Realist art went into decline due to the introduction of new art styles

in the art scene as artists returning from study abroad.

This chapter has examined the institutional growth of the Academy in the

1950s and early 1960s. One of the issues that has emerged in this study is how while

attempting to gain recognition as a Malayan art training facility, the Academy’s

development and perspective as an institution can be said to have remained Chinese

during the period. In terms of administration, the status of the Academy was

recognized as a Chinese school; as a result, the diplomas offered by the Academy

were not recognized by the government, and it was also sidelined in the issues of

government educational funding, generally reserved for the English schools supported

by the government. Its teaching approaches were further described to be strongly

92
Chinese in nature through its emphasis in techniques such as copying as a way of

learning; this ultimately became a problem as students started to require more

sophisticated and indepth methods in teaching Western art. At the same time, it was

in this unique perspective of the Academy that led it to champion the development of

the Nanyang style in art, leading to one of the most energetic of stylistic exploration

in Singapore’s history of art. This period of the Academy can be said to have drawn

to a close with the death of Academy founder and principal Lin Xueda in 1963. After

helming his Academy for over two decades and seeing it through various trials and

tribulations, Lin passed away on 14 February 1963 following a long struggle with

tuberculosis. 1962 was Lin’s last year as principal of the Academy. However, his long

years in service to the field of Malayan art did not go unnoticed. On 3 June of that

same year, the Singapore Government conferred upon Lin Xueda the Meritorious

Award in recognition of his contribution.172 This award represented the long desired

acknowledgement that Lin had been striving for his Academy and staff over the years.

Prior to his death, Lin offered his position as Academy Principal to his long time

assistant Georgette Chen, who declined it. The issue was later put up for

consideration to the Academy’s Board of Directors, which decided to pass the

position to Lin Xueda’s son, Lin Youquan, then freshly returned from his studies in

England.

172
Georgette Chen, “A Chat with the Class of 1962”, in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts [Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts](Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1962), unpaginated.

93
 CHAPTER FIVE:
REFORMATION AND THE ACADEMY IN THE POST-INDEPENDENCE
YEARS (1970s – 1980s)

In comparison with the buoyancy of the earlier periods, the Academy of the late

1960s can be said to have reached the upper limit of the abilities it then possessed as

an institution of art training. Wracked by financial problems and a skeleton staff of

teachers, the Academy was subsisting on the meanest of circumstances. To

exacerbate the situation, its curriculum and teaching methods were also becoming

significantly outdated. The Academy was unable to provide advanced training in art

beyond its diploma courses, and with no other institution able to provide a certified

fine art courses in Singapore, students who sought further education in art had no

alternative but to pursue it overseas. Ironically, as the number of overseas trained

Singapore artists rose during the 1960s, the Academy’s predicament was made all the

more obvious by the return of these overseas-trained students; when compared to its

graduates, the wide disparities of standards in art education standards in Singapore

and abroad was revealed, making it clear that the Academy was falling behind times.

On top of this, the position of the Academy was further threatened by the wider

changes taking place in the rapidly industrializing Singapore society, where the study

of art was losing out to the new technical courses and schools being set up. It was

clear by the early 1970s that if the Academy was to stay relevant to both the art scene

and Singapore, it would have to adapt to the new post-independent Singapore

economy by producing art professional with skills that allowed them to enter the

competitive job market.

94
 In response to these challenges, the Academy underwent one of the most

important transformations in its history – the shift from a fine arts academy to a

school devoted to the teaching of different forms of arts. This was the period of the

Academy’s evolution from the teaching of the fine arts (meishu xueyuan) into the

broader based art school (yishu xueyuan) which provides training for diverse visual

and performance art subjects. Notions of identity and the purpose of teaching art were

thus reevaluated so as to allow it to forge a new niche in Singapore’s economy. The

Academy undertook a series of organizational reforms throughout the seventies and

eighties aimed at fostering a contemporary identity for itself which included an

overhaul of the curriculum structure, the introduction of new departments of study,

and a reevaluation of its teaching and assessment methods. This point in time also

represented the start of the Academy’s foray into new media beyond those

traditionally identified with the fine arts.

This chapter examines the situation of the Academy in first twenty years after

Singapore’s independence and the various factors that brought about its reformation

into its current status as a government accredited tertiary arts institute. The chapter

begins with an overview of new trends sweeping through the field of art education in

post-independent Malaysia and Singapore, and the situation of the Academy after the

formation of Malaysia and the separation of Singapore. The section is followed by a

study of the Academy in the 1970s and its attempts at reformation in response to the

evolution of Singapore society and the art scene. In dealing with the post-

independence Malaysian and Singaporean art scenes, one must take note of certain

95
methodological issues involved in the comparison. Despite the arrival of the long-

awaited independence for Singapore, the separation of the island from its Malaysian

hinterland proved to be a major problem in the development of its art scene. The

cultural sphere, formerly enclosed in a single Malayan entity, was split into two parts

with their boundaries delineated by the new national identities and governmental

apparatuses. Artistic issues, however, remained deeply entangled between the two

countries. In the immediate post-independence years of Singapore and Malaysia, the

industrialization of programs of both countries can be seen as having a similar impact

on the development of the field of art education in many similar ways. For this reason,

the study of both Malaysian and Singapore art schools provides the general

background in which the case of the Academy can be situated in.

5.1 Artistic training in Malaysia: the late sixties and seventies

The separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965 had an immediate effect

on the art scene in terms of its impact on the physical movement of artists between

the two countries. The previous frequent interactions of the Chinese artists between

Singapore and Malaysia were gradually reduced and important art facilities were also

separated by the new demarcation between the two countries. The National Art

Gallery (Balai Seni Lukis Negara), built in Kuala Lumpur in 1958 and once an

important site of exhibition for Singaporean artists, now belonged to the Malaysian

state. Conversely, the Academy in Singapore found itself cut off from the supply of

students residing in Malaysia as an effect of the new immigration laws. This

represented an issue of significant concern to the Academy. During the fifties and

96
early sixties, nearly half of the Academy’s student population came from Malaya,

drawn by the Academy’s name to study at its campus in Singapore. 173 In the

separation from Malaysia, the Academy lost a major proportion of its students.

