在西畫引入中國的過程中，人體再現或許是最能引發個人與集體間二元張力的場域。這個張力的來源是雙重的，首先是人體再現本身在西方繪畫中裸與露之間的張力，要使得人體的視覺再現不落入色情，這個再現必須服從圖式的常規，而常規來自於集體的建構。人體再現是西方繪畫核心的事實，並不必然導致它也是在中國的西式繪畫的核心，於是西方人體再現到了中國便又加上一層文化脈絡轉換的問題。 中國與近代西方的接觸相當早，接受西畫的過程也是漸進的，但無論在任何時刻都不曾有全盤移植的問題，因為這個接受的過程同時也是有選擇性的。由於中國繪畫並沒有再現人體的傳統，所以西方人體繪畫傳入中國的途徑便格外曲折。在二十世紀初，西式的人體再現以它挑釁性的吸引力首先隨著攝影一起進入商業美術的範圍，在這個與物質慾望相連的地帶，為了躲避衛道者的圍剿，人體再現必須尋求存在的理由。在一個企圖趕上西方的社會氛圍下，這些理由依附著進步的概念，將人體再現塑造成文明的指標，中國最初的藝術學院開始無法在教學內容上規避人體再現的問題。 在這個人體再現爭取它繪畫中的合法地位的過程中，問題開始聚焦始於中國導入西式的藝術學院教育作為西式繪畫的訓練手段之際。學院式的再現手段一面宣稱它是西方繪畫的正統，一面也藉此與商業美術區隔，以便將後者排除出競爭圈外。在論述方面，學院組織與官方關係密切的學會，利用半官方的框架，賦予人體再現一個「學術性」的權威與「公眾意見」的正當性，另一方面也利用定期美術刊物、報刊文章與公開展覽加強論述的效應。在實踐方面，學院重塑寫生概念的嘗試並不容易，因為學院式人體寫生是以一個中國仍然沒有的圖示系統為基礎，因此，早期的學院人體素描仍帶有相當濃厚的臨摹性質，參照的可能是印刷品上的西方學院素描。 這種方式並不能長期將商業美術區隔在外，當美術學院學生出校門後投入商業美術時，這種情況變得更複雜，尤其是如果美術與非美術的差異僅在於參考對象的不同時，美術並不握有絕對排他的資料參考權，美術與非美術的邊界便再度含混起來。在反覆的越界──畫界動作中，中國的西畫逐漸向西方靠攏，而人體再現則始終是測試邊界最銳利的工具。

When Western painting was introduced to China, representation of the human body was perhaps the area most capable of provoking tensions between the individual and the collective. Such tensions had two sources. The first was the tension between the nude and the naked within Western painting itself. To prevent visual representation of the human body from becoming merely erotic, this representation had to follow certain pictorial conventions that had been collectively constructed. The fact that representation of the human body lay at the heart of Western painting did not necessarily entail it becoming the heart of Chinese Western-style painting. Thus, once Western-style representation of the human body reached China, a second tension was created through the change of cultural context. China’s contacts with the modern West occurred rather early, and the process of accepting Western painting was gradual. The problem of wholesale transplantation did not arise, since this process was also selective. Because Chinese painting did not have a tradition of representing nude figures, the transmission of Western figure painting into China was unusually difficult. In the first years of the twentieth century, the allure of Western-style figure painting first entered the realm of commercial art along with photography. Since it occupied an area connected with material desire, rationales had to be found for its existence in order to prevent it from being suppressed by moralists. These rationales were attached to the concept of progress, at a time when society was obsessed with catching up with the West, and the representation of the nude was fashioned as a marker of civilization. China’s earliest art academies could no longer avoid the issue of representing the nude in art education. While the struggle continued over the legality of nude figure painting, attention began to focus on the methods used by art academies in China to teach Western painting. On the one hand, the schools claimed that the representational methods they taught represented the orthodoxy of the West, while on the other hand they used this to distinguish themselves from purveyors of commercial art, which made it easier to push the latter out of the sphere of competition. Meanwhile, Chinese art academies organized associations that maintained close ties with the officialdom and made use of their semi-official status to put the stamp of “academic” authority and “public opinion” on their discourse concerning the nude. They also utilized art periodicals, essays, and public exhibitions to strengthen the effectiveness of their discourse. As a practical matter, the art academies’ reconstruction of the “sketching from life” concept was not easy, because the academic nude was something for which China still lacked a foundational graphic system. Therefore, early academic nude drawings still bore a pronounced “copied” quality and were probably derived from printed illustrations of Western academic drawings. These methods could not, over the long term, exclude commercial art. When students left the art academies and tried to make a living in commercial art, the situation became more complex. When the only difference between fine art and non-fine art is the subject matter, and when practitioners of fine art do not have absolute authority to exclude other sources of reference, the borderline between fine art and applied art becomes blurred again. Through repeated border-crossing among painters, Chinese Western-style painting gradually drew closer to the West, and nudes were always the best tool for painters to test these boundaries.

裸與露；圖式的常規；商業美術；攝影；藝術學院；公共意見；寫生；越界與畫界

the nude and the naked; pictorial conventions; commercial art; photography; art academies; public opinion; sketching from life; border-crossing