The Culture Arts Review


The Culture Arts Review or Wen Hwa was an art monthly magazine based in Shanghai that ran from August 1929 through 1935, with 54 issues. It was published first by the Wen Hwa Fine Arts Press Limited in Shanghai. Other publishers names included the Shanghai Friends Art Society and the Shanghai Wenhua Art Book Printing Company. The magazine had drawing editors, Liang Dingming ) and Liang Xueqing and a literary-and-art editor. This post was held first by Zhao Hao and then by Zhang Yiwei.
The magazine had a text section and a pictures section. The magazine was multilingual in the sense that the captions with the pictures were in English and Chinese together. That mulitingual nature was prominent on the cover with the name of the magazine in two languages, similar to how another popular Shanghai magazine, The Young Companion, would manage their cover. Content included art, literature, and politics. Like Liangyou, it included pictures of urban women's lives, which has proven useful in studying the Republic of China. While the bulk of literary and artists covered were well-known in their circles, the magazine did include a number of female artists, something that was unusual for the time.