Moreover, the drastic drop of student numbers from the late 1960s was a problem

exacerbated by the building of new art academies and schools in Malaysia, which

started to represent an alternative to studying art at the Academy in Singapore.

The 1957 independence of peninsular Malaya and the formation of the

Federation of Malaya initiated the development of the seat of government and federal

capital, Kuala Lumpur. However, with the emergence of Kuala Lumpur’s art scene, a

growing sense of rivalry with the older art center Singapore can also be seen in the

field of art education and in the building of new art training institutions. As described

by artist and art educator Joseph McNally, the general worry then was, “If Malaya did

not take the initiative in establishing the school, there was a danger that Singapore

might.”174 Among the many issues addressed during the time was that of the need for

a national art school. With the end of the long Emergency in Malaya and unfreezing

of government funds for use in new development projects, a number of artists stepped

up their requests for a school of art in Malaya.175 McNally reports that in 1961 the

Arts Council made a statement regarding the commencement of planning for an art

school.176 In 1962, the Ministry of Education also made an announcement on forming

173
Chen Zhuang, “Nanyang meizhuan wushi niandai zuopinzhan (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
exhibition during the fifties)”, Sin Chew Jit Poh, 3 Jan, 1982.
174
Joseph McNally, Proposals for the Malaysian School of Fine Arts based on a study of demographic
and cultural factors (New York: Columbia University, 1972), p.105.
175
Ibid., p. 101.
176
Ibid, p. 104.

97
a committee to study the possibilities of forming an art school; the Arts Council’s

proposal was among those considered by the committee. However, due to financial

issues and the political reformation of Malaya into Malaysia, the government’s

proposal was repeatedly delayed and finally shelved.177

While the debate for a national art school progressed, the teaching of art in

Malaysia during the period was undertaken by various institutes such as the Specialist

Teachers’ Training Institute and later at the MARA (Majlis Amanah Rakyat) Institute

of Technology (the former Rural and Industrial Development Authority Training

Center started in 1956, and renamed MARA Institute of Technology in 1967).178 The

MARA Institute of Technology was the earliest educational institution in Malaya to

possess a School of Art and Design. Under this school, a diploma – later changed to a

four-year degree – was offered in various areas including Fine Arts, Design, Ceramics

and Fashion Design. The school also offered a one year diploma course for art

education, designed to train art teachers for Malaysia. From the seventies onwards,

the Science University of Malaysia (Universiti Sains Malaysia) also started offering

courses in the fine arts. These venues are some representatives of higher-level

educational bodies in Malaysia with fine art courses.

Of interest to this discussion is a second group of private art academies which

started to appear in Malaysia from the late sixties. A number of these new art

177
Ibid., pp. 100-127.
178
The Rural and Industrial Development Authority Training Center (Dewan Latihan Rida) was started
in 1956 to provide skill-based education for Malays and indigenous people. MARA is now a fully-
fledged university, and was renamed University of Technology MARA (Universiti Teknologi Mara)
on August 26, 1999.

98
academies were initiated by former Academy students returning to Malaysia during

the period. For this reason, some Chinese writers occasionally refer to the new

academies as the ‘seeds’ spread by the Academy. 179 Examples of Malaysian art

academies that have been set up by Academy graduates include Cai Guirong’s

Equator Arts Academy in Penang, and Chen Yuansong’s Perak Art Academy in

Ipoh.180 The idea of the ‘seed’ however, is not restricted to the simple establishment

of new art educational facilities by Academy graduates. A number of these new

academies also took the Academy’s curriculum and structure as a model. One such

case is Zhong Zhengsun’s Malaysian Institute of Art (MIA). In 1967, Zhong

Zhengsun, a graduate of the Academy’s 1955 class, started MIA to provide artistic

education to Malaysian students. The original teaching staff included a number of

Academy graduates, such as Xie Youxi (class of 1961), Zhuang Jinxiu (1955), Zhang

Naitong (1959), and Li Mingtang (1961). Originally housed at Jalan Treacher in

Kuala Lumpur, MIA started its school with a small group of sixteen students. 181

Created with the Academy’s structure as its template, the Malaysian Institute of Art

was a tertiary education institution that required a minimum of a school certificate for

entrance. School fees were initially set at twenty Malaysian ringgits per semester, and

students received a diploma at the end of their three-year course. 182 MIA further

adopted the Academy’s way of teaching both Western and Chinese art. 183 This

179
See Zhuang Zi, “Nanyang meishu zhifu Lin Xueda (Father of Nanyang Art: Lin Xueda)”, in
nanayng meishu zhifu Lin Xueda, [MIA, NAFA, KLCA, NAFA Alumni, and Nanyang Siang Pau]
(Singapore & Kuala Lumpur: MIA, NAFA, KLCA, NAFA Alumni, and Nanyang Siang Pau,1991),
unpaginated.
180
Wu, “Meizhuan shenghuo de yixie huiyi”, p. 108.
181
The school’s main campus is currently located at Taman Melawati at the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur
City.
182
McNally, Proposals for the Malaysian School, p. 87.
183
See Chow Ee-Tan, “Different Strokes”, New Straits Times, Thursday, 17 August, 1995, p. 3.

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curriculum was later expanded in the early seventies to include a choice of electives

such as commercial art and design, fashion design, and photography. In 1968, Xie

Youxi left the staff of MIA to start up his own art academy, the Kuala Lumpur

College of Art (KLCA). With the rise of these academies on their home ground,

Malaysians no longer needed to make the journey to the Academy in Singapore and

the number of Malaysian students studying at the Academy gradually reduced from

the seventies onwards.

