Kelly WS Ritter

'The City and its Image' — the relationship between architecture and visual culture in 1930s Shanghai

Kelly’s dissertation specifically focusing on how skyscrapers, shikumen/lilong, and hutments were actively shaped by the popular pictorial 时代漫画 or Modern Sketch.

This investigation of 1930s Shanghai is structured by three overlapping threads of analysis. First, as a concomitant relationship between the city as built (architecture) and images of the built environment from Shanghai pictorials (visual culture). Second, as embedded within and indebted to myriad local political discourses, social relations, and cultural practices. Third, as a constellation of linked ideas, images, and concepts. Considered together these three threads of analysis operate as part of a system of meanings grounded in interrelated structures. Based on this theoretical scaffolding this research uncovers new historical information found in the connections, relations, and fissures in this system of meaning. Chapters mobilize these threads to examine three case studies to explore 1930s Shanghai: Shanghai slums, the lilong and shikumen, and notorious views of the Shanghai skyline.

Based on archival research and field work completed in Shanghai, her dissertation demonstrates how, in representations of political, ethical, and intellectual struggles, artworks strategically referenced Shanghai’s urban landscape and built forms. These images, a locus of cultural and historical change, represent a rich archive of city spaces. Through such an analysis her research shows how cities are produced both as built and through visual culture.