In the French capital, the couple met Pierre Cardin (1922–2020), a fashion designer and pioneering business mogul eager to explore the Chinese market. This encounter was a turning point in Song’s life. With little hesitation, she bid farewell to Paris and her identity as an artist and moved back to China to help Cardin expand his empire. At that time, in the early 1980s, China was starting to implement policies of reform and opening-up, transforming the economy and ushering in dramatic social change. In addition, the emergence of new art movements and the rise of fifth-generation filmmakers heralded a decade in which avant-garde art and popular culture flourished in China.^[2]

It was upon this fertile ground that Song promoted Cardin’s designs in Beijing, introducing vibrant colour to a capital city once saturated with dour greys and blues. In 1981, Song organised a watershed fashion show in the Beijing Hotel, then took Chinese models she had trained herself to Cardin’s runway in Paris. She also collaborated with Cardin to open a Beijing branch of Maxim’s, the renowned French restaurant.

As the first Western dining establishment to open in China after the Cultural Revolution, Maxim’s soon became the favourite gathering spot for local and international filmmakers, actors, musicians, artists, businessmen, and diplomats. Presiding over Maxim’s, a symbol of the Western cosmopolitan lifestyle, Song became the salon hostess of Beijing’s elite in the 1980s. The media dubbed her the ‘Godmother of Fashion’, reflecting the frequency with which she judged modelling competitions. Song spent much of the decade facilitating a growing exchange between cultural and artistic figures in China and abroad. She helped secure Dior’s support for the comedy The Troubleshooters (1988) by fifth-generation director Mi Jiashan (b. 1947). She even appeared as Empress Dowager Longyu in The Last Emperor (1987), the epic film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (1941–2018).

There remains much to uncover about Song’s life. When she was not acting as chief China representative of Pierre Cardin and the manager of Maxim’s, who was she? Why did she give up art, and how should we understand the nature of her life’s work? With the exception of a few paintings, garments, and documents, Song did not leave many personal records behind. But these fragments reveal a vibrant voice and a life far more exuberant than that portrayed in the standard accounts circulating in popular media. This is what prompted our decision to dedicate an exhibition at M+ examining her diverse contributions to visual culture.

Taking a path all her own, Song neither succumbed to nor revolted against the crushing weight of life; rather, she always looked for possibilities in the crevices, tirelessly adjusting and shaping her actions to let light through. A life like hers can be easily underestimated, especially given her later investment in fashion, which could be seen to lack the profundity of literature and art. But in a China where socialist ideology persists, investing oneself in fashion and grounding oneself in everyday life can also be revolutionary. Tragic sacrifices for political ideals are not the only actions worth eulogising: Song’s way of life, at once open-ended and resilient, offers a uniquely relevant reference for today’s increasingly divided, black-or-white reality.

While sorting through Song’s archives, we were shocked to discover just how many memories of her have become blurred, almost to the point of vanishing, in little more than a decade. This constant battle between memory and amnesia has also, consequently, contributed to shaping her history. As historian Luo Xin once observed, ‘Memories are like lone islands, surrounded by long-forgotten oceans . . . If collective memories are the shared memories of a society in a particular era, then to study such memories must require a survey of not only what is remembered, but also what is excluded from remembrance.’^[3] If the mainstream narratives of Chinese cultural history during the second half of the twentieth century are our lone islands of memory, then Song must represent the body of water in between.

To study Song is to study the linkages between the various cultural phenomena of her lifetime. What Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China seeks to portray is not only the story of Madame Song but also the exchange, evolution, and transmutation of a visual culture invented by her and her friends. Only in this way can we fully perceive the dynamic flows of art and fashion over time.

¹ The most renowned use was in relation to the three Soong sisters, especially the glorious, rebellious Madame Soong Ching-ling and Madame Soong Mei-ling, who had a profound impact on the course of Chinese history.

² The term ‘fifth-generation filmmakers’ refers to directors, producers, and cinematographers who graduated from Beijing Film Academy in the 1980s, and who would have experienced the Cultural Revolution in their youth, such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Gu Changwei. Richly allegoric and featuring new shooting styles and techniques, their films explore the scars of history and the Chinese psyche, creating a dramatic and historic image of China. Their works also won numerous awards at international film festivals in the 1990s, marking a new high point for Chinese cinema.

³ Luo Xin, ‘The Contest of Forgetting’, in The Historian as Principled Rebel: Criticism, Doubt, and Imagination (Shanghai: Joint Publishing, 2019), 27.

Dr Pi Li was Sigg Senior Curator (2012–2023) and Head of Curatorial Affairs (2020–2023) at M+.