5.2 Changing notions of art and education

The increase of subject matter taught at MIA from the early seventies should

be brought to attention, for its curriculum expansion reflected a trend sweeping

through the other art academies and university art programmes in Malaysia, and also

at the Academy in Singapore. Of note is how art training institutions established from

the 1960s onwards were no longer devoted to the training of artists in the exclusive

tradition of painting, but were increasingly moving towards producing art

professionals well versed in different types of arts and crafts. Subjects such as design

were also gaining prominence in the curriculum, slowly overtaking painting as the

dominant interest. While the explanation for this phenomenon lay in a number of

factors, the leading cause is perhaps the overall change in the art education field itself,

as seen overseas. According to Alan Gowans, during the 1960s numerous art schools

and academies across Europe underwent a process of reevaluating both the curricula

and internal organizational structures of their departments. 184 Since the nineteenth

century, European art academies have always been viewed as quintessential centres of
184
Alan Gowans, “Art Schools Abroad”, Art Journal, 1969, pp. 209-210.

100
artistic training. This changed, however, following the emergence of the Romantic

movement and its emphasis on individual creativity; the academic system was

criticized for being overly rigid in its teaching methods and of stifling inspiration.185

The position of the art academy was further made precarious by the rise of the art and

design schools. These schools were initially formed in the eighteen century to serve

the trade industries, but started to dominate the field of artistic training from the early

twentieth century onwards. Such schools included the Bauhaus in Germany, which

was instrumental in introducing the concept of a foundation year, seen now in many

art schools and design institutes’ curricula.186 The Bauhaus is significant among the

art schools for its approach in uniting the teaching of arts, crafts and architecture into

a single schooling system, thereby breaking down the old categories that existed

between the three areas. It must be noted, however, that the new art schools did not in

fact displace the traditional academic system, but grew in parallel. By the end of the

1960s, a wide spectrum of artistic training systems had sprung up in the West,

ranging from art academies that continued to keep closely to the traditional focus on

producing artists skilled in the technicalities of the fine arts; to art school counterparts

that adopted new approaches and philosophies towards art and artistic training.

While the understanding and definitions of what artistic training comprises of

may have been significantly changed in the West, the question remains of whether

185
Wine, “Academy”, p. 101.
186
Established by German architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, also
known as the Bauhaus, sought to integrate the teaching of the arts, crafts and architecture. Recognized
for its innovative ways in teaching art, the Bauhaus pioneered a number of art teaching approaches that
are now commonly used in the field of art education, particularly in America where the influence of
the Bauhaus on the art school system is particularly strong.

101
these changes also influenced the growth of art training institutions in Singapore and

Malaysia. Although it is difficult to establish direct linkages between changes

overseas to the processes of art development in Singapore and Malaysia, it can be

established at least that the Singaporean and Malaysian artists were not unaware of

the new trends. The sixties was the period when the first generation of artists who had

gone to study overseas returned.187 As more and more artists started to pursue their

education overseas, the gap in artistic trends between the two countries with the

Western art world also started to narrow. Other researchers have established the

importance of these returning artists and how they brought with them new knowledge

and skills that increased the diversity of artistic practices present in the art scenes of

Singapore and Malaysia. The same can also be said of the art educational scene, in

which many of these artists entered to take up work as teachers. Their overseas

training would have a definite influence on their teaching methods, and also in the

type of subjects taught.

However, the choice of art subjects which many of the art academies and

institutions ultimately adopted in their curricula appears to have been determined by

the economic situations of Singapore and Malaysia. The second driving factor for the

choice of a modern art school system, as opposed to a classical academic system, lay

187
Within the Academy, Lai Fengmei was an important influence on fellow Academy graduates to
seek out study overseas. Following her return in 1958, there was a surge in the number of Academy
students seeking out overseas education in UK and France. These students included Lin Xueda’s son
Lin Youquan, who studied in England and later returned to become the second principal of the
Academy. Up until the early 1960s, inadequate training colleges for teachers meant that those pursuing
this path also had to go overseas for further education. Their return often heralded the introduction of
new knowledge and influences. Well known art educator Lee Joo For was studying in England when
he first penned his proposal for the formation of a national art school in Malaysia; according to
Joeseph McNally, the proposed school closely resembled that of the Royal College in London. (See
McNally, 1972, p. 108)

102
in the industrialization drive of the two newly independent countries. In his writings,

McNally points out the importance of having an art school based in Malaysia, not

only for the general progress of the art scene, but as a crucial player in the

industrialization of Malaysia.188 Writing at the beginning of the seventies, McNally

outlined the problem often faced by the Malaysian commercial art field of having to

import foreign talent due to the lack of capable art professionals on their own side; an

alternative to importing foreign work skill was to send people abroad for training.

These expenditures, he argues, could be avoided if only an art school based in

Malaysia. Another source that throws light on the issue is that of the 1967 report of

the Malaysian government’s Higher Education Planning Committee, which clearly

states the economical benefits of Malaysian-based artistic training in its proposal for a

new art school:

A School of Fine Arts has an important role to play not only in the cultural but
also in the economic development of the country. As the country’s programme
for large scale industrialization gets under way and gains momentum there will
be increased demands for all types of industrial and commercial designers. At
present much of the advertising techniques and poster designs are imported and,
therefore, they are not necessarily suited to local conditions. It is also important
that local talents are developed early to meet these demands and unless
adequate facilities are provided locally the country’s industrialisation
programme may be somewhat handicapped in this modern are of intensive
activity. Local techniques, designs and methods of advertising must be such as
to improve sales of locally produced goods in this country in competition with
those from abroad and also to help find markets elsewhere. In order to develop
local artistic and creative talents, the establishment of a National School of Fine
Arts alone in this country will not be sufficient. Talents in this field must be
developed in schools and for that purpose there should be an adequate supply of
specialist teachers. The courses should include painting, sculpture, graphic and
commercial design, ceramics, mural techniques, textile design, silversmithry
and jewellery, interior design, furniture and furnishings design, fashion design,
stage design (for theater, film and television), music, drama and dancing.189

188
McNally, Proposals for the Malaysian School, p. iv.
189
See “Report of the Higher Education Planning Committee”, cited in McNally, Proposals for the
Malaysian School, p. 120.

