Scholars have historically used the tripartite traditionalist–modernist–reformist model to explain the identity struggle experienced in Chinese art and society during the late-Qing and Republican eras. While this has been insightful for broad-stroke purposes, recent scholarship increasingly shows us that this sort of view is, on its own, reductive. The antidote for this, then, is to give attention to both nuance and interplay of milieu rather than to speak axiomatically using rigidly applied categories. Pedith Pui Chan's The Making of a Modern Art World provides that attention. Her text explains the complex factors at work in the construction of the Shanghai art scene, as well as the factors that led to the institutionalization of guohua (national painting) in Republican China. In doing so, Chan effectively expands and adjusts prior conceptualizations of guohua by dismantling the idea that its contestation and subsequent rise in stature was merely a result of East–West tensions or debates that pitted modernity against tradition.

Chan's study, however, does not entirely eschew the aforementioned framework. Rather, it restructures it to show the reader how the art scene in modern Shanghai was composed of dynamic socio-economic players – Qing loyalists, a rising merchant class and new intelligentsia-entrepreneurs – that built the Shanghai scene through the creation of art societies and periodicals, and the influence of new modes of art education. The author also calls attention to the industrial roots of exhibition as a public practice, and explores former and new uses of exhibition spaces. Ultimately, by getting into the markets, networking, consumption and production means behind artwork, Chan offers an entirely new picture of the art machine in Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s and of how guohua became part of the modern Chinese canon.

Driving Chan's approach is the use of two theoretical perspectives as a framing device. First, she invokes Howard Beck's notion of art as a “collective action” to argue that the value of art is essentially a label attached by those “whose interests are augmented by the object being defined as art” (p. 4). Chan pairs with this Pierre Bourdieu's definition of an “artistic field,” wherein an independent social sphere acts according to its own laws and produces its own form of cultural capital, while simultaneously translating external stimuli according to the field's own particular logic (p. 5). The author uses these ideas as a powerful tool that allows the discussion of this topic to move beyond old territory; we can see how artistic products themselves were not only beholden to greater social factors, but constructed according to the goals of influential players in cultural societies and newly minted professional positions.

Within this framework, Chan's study covers an impressive amount of ground. The introduction, serving as chapter one, offers a robust characterization of the hierarchy of the Shanghai art world and the changing perception of guohua in Republican China. New social circumstances led to the emergence of celebrities and a new merchant class, who, along with Qing loyalists, came to prominent positions. The salient contributions of chapter two involve the interplay of influence between art societies, periodicals, and art colleges. Using the Bee Society (1929–1930), the Painting Association of China (1931–1949), and their respective publications as representative examples, Chan's sociological approach proves itself by showing how art societies’ adoption of modern managerial structures and exhibition practices, as well as the public discourse created by their journals, helped professionalize the context in which guohua was produced. The establishment of art colleges was a sign of maturing structures in the art world, which allowed new and varied professional roles to become socially and economically viable, including guohua instruction. This, coupled with a perceived cultural threat from Western arts and a more immediate, existential threat from Japan that drove nationalist sentiment, convincingly makes the case that the institutionalization of guohua was largely a social outcome, rather than simply the result of battling modernist or traditionalist camps.

Chapter three discusses exhibition practices in depth. Chan reveals the profit-motives of art societies, and how they led to “a marriage of commerce and traditional art forms” (p. 143). The livelihood of guohua artists now involved selling “art products,” such as calligraphy, painted fans and calendars, as much as it did painting formal pieces. Chapter four covers the rise of commercial art societies, new marketing strategies for artists cashing in on the commoditization of guohua, and a thorough look at the logic behind pricing works of art.

The strengths of Chan's book lie in its meticulousness and complex perspective. The source material, including a range of periodicals, pricing lists, advertisements, artwork, photographs, meeting minutes and more, is extremely rich, bringing the historical figures and their activities to life. Even where recent research has approached the topics that Chan covers, The Making of a Modern Art World stands alone in its cohesiveness and its methodology, which links complex and varied factors to form the most complete picture yet of this moment from the “golden age of guohua” (Julia Andrews and Kuiyi Shen, The Art of Modern China, 2012). The text, while written in language approachable for undergraduates, would be exceptional for graduate studies due to its depth and the foundational knowledge required to fully engage with its content. Art historians and those studying modern Chinese society will find this an indispensable resource for their library.