英文摘要
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Research about "The Young Companion" on its modernity and visuality often focused on the surface of its illustrations. Yet behind those topics, there lies a hidden logic of layout arrangement, which was often overlooked by current research. As the first large-scaled illustration magazine published in China, "The Young Companion" altered their outlook to better suit the increasing amount of visual content, so to let their readers to have clear view on the magazine. They have added three particular features, mainly partitions, contents arrangement and the Art Deco. These features allowed their readers to develop a naturalist's gaze, which is quite similar to the Chinese who got in touch with Universal Exposition and department store in late Qing Dynasty and the early years of Republic of China. Through these features, the thinking and reading structure of the readers have changed drastically, thus allowing them to be able to receive massive information effortlessly, and this led to the advent of "modernity". Firstly, I will discuss about how the partitions and the content arrangement of "The Young Companion" underlied a precise yet fragmentary illustration-viewing method, which had affected the readers to comprehend the world in a similar "boxed-viewing" way, thus developed the "modernity" within the readers. Then, the article focuses on how a 1920's French Exposition which showcased modernity aesthetics from different cities, influenced on geometrical and mathematical layout arrangement of "The Young Companion". Above all, this article argues that firstly, "The Young Companion" had influenced the construction on "gaze of modernity" in Shanghai, as it can be easily done by just reading the magazine. Since it was quite popular among the Chinese readers, it was the most economical way to guide the readers to practice the "gaze of modernity" repeatedly. Secondly, the abstract layout arrangement of this illustration magazine is more effective in constructing "modernity" compared to the surface of its illustrations, as the readers are affected unconsciously through mere reading, thus making it irreversible.
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