103
As shown by the committee report, economic considerations formed the main impetus

in the establishment of the school, and it is obvious that the organizers intended the

school to assist in the formation of a commercial art and design field, a development

which in turn would be able to boost the country’s export market. This point explains

why nearly half the listed courses in the report are design courses. In fact, one of the

main impacts the changing economy had on the art scene was the growing influence

of the design industry. Redza Piyadasa noted in his 1974 article that one of the newest

roles in the art scene was that of the industrial designer, which he compares to a

‘technologically-oriented artist’.190

The growing strength of the commercial art and design industry did not go

unnoticed by the art institutions. The economic situation led even the older academies

such as MIA and KLCA to move towards reevaluating their curriculum and changing

it to fit the new demand for designers. Zhong Zhengsun comments on how MIA was

gradually moving away from its prior commitment towards producing fine art artists,

and taking up a more general approach towards exploring and working with different

types of arts. In particular, he describes the development of the commercial art and

design subjects in his academy’s curriculum as being “inevitable”: “Advertising has

grown into such a big concern it cannot be ignored. Artists are very much in demand,

and there are many who love it because it can be interesting, and provides a steady

income.”191 However, the new enthusiasm for commercial art and design in the art

schools also had its shares of detractors. “There is no appreciation for fine art in many

190
Redza Piyadasa, “Art and role of the industrial designer”, The Sunday Times, January, 1974.
191
[New Straits Times], “School that’s commercial at art…”, New Straits Times, 18 June, 1981.

104
of these schools. The emphasis on graphics has little to do with aestheticism. It is all

to do with advertising, consumerism and the opportunity to make money,”

complained noted Malaysian art educator Yeoh Jin Leng on the new art schools being

established in Malaysia. 192 Fueled by the growing economy, the art training

institutions of Malaysia started to incorporate a growing diversity of subject matters

in their curriculum. By the end of the seventies, a new face to many of these art

institutions emerged, as the training grounds that produced not only the fine arts, but

more importantly, in creating artists and designers who could adequately function in

and contribute towards the industrializing society.

5.3 Looking to the future: the reformation of the Academy

In the immediate years following the separation, Singapore’s biggest

economic challenge was to find a new overseas export market to replace the

Malaysian market it had formerly served.193 The need to look beyond the region was

further prompted by the changing economic status of Singapore at the time. In its

long history as a port-city, the life-blood of the Singapore was traditionally its

entrepot trade. Since the island had little natural resources, it compensated by playing

a major role of middle-man in the movement of goods between the region and the

world market. However, by the late 1960s Singapore’s entrepot trade was in decline

due to heavy competition from the surrounding countries and the changing needs of

the international market. Entrepot trade was no longer a viable source in the provision

of income or a stable job market for the country. In its place, the Singapore

192
Yeoh Jin Leng, “Why art can’t be taught in isolation”, Sunday Star, 24 April, 1994.
193
Cheng Siok Hwa, “Economic change and industrialization”, in A History of Singapore, eds. Ernest
C. T. Chew and Edwin Lee (Singapore, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 195.

105
government found a new niche in the manufacturing sector, where products were

either made or parts-assembled for the world market. The emergence of the

manufacturing industry had wide-ranging effects on the various other parts of the

economy, and stimulated the growth of other smaller supporting sectors. The growth

of one sector pertinent to this discussion is that of publishing and printing, which

opened up new job opportunities for commercial artists. Commercial artists, as artists

who produce artworks and illustrations for the purposes of advertisement,

publications and other forms of visual media, became increasingly important in the

new economic situation. In a rapidly growing national economy aiming to promote its

goods in the highly competitive markers overseas, the role of such artists become

necessary in the visual design of packaging and advertisement, and are the

counterpoint to the manufacture sector as what McNally describes as “an ancillary

workforce of designers, technicians in art and craft, craftsmen and ‘salesmen’ to help

her budding industry.”194

It was in the attempt to address the new economic situation and job market

that the Academy in the early 1970s first started to look into ways of improving the

school’s curriculum. One of the measures taken by the Academy was to set up a

research group comprising of Academy graduates and staff who had studied overseas

and use the group’s knowledge of artistic trends outside Singapore to find a solution.

The outcome of the group’s work was the establishing of the Department of Graphic

194
McNally, Proposals for the Malaysian School, iv.

106
Design (formerly the Department of Applied Arts) in 1974.195 Chen Binzhang and

Shen Guohua, who both majored in the study of applied arts in England, were placed

in charge of coordinating the curriculum of the new department. The curriculum

included subjects of industrial draftsmanship, typography, three-dimensional

representation, printmaking, and photography. Traditional fine art subjects such as

life drawing were retained in order to train the students in basic art techniques of

drawing and aesthetics. The overall purpose of the new two-year Graphic Design

course offered by the department was to attract commercial art-inclined students to

their school, as well as offering a wider choice of electives to students of the

Department of Western Art looking to broaden their studies. Through the Department

of Graphic Design, the Academy hoped to produce art-practitioners who were able to

smoothly enter the growing job market, and therefore answer the nation’s need for

skilled manpower in the field of commercial art and design.

Apart from accommodating the new job market, the decision for curriculum

change also stemmed from the Academy’s internal need for general reformation of its

out-dated curriculum. When Academy graduate Thomas Yeo first went to England

for further art studies, he noted the surprise of his first-year art teacher at his outdated

drawing methods.196 According to Yeo, the different teaching systems resulted in him

having to relearn everything, since the teaching methods for art used in the West had

progressed so far forward that his educational background was simply unable to cope.

With increasing students returning to Singapore from overseas art institutions, there

195
Chen Shiji, “Nanyang meishu zhuanke xueyuan kecheng fazhanshi (The history of Nanyang
Academy of Fine Arts curriculum development)”, in Xueda, 2(1988), pp. 20-21.
196
Chuah Ai Mee, “Learning to be an artist”, The Straits Times, 8 April, 1982.

107
was pressure on the Academy to provide similar standards in education to what was

being taught in the Western countries. The introduction of the new department can be

said to be a move in this direction. However, through the study of the Academy’s

history, it can also be seen that the formation of the Department of Graphic Art was a

rare event in the introduction of new study streams to the curriculum. Since its

establishment in the 1930s, the Academy experienced only two major shifts in its

organizational structure, the first being the closing of the Department of Sculpture

after the war, and the second the closing of the Department of Art Education during

the 1950s. Academy Registrar, Chen Shiji, further reports that the new department’s

formation was also the first big change in the Academy’s curriculum since Principal

Lin Youquan took over from his father Lin Xueda.197 The Academy curriculum had

in fact survived from the end of the Second World War up to the seventies with little

modifications and consequently lagged many years behind contemporary trends in art

and art education.

