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The Painter from Shanghai: A Novelby Jennifer Cody Epstein |
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Reminiscent of Memoirs of a Geisha, a re-imagining of the life of Pan Yuliang and her transformation from prostitute to post-Impressionist.
Down the muddy waters of the Yangtze River and into the seedy backrooms of "The Hall of Eternal Splendor," through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution: this novel tells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talentedÂ?and provocativeÂ?Chinese artists of the twentieth century.
Jennifer Cody Epstein's epic brings to life the woman behind the lush, Cezannesque nude self-portraits, capturing with lavish detail her life in the brothel and then as a concubine to a Republican official who would ultimately help her find her way as an artist. Moving with the tide of historical events, The Painter from Shanghai celebrates a singularly daring painting styleÂ?one that led to fame, notoriety, and, ultimately, a devastating choice: between Pan's art and the one great love of her life.
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Memoirs - Redux -  |
The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel Review |
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This book is well written, but definitely reminds me in many ways of Memoirs of a Geisha... the Chinese version. I still found the book very interesting and will admit that Memoirs was one of my favorites. |
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Compelling and heartbreaking story of a woman's fight to be an artist -  |
The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel Review |
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The Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein is the story of famed Chinese artist Pan Yuliang. If the book was fiction (it is a fictionalized biography), it would be impossible to believe that it's true. Yuliang was sold into a brothel at the age of 14 by her opium-addict uncle. The girl initially believed that she was going to do embroidery to support the family. Trained by the brothel's top girl, she shuts down her emotions in order to deal with daily degradations. At seventeen, she meets a Republican official, Pan Zanhua, who quickly makes her his concubine, and eventually second wife. Zanhua supports her interest in art and allows her to enter art school, even when it endangers his position with the government. Yuliang continues to keep her emotions hidden and only allows them to show through her artwork, many of which are self-portrait nudes. Yuliang's story takes place on the sweeping canvas of Chinese civil war and the Japanese invasion. As as her home country tries to determine its new identity (making the book very timely), Yuliang has to determine her own as well. Epstein tackles this amazing story deftly and with compassion, Yuliang suffered much, torn between art and love and was deeply scarred by the sexual abuse she faced for three years. Many artists have faced hunger and poverty, but Yuliang faced so much more, the reader can't help but be awed by the obstacles she faced and overcame, including the destruction of an entire exhibition by anti-Communist forces. The book is well-written and compelling. |
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Review - |
The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel Review |
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Pan Yuliang has lived and taken care of her uncle, ever since her mother died when she was young. At fourteen years Pan Yuliang was sold to The Hall of Eternal Splendour to become a prostitute. Her uncle did it to play off some loans he had accrued for his habit of opium. After two years of working at The Halls of Eternal Splendour, Pan Yuliang was saved. A young man by the name of Pan Zanhua, who is an inspector. He is so fascinated by Pan that he offers to take her away from Eternal Splendour and make her his wife. For once Pan Yuliang sees Shanghai through a different light. Pan Zanhua recognizes Pan Yuliang interest and talent for painting. He encourages her to become a professional painter but is Pan Yuliang to free spirited for the school and will they even accept a woman.
The Painter from Shanghai is based on true events of Pan Yuliang life. I have to admit that I had never heard of Pan Yuliang. After reading The Painter from Shanghai, I found Pan Yuliang to be a very remarkable woman. She could find beauty in everything around her. This included even during the two years Yuliang was at The Halls of Eternal Splendour. Pan Zanhua was a good husband to Yuliang. He helped Pan Yuliang pursue her dreams no matter what people thought. For this fact Pan Yuliang was able to stand up for what she wanted to paint and not just what sold. I feel Jennifer Cody Epstein did Pan Yuliang justice in this creative masterpiece of a book titled The Painter from Shanghai. |
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A Story of Impossible Odds Overcome in the Name of Art - |
The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel Review |
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Jennifer Cody Epstein's engaging if blandly titled biographical novel, THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI, presents a fictionalized but chronologically straightforward account of the life of one of China's most controversial painters of the early Twentieth Century, Pan Yuliang. Born Zhang Yuliang in Anhui Province, the outlines of Ms. Pan's life are readily available on dozens of Internet sites - orphaned as a child, sold into prostitution at age fourteen by her opium-addicted uncle, saved from her fate by a government officer who takes her as his second wife, talented but unlikely admission to an art school in Shanghai and from there to Paris, celebrated for her adaptation of Western Post-Impressionism to Chinese themes and styles, condemned in her native country for her paintings' moral decadence, her brief and largely unhappy return to China in the 1930's, and her eventual return to Europe in 1937 where she lived until her death in 1977.
