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Folk art is now widely recognized as an integral part of the modern Chinese cultural heritage, but in the early twentieth century, awareness of folk art as a distinct category in the visual arts was new. Internationally, intellectuals in different countries used folk arts to affirm national identity and cultural continuity in the midst of the changes of the modern era. In China, artists, critics and educators likewise saw folk art as a potentially valuable resource: perhaps it could be a fresh source of cultural inspiration and energy, representing the authentic voice of the people in contrast to what could be seen as the limited and elitist classical tradition. At the same time, many Chinese intellectuals also saw folk art as a problem: they believed that folk art, as it was, promoted superstitious and backward ideas that were incompatible with modernization and progress. In either case, folk art was too important to be left in the hands of the folk: educated artists and researchers felt a responsibility to intervene, to reform folk art and create new popular art forms that would better serve the needs of the modern nation. In the early 1930s, folk art began to figure in the debates on social role of art and artists that were waged in the pages of the Chinese press, the first major exhibition of folk art was held in Hangzhou, and the new print movement claimed the print as a popular artistic medium while, for the most part, declaring its distance from contemporary folk printmaking practices. During the war against Japan, from 1937 to 1945, educated artists deployed imagery and styles drawn from folk art in morale-boosting propaganda images, but worried that this work fell short of true artistic accomplishment and pandering to outmoded tastes. The questions raised in interaction with folk art during this pivotal period, questions about heritage, about the social position of art, and the exercise of cultural authority continue to resonate into the present day--

James Flath's The Cult of Happiness is a stimulating and accessible book that contributes to more than one area of current concern in Chinese studies. The author effectively situates his work in relation to developing debates about print culture, alternative conceptions or experiences of modernity, and the relationship of popular culture to markets and to state power. It should also appeal to readers interested more generally in modern Chinese art, history and visual culture.In this general vein, the book would be valuable simply as one of only a very few English-language works that deal with woodcut-printed nianhua or New Year's Pictures. These pictures, which depict a range of subjects from gods to auspiciously fat babies to scenes from legend and history, were a ubiquitous part of Chinese household ritual and decoration well into the 20th century, and are still evoked in a variety of contexts in contemporary Chinese visual culture. For various reasons, they have not received as much scholarly attention as they should, especially in comparison to other popular print traditions, such as their distant Japanese cousins, ukiyo-e prints. As a genre, nianhua are believed to have quite a long history (Chinese sources, for example, often identify a print found in a 12th-century tomb as one of the earliest extent nianhua), and they were certainly made and circulated throughout China. Flath, however, wisely limits his study both temporally and geographically by focusing on the last decades of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, when the vast majority of nianhua now extant were made, and on north China, which encompasses several of the most influential and best-documented centres of nianhua production.

This books offers an appreciation of the life and work of Father Mon Van Genechten, a Belgian artist-priest who was a missionary in China from 1930 to 1946. It presents Father Van Genechten as an open-hearted and creative man of faith, and also makes the rather dramatic claim that Van Genechten, whose art combined Chinese styles with Christian iconography, should be seen as a Chinese artist.The book contains two essays: one by De Ridder, on the art-historical context of Van Genechten's work; and the other by Swerts, giving fuller biographical detail. It also includes a brief memoir of Van Genechten by a former student; reproductions of his paintings, woodcuts and photographs; a list of his exhibitions; and a catalog of his known works. This catalogue is, unfortunately, less useful than it might be as it gives neither the current location of a work nor where it is reproduced.Van Genechten is no neglected genius, but he is potentially interesting to students of Christian missionary work in China, of the modern development of Christian art, and also to students of modern Chinese art. His career – which encompassed decorating churches in Inner Mongolia, teaching at the Catholic University of Peking, and being prisoner of war in Shandong – offers a fresh perspective on East–West artistic interchange. But while the book introduces a worthwhile subject, it falls short in analysis and historical contextualization.