One of the other side effects of the nation’s industrializing drive for the

Academy was that it also faced strong competition from the many new technical

schools formed in the late 1960s onwards. The growth of the manufacturing industry

created a need for skilled manpower and to cater to this need, a number of new

vocational colleges and industrial training centre were set up with government

support. In general education, the school curriculum was also redeveloped to give

greater prominence to technical education.198 Art as a subject of study was thus losing

197
Ibid.
198
Cheng, “Economic change and industrialization”, p. 204.

108
out to the popularity of the new technical-oriented courses, and there was a

perceptible drop in the number of students studying at the Academy in this period – it

had already lost many of its Malaysian students previously through Singapore’s

separation and the institution of new immigration laws (the new laws reduced the

length of time for visas issued).199 In 1971, a further decrease can be attributed to the

nation building efforts of Singapore and its implementation of national service.

Georgette Chen notes this event in her writings, and records 1971 as a significant year

in which the gender ratio of the classes shifted for the first time in its history in favour

of female students studying art.200 The falling student numbers was so great that, by

1973, the school was in imminent danger of closing. In response to the crisis, the

Chairman of the Academy’s Board of Directors, Cai Puzhong, initiated a fund raising

drive in that same year to raise money for the school. He approached former students

for help, a course of action that led in turn to the formation of the “Fund-raising

Committee for the Development of the Academy”, which organized an art exhibition

at Victoria Memorial Hall and helped raise one hundred and twenty thousand dollars

for the Academy.201 It was at this juncture in time that the Department of Graphic

199
In the 1960s, the Academy alumni records show an average of fifty to sixty students registered
under the school’s fine arts department in most years. In 1969, however, the records show only twenty
nine students graduating that year (after a three-year course of study starting from 1966).
200
Georgette Chen, “ A Few Parting Words to the Class of 1971”, in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
31st Souvenir Magazine, [Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts,
1971), unpaginated.
201
Although the formation of the committee was originally intended as only a temporary measure, it
was later decided that the effectiveness of the committee in uniting many of the former students should
be maintained in the long run, through the reinstitution of the committee as an alumni association. The
new alumni association was established on 18th December 1974 and formally registered under the
name “Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association”. Initially set up to serve as an auxiliary
arm of the Academy, the alumni now functions as an independent art body, maintaining it own
regulatory board and member lists. Alumni activities are divided into four areas: exhibition, art classes,
alumni events, and the publishing of its own catalogues and other materials. See [NAFA Alumni],
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni Association Opening Ceremony Exhibition, Collection of
NAFA Library.

109
Arts was first introduced to serve two needs: to increase the number of students

studying at the Academy through the provision of a new study stream and to provide

skill-based training for those students who wished to work in the commercial art field.

Unfortunately, the Department of Graphic Arts proved to be a stop-gap

measure in keeping the Academy financially afloat, and did not stave off all its ills.

An underlying reason appears to be how the efforts at curriculum reformation were

limited solely to the introduction of the new department, and thus can be described as

a superficial attempt at change. Consequently, the Academy until the late seventies

continued to experience a period of tribulation caused by the low student intake.

During the period, funding for the running of the Academy was gained from two

basic sources: student fees and a yearly twenty thousand dollar endowment from the

Ministry of Education. The combination of these two sources, however, was unable to

cover the massive operations costs of the Academy, which by the late seventies was

incurring an annual deficit of some forty thousand dollars.202 In 1978, the situation

had deteriorated to the point that the teachers were not receiving their pay on time,

and the Academy once again faced the threat of closure. The state of affairs was

eventually made known to the press, and the Chinese newspapers Nanyang Siang Pau

provided extensive coverage of the Academy’s woes. It was clear that drastic

measures had to be undertaken in order to save the Academy. In 1979, heeding the

advice for reformation by Parliamentary Secretary of Culture Dr. Ou Jinfu, the

Academy embarked on a complete overhaul of its organizational structure and

202
See Xing Min. “wanjiu nanyang meizhuan”, Nanyang Siang Pau, Thursday, 31 August, 1978.

110
policies.203 A new board of directors and management committee was assembled with

Deng Lianghong as the Chairman. A new principal was also hired – Wu Conggan

became the third principal of the Academy and Lin Youquan took up position as

Vice-Principal.

Wu Conggan was the former principal of Hwa Chong Junior College and an

assistant inspector with the Ministry of Education. His appointment was an

unanticipated and controversial one, for he did not possess a background in art.

However, with his many years of experience in the field of education, Wu proved to

be the ideal figure to tackle the Academy’s organizational problems. His time as

principal is distinguished by the outward looking perspective of the Academy towards

international trends in art and art education, an approach which also contributed

greatly towards narrowing the discrepancies in curricula between the Academy and

other art institutions. To bring himself up to task, Wu conducted a study trip of

different art institutions in East Asia, Europe and America in 1981 to observe the

different ways of teaching art. By using the information gained on his trip, he

implemented a series of wide reforms that provided new direction in which the

Academy was to develop for the eighties. The first step Wu made as principal was to

address the biggest issue underlying the Academy’s troubles – the curriculum. To

resolve this issue, he formed a special study staff committee to take charge. Called the

“Consultative Committee for Professional Fine Art”, the committee dealt with the

restructuring of the curriculum, and was also responsible for drawing up a long-term

strategy for course development. Prominent Singapore artists were also invited on
203
Chi, “A Brief History of NAFA”, pp. 25-26.

111
board the committee as curriculum advisors. Artists who played the role of

consultants include established artists in the art scene such as Liu Kang, and former

Academy teachers Zhong Sibin, Chen Zongrui and Chen Wenxi. Younger artists such

as Cai Mingzhi were also part of the consultant group.

Significantly, artists such as Ho Hoying who did not graduate from the

Academy were also included among the group of advisors – Ho was a well known

proponent of modern art during the 1960s and also a strong critic of realism in art.