The challenge for Ms. Epstein was what to make of such a life, how to cast it against its own remarkably volatile cultural/historical backdrop while still positioning her biographical subject's place in the 20th Century art world. She fairly successfully meets the first part of that challenge in her book, infusing Ms. Pan's life with the sense of an artist's vision and tortured soul against a background of violent historical movement - the end of imperial rule, the portioning of Shanghai by Western powers, the birth of Sun Yat-Sen's Republic, the advent of Chang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Party, the early signs of the evolving Communist Party (embodied by multiple appeareances of Zhou Enlai), and the Japanese intrusions paving the way for its 1937 invasions and massacres in Shanghai and Nanjing. It is not so clear whether she succeeds in the second challenge, that of defining Ms. Pan's importance to the history of art, either China's or the world's at large. Ms. Epstein provides no substantial sense of Pan Yuliang's artistic style, seemingly settling for the notion that female nudity alone was enough reason to signify her work. While this may well have been true in 1930's China, Ms. Pan's actual work (not included in the book) are strikingly different - far more Rubensesque, for example - than the impressions left by Ms. Epstein's writing. I chose not to survey Ms. Pan's oeuvre until after reading the book, only then to be astonished at the difference between the mental picture I had formed and the reality of Pan Yuliang's work. It seemed surprising that paintings with such strong 17th Century influences would have found an accepting critical audience in a European art world already under the thrall of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp, and so many other Modernists. To a modest extent, I feel compelled to fault Ms. Epstein for both the perception gap (literary impression versus artistic reality) and the reasons for Ms. Pan's acceptance in the Paris art world. How much of the latter, for example, could have been simply a product of her "Oriental exoticism?" Nevertheless, Ms. Epstein effectively brings her subject to life, casting her as a heroic victor over extraordinary odds by sheer force of talent and will. As an author, she has much material from which to choose - Ms. Pan's cruel childhood (including footbinding), her "Memoirs of a Geisha" adolescence, her insistent self-education, her strong feminist leanings, her cultural iconoclasm, and her unshakable belief in her own artistic vision. There are suggestions of deeper veins to be mined, particularly references to Ms. Pan's homesexual relationship to another prostitute, Jinling, that can hardly fail to be connected with the artist's later focus on the nude female form in much of her work, but Ms. Epstein appears content to introduce them without further examination. In addition, the male characters in Ms. Pan's life - her uncle Wu, her youthful revolutionary friend Xing Xudun, and of course her "savior" husband, Pan Zanhua - are perhaps less thoroughly exploited for their perspectives on Ms. Pan than they could have been. Alternating chapters seen through Ms. Pan's eyes and those of the various males in her life might have provided for more critical, arm's length view of the artist's actions and their effects on others within the broader social and cultural context of early 20th Century China. Likely unknown to most Western readers of THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI is an earlier, fictionalized account of Ms. Pan's life in subtitled cinematic form. A SOUL HAUNTED BY PAINTING was released in 1994, directed by Huang Shuqin and starring China's incomparable Gong Li as the tortured painter. While the movie suffers numerous flaws - underexplained character motivation, storytelling choppiness from multiple continuity breaks, and melodramatic acting, among others - it fairly mirrors Ms. Epstein's story while providing a much greater sense of Pan Yuliang's artistic style and works. |
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Wonderful glimpse into Pan Yuliang's life - |
The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel Review |
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Pan Yuliang, one of China's finest and most controversial painters, lived in the early part of the 20th century. Forced into prostitution when her uncle sold her to pay for his opium habit, she is later unexpectedly rescued by a man who comes to love her and make her his second wife. Though she is only a concubine, he treats her with love and respect, and encourages her to study painting, both in China and in France.
"...no matter how we long for the past, we are rooted in the present," Pan Yuliang tells her husband, Pan Zanhua. Jennifer Cody Epstein brings this concept home to us in her use of present tense in telling Yuliang's story. Based on the limited knowledge of the painter's life, she has captured this turbulent time period in China, and some of the experiences she imagined Yuliang may have had. The Painter From Shanghai pulls the reader into Yuliang's life, sharing the horrors of Hall life, the joy in discovering her ability to paint, and the hunger and loneliness of her life in France. Though most of the public never understood her need to paint nudes, Epstein suggests her monsters were what produced her art. In creating beautiful female bodies on canvas, she may have been able to deal with the memories of offering her body in a way no fourteen year-old girl should. Haunting, compelling, and masterfully written, The Painter From Shanghai invites the reader into Pan Yuliang's world. Although this a work of fiction, you'll feel you've had a glimpse into the life of this intriguing and talented woman. Reviewer: Alice Berger, Bergers Book Reviews |
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