图绘“近代东方圣母”:视觉现代性在中国的另类可能

Portraying Our Lady of Modern China:An Alternative Visual Modernity in China

“东方圣母像”是传统与外来视觉文化在中国民间相遇、杂糅、进而融合新生的一个视觉文化案例。通过回溯“女王圣母”形象在中国民间历经数个世纪的视觉转译脉络,本文认为直到20世纪初“东方圣母像”的创制,将圣母作为“母皇”的独特本土观念,才有效实现本土化的视觉呈现。在此基础上,本文认为,“东方圣母像”承载着“写实”的现代价值和“基督教化的现代性”表征,但又区别于现有诸种现代性范式,呈现出20世纪早期中国视觉启蒙进程中虽被忽视、但确乎存在过的、视觉现代性的另一种可能。

To explore the possibility of an alternative visual modernity that mixes together Chinese and western visual cultures as a new one,this paper focuses on the icon of“Our lady of China”which was initiated in the early 20th century.By tracing the centuries-long Sinicization of the western icon of“Maria Regina”,noticeably,it is the 20th-century icon of“Our lady of China”that at last effectively visualized the specific Chinese notion of taking Madonna as“Mother Emperor”.Finally,this paper argues that the icon of“Our lady of China”conveys both realistic and Christianized modernity,while at the same time differs from several current typical narratives of modernity,which provides another possibility of visual modernity,neglected but once existed,in the process of visual enlightenment in China in the early 20th century.