This was important for the Academy as it often hired its graduates onto the staff in the

past, resulting in a restrictive pool of Academy trained staff members; the inclusion of

artists not from the Academy in the planning process showed the attempt of the

school towards incorporating a wider range of opinions from the different parts of the

Singapore art scene. The composition of the advisory group demonstrates the point

that the Academy was gradually moving away from its traditional base in the School

of Paris and positioning as a centre of Nanyang style, and adopting an inclusive

attitude towards different art styles. Wu further set in place a new policy of hiring

overseas art professors as guest lecturers in order to increase the flow of knowledge

between the Academy and overseas art institutions. To maintain standards, an

examination board was formed to regulate the overall performance of the students;

student works was also to be assessed by professional artists in Singapore. During his

tenure, Wu contributed greatly towards boosting the Academy’s status as a

contemporary institute for artistic training.

112
 In 1984, the decision was made to adopt the Bauhaus educational approach in

the teaching of visual art subjects.204 The impact of the decision is seen most notably

in the implementation of a foundation year in the Academy’s curriculum, in which all

students undertook a common year in learning a wide variety of fine and applied arts

subjects. Students under this new system chose their field of specialization from the

second semester, and embarked on their training from the second year onwards.

According to Chen Shiji, the choice of the Bauhaus method lay in its provision for

greater flexibility in the students’ training.205 Through the foundation year, students

gained a wider perspective of different artistic techniques and philosophies, critical

knowledge which could be employed in their later years in regardless of the stream of

study they took. Basic art subjects such as drawing and painting were increasingly

separated from their position in the fine arts study streams, and offered as separate

modules to students from various streams to teach basic art skills. The use of the

Bauhaus approach also reflects the new philosophy of the Academy towards greater

incorporation of different forms of arts in study, an interest that it brought to bear

through the introduction of other artistic fields that were not traditionally included in

the scope of an art academy. As part of the Academy’s efforts to diversify its

curriculum, two new departments were formed in 1984 – the Departments of Dance

and Music.206 In 1987, the establishment of the Department of Fashion Design also

204
Chen, “kecheng fazhanshi”, p. 25.
205
Ibid.
206
A problem faced by the Academy in regards to the expansion of its curriculum was the space
needed for the classrooms. This, however, was solved in 1982, when the Singapore Hokkian Clan
Association generously offered to the Academy the usage of the old premises of its San Shan Primary
School at Mount Sophia at a token rental fee of ten dollars a month. This contribution was followed by
the rental of a second campus at Adis Road in 1985 from Nan Hwa Secondary School, also at nominal
costs. The Nan Hwa Campus was given over to the new Department of Dance for its use. In 1989, the
Academy gained the third of its premises at Selegie; where the old premises of the Selegie school was

113
added to the increasing fields of study at the Academy. Amongst the various reforms

to the curriculum during the eighties, one important decision was the reinstatement of

art education as a course of study in the Academy’s curriculum – art education as a

study stream in the Academy had ceased with the closure of the Department of Art

Education in 1952. This decision was made after the implementation of the art

teachers’ foundation course at the Academy in 1981.

A question of interest is how the old departments of Western and Chinese Art

fared under the new teaching system. In 1986, a new Fine Arts Department was

formed as part of the reorganization process; the new department encompassed the

three study groups of Western Art, Chinese Art and Sculpture. The Academy’s

unremitting commitment to artistic training in the two traditions of Western and

Chinese art can be said to be a hallmark of Academy training, a position which

distinguishes it from other art schools in Singapore. The LaSalle-SIA College of the

Arts, founded in 1984 by Joseph McNally and the second of Singapore’s two art

training institutions, adopts contemporary approaches in its intensive study of the

forms and media underlying the general practice of art. 207 On the other hand, the

continued maintenance of the subjects of Chinese and Western Art at the Academy in

spite of the undertaken reforms is also an issue for consideration, in which the

reconverted for use by the Academy’s multimedia art programmes. (See Chi, “A Brief History of
NAFA”, pp. 25-26.)
207
Although there have been considerations towards removing categorizations between fine arts and
design at the Academy (many years later, a proposal was made by the fifth Academy principal Su
Qizhen to merge the Academy’s fine arts and graphic design departments), the Academy for the period
of 1980s continued to maintain the grouping of fine arts and design separately in its curriculum. [Chi,
“A Brief History of NAFA”, p. 27.]

114
Academy now can be described as encapsulating two modernities in its art

educational approach. Gao Minglu defines modernity as such,

In our age the notion of modernity has lost its original meaning of the
consciousness of a new temporal epoch…Modernization became the
imagination of an advanced society in a space between the present and the
future, the local and the international, the I and the Other. In different
geographical areas, modernization produces a consciousness of subjectivity
fixed to different social models.208

The first modernity at the Academy lay in the overall structure it inherited from the

Chinese education scene at the beginning of the twentieth century and its desire for a

new Chinese art; this desire ultimately led to the teaching of Chinese art and Western

art in the same art institution in the attempt to engender greater cross-fertilization in

art practice. The second and newer modernity came about in the eighties as both

internal and external pressures on the Academy to reform led it once again to look to

the West for answers. Through the adoption of Western forms of art education such

as the Bauhaus method of teaching, the Academy hoped to create a new image in

keeping with domestic and international trends. Nineteenth century Chinese classicist

and social reformer Zhang Zhidong once wrote that “the strength of Western

countries lies in the strength of their schools.”209 Even in the late twentieth century,

this situation is still largely true for the Academy, where Western art educational

methods continue to be crucial in the establishment of a contemporary identity for the

school.

208
Gao Minglu. “Toward a Transnational Modernity: An Overview of Inside Out: New Chinese Art”,
in Inside Out: New Chinese Art, ed. Gao Minglu. (New York: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
and Asia Society Galleries, 1999), p. 18.
209
Zhang Zhidong as quoted in Kao, Mayching. “Reforms in Education and the Beginning of the
Western-Style Painting Movement in China”, in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the
Art of Twentieth-century China, eds. Julia F. Andrews & Shen Kuiyi (New York: The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation), 1998, p. 147

115
 With the addition of the new departments, the Academy’s position as an art

training institute changed profoundly. It was no longer solely a training ground for the

fine arts; the new design streams comprised the majority of the student enrolment.

Traditional subjects such as painting and sculpture were also relevant to a small

percentage of the student enrolment studying the visual arts only, and even in this

case, have been slowly giving way to new multimedia approaches in art. In light of

these changes, the Chinese word ‘meishu’ (fine arts) of ‘nanyang meishu zhuanke

xueyuan (Nanyang Academy of Fine Art)’ was no longer applicable to the reformed

Academy. Thus, in 1990 a decision was made by the Board of Directors to change the

name of the Academy from ‘nanyang meishu zhuanke xueyuan’ to ‘nanyang yishu

zhuanke xueyuan (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts)’.210 Since then, the Academy has

continued to grow exponentially. The Academy is currently divided between the three

Schools of Visual Arts, Performing Arts and Fashion Studies, under which the

various departments are arrayed. Under the School of Visual Arts, the curriculum has

broadened out to include the two fine arts departments of Western and Chinese art,

and the design departments including Graphic Design, Interior Design, and

Multimedia Design. Both the Music and Dance departments have been regrouped

under the School of Performing Arts. The Academy has also made inroads into the

artistic education of children in recent years, with the formation of departments such

as the Junior Art Department and the Gifted Young Pianist School; in 2005, the

Academy added the NAFA Arts Kindergarten to its growing family of artists.

210
Chi, “A Brief History of NAFA”, p. 28.

116
 From its initial class of fourteen students in 1938, the Academy has made

tremendous progress to its current position as one of the major training ground for

artists and art professionals in Singapore. This chapter has examined the various

issues and factors during the late 1970s and 80s that brought about the Academy’s

reformation into its current status as a government accredited tertiary arts institute.

The chapter has studied the reformation of the Academy against the new trends

sweeping the field of art education in post-independent Malaysia and Singapore. The

chapter has further highlighted the influence of industrialization as an important

reason behind the Academy’s push for change. While the study of the influence of

industrialization on the development of Singapore art is still little discussed in

research, as this chapter has shown, its role in introducing new artistic professions,

subject matters and discourses should not be underestimated. Finally, the chapter

studied the response of the Academy towards incorporating these new trends in its

organizational framework.

117
 CONCLUSION

This thesis has studied the historical development of the Nanyang Academy of Fine

Arts in Singapore in the period spanning the 1930s and the 1980s. By careful

examination of the Academy’s organizational structure and enrolment, activities and

pedagogy, this thesis has endeavored to produce a comprehensive picture of the

Academy’s establishment and development for future scholars to work with. At the

same time, the analysis of the Academy has also opened up lines of inquiry into

various other issues present in the history of Singapore art. As can be seen in this

thesis, the growth of the Academy is interlinked with a number of other critical

concerns such as the emergence and development of the field of art education in

Singapore. Issues that fall under this theme include the provision of a training ground

in Singapore for artists; the way art education in Singapore has developed to

accommodate the needs of its society and environment; and the connection between

Singapore art and an educational institution such as the Academy. These topics have

been addressed in the course of this study, and have also provided an alternate view

of major events and figures in the history of Singapore’s art scene as seen from the

perspective taken from within the Academy. By doing so, a greater awareness of the

many complexities involved in the overall establishment and growth of the Singapore

art scene has been achieved.

Chapter Two discussed the background of the rise of art school and studios in

Singapore during the prewar period of the 1920s and 30s. In this chapter, the

118
connection between the emergence of the Singapore art scene and the events taking

place on the China front has been examined. In the early twentieth century, the rise of

China as a modernizing nation led many artists to pursue their studies overseas in

Europe. This chapter has shown how the position of Singapore as a port along the

shipping lines between China and Europe made it an important port-of-call for the

Chinese artists traveling to Europe, and how the arrival of the Chinese artists into the

area also heralded the start of modern artistic activities in Singapore. The chapter

further introduced the contribution of the immigrant Chinese artists in setting up the

earliest art schools and studios in Malaya as the precursor to the establishment of the

Academy.

Chapter Three examined the Academy as a case study of the conditions in

which early artistic training took place in Singapore. The chapter has discussed the

various issues pertaining to the Academy’s establishment and its early history. One

particular issue that is highlighted in this chapter is the strong roots of the Academy

that can be traced back to China’s art scene; the chapter traced the origins of the

Academy to the Xiamen Art School in China, and how its formation was intended to

be a branch of the Xiaman Art School in Singapore. This point is further seen in the

impact of the Sino-Japanese war and the Chinese war relief fund-raising which has

helped establish the Academy’s reputation as an art center at which the Chinese

artists congregated. Another issue that has also surfaced in this chapter is the links

between the overseas Chinese communities in Singapore and Penang, most clearly

seen in the cooperative efforts by artists from these two areas in starting the Academy.

119
Such information is important in understanding the historical relationship between the

various overseas Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaya, and how the flow of

people between the areas also enabled the spread of art practice in the area.

Chapter Four addressed the role of the Academy as an institution of artistic

training. The 1950s and early 1960s was the period in which the Academy emerged

as an important centre in Malaya. This chapter has analyzed the Academy’s

organizational structure; staff; curriculum and teaching methods adopted in order to

better understand the Academy’s educational policies in this period. By detailed

examination the education provided by the Academy, a better understanding is gained

of the type of education Singapore and Malayan artists received in the period. Amidst

the government backed movement for the Malayanization of culture, one particular

issue that arose from this study is how the Academy’s Chinese background continued

to form a strong influence on its development; this point is also clearly evinced in the

teaching methods employed at the school during the period. Knowledge of the

Academy’s teaching methods is important in understanding the early shaping

influences on an artist and his art production. In relation to this point, the chapter has

further examined the artistic influences of the Academy teachers on the students, and

also the role of the Academy in the propagation of the Nanyang style in art.

Chapter Five documented the period of growth in the Academy from the late

1960s to 1980s. The chapter addresses the response of the Academy to the new trends

of the time, and the different factors that led to the Academy’s reformation in the late

120
1970s and 1980s. One factor discussed in this chapter is how industrialization of post-

independence Singapore and Malaysia has affected the general growth of the field of

art education in these two countries. One impact of industrialization on art education

discussed in this chapter was the introduction of new design and commercial art

subjects to accommodate the needs of the economy and job market. Within the

internal organization of the Academy, poor student intakes and an outdated

curriculum also became the push factor in the Academy’s reformation. In a situation

reminiscent to the Chinese academies of the early twentieth century, the Academy, in

order to solve its educational problems, once again looked to the West. By following

Western trends in art education, the Academy was reorganized from a fine arts

academy into an art school which opened up its curriculum to the teaching of various

fields of arts.

Many artists in the Singapore and Malaysian art scenes still remember the

early days of the Academy, and the determination shown by Lin Xueda and his

teachers in keeping its doors open in times of hardship. In commemoration of Lin

Xueda’s efforts in establishing the Academy and his long years of service in the

propagation of the art scene through art education, a retrospective exhibition on the

man was held in 1991 by the former students of the Academy. Titled “nanyang

meishu zhifu Lin Xueda (The Father of Nanyang Art: Lin Xueda)”, the exhibition was

a major collaborative effort between two Malaysian art schools, the Malaysian

Institute of Art and Kuala Lumpur College of Art, with the Nanyang Academy of

Fine Arts and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Alumni. Looking at the long list of

121
prominent artists and art educators listed in the catalogue and their recorded

memories of their time at the Academy, one is reminded of a statement made by

Georgette Chen in the 1960s. In her salute to Lin Xueda in 1962, Georgette Chen

with her usual flair for the descriptive, wrote,

I think of a pioneer as a person with a vision and a flame in his heart. It is to

that race of men who sow live germs that our world owes many of its
discoveries and the fruition of great ideas. Although Mr. Lim is stricken with
illness, it must warm his heart to see for himself that the seedling he planted
nearly a quarter of a century ago, has now grown into a green field strewn here
and there with colourful blooms not unlike an artist’s palette.211

211
Georgette Chen, “A Chat with the Class of 1962”, in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts 1962,
[Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts] (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1962), unpaginated.
Cited in T. K. Sabapathy, “Hak Tai points the way”, The Straits Times, Saturday, February 28, 1981,
Leisure 2.

122
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 APPENDIX: LIST OF NAMES

Names of Academy teachers as appeared in thesis

Cai Mingzhi (Chua 蔡名智 Graduated class of 1952; Academy teacher

Mia Tee)

Cai Xiuya 蔡秀崖 Graduate; Academy teacher (commenced

tenure in 1950s)

Chen Binzhang (Tan 陈彬章 Teacher in Department of Graphic Design

Ping Chiang)

Chen Liying, 张荔英 Teacher in Department of Western Art

Georgette Chendana (commenced tenure in 1954)

Chen Puzhi 陈溥之 Academy teacher for subject of wood block

prints (commenced tenure in 1940)

Chen Shiji (Tan Tee 陈世集 Graduated class of 1953; later Head of School
Chie) Affairs (1960 – 1984); Academy Registrar
(1984 – 1994)

Chen Wenxi (Chen 陈文希 Teacher in Department of Chinese Art

Wen Hsi) (commenced tenure in 1951)

Chen Zhenxia 陈振夏 Teacher in Languages (1939)

Chen Zongrui (Chen 陈宗瑞 Teacher in Department of Chinese Art

Chong Swee) (commenced tenure in 1940)

Gao Peize (Kao Fei 高沛泽 Teacher in Department of Sculpture

Tse) (commenced tenure in 1938)

Guo Yinglin 郭应麟 Former teacher of Xiamen Art School;

Academy teacher (1938)

Huang Baofang 黄葆芳 Head of School Affairs (1940)

(Huang Pao Fang)

Huang Yiquan (Ng 黄奕全 Graduated class of 1956; Academy teacher

Yat Chuan)

Lai Fengmei (Lai 赖凤美 Graduated class of 1954; teacher in

Foong Moi) Department of Western Art (commenced

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 tenure in 1958)
Li Dabai (Lee Ta Pai) 李大白 Academy teacher (commenced tenure in 1941)

Li Kuishi 李魁士 Academy teacher (commenced tenure in 1941)

Lin Xueda (Lim Hak 林学大 Founder of Academy; first Academy principal
Tai) (1938 – 1963)

Lin Youquan (Lim 林友权 Son of Lin Xueda; graduated class of 1950;
Yew Kuan) second Academy principal (1964 – 1979)

Qiu Yingkui (Chiu In 邱应葵 Teacher in Languages (1938)

Wei)

Shi Xiangtuo (See 施香沱 Teacher in Department of Chinese Art

Hiang Tuo) (commenced tenure in 1941)

Shen Guohua (Sim 沈国华 Teacher in Department of Graphic Design

Kok Huoy)

Wu Conggan (Wu 吴从干 Third Academy principal (1979 – 1989)

Tsung Kan)

Wu Zaiyan (Wu Tsai 吴再炎 Teacher in Department of Chinese Art

Yen) (commenced tenure in 1941)

Xie Touba 谢投八 Former teacher of Xiamen Art School; Teacher

in Department of Western Art (1938)

Xu Dongliang 许栋梁 Graduate; Academy teacher (commenced

tenure in 1950s)

Zhang Ruqi (Tchang 张汝器 Teacher in Department of Western Art

Ju Chi) (commenced tenure in 1940)

Zheng Nong (Tay 郑侬 Graduated class of 1940; assistant teacher at

Long) Academy. Co-founded the Hai Xia Art
Supplies Company with fellow Academy
teacher Zhong Baimu.

Zhong Baimu (Chong 钟白木 Head of Guidance Counselling (1940); also

Pai Mu) teacher in Department of Western Art.

Zhong Mingshi 钟鸣世 Teacher in Department of Applied Arts

(Cheong Ming See) (commenced tenure in 1938)

140
Zhong Sibin (Cheong 钟泗滨 Teacher in Department of Western Art
Soo Pieng) (commenced tenure in 1947)

141