Art and Revolutionary China
Since China re-opened to the west in the 1980s, artists and historians across the world have leapt at the opportunity to exchange ideas and information. Historians have since written extensively on art created after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, discussing the styles and symbolism that can still be found in contemporary Chinese art and aesthetics today.
This course will focus on political art from the period between 1949–1976, including the ten-year period known as the Cultural Revolution, during which time art and literature was heavily regulated.
How did art and politics intersect?
How did people’s lives change under the policies of the Communist Party, and how was that reflected in art?
Founding a Nation (1949–1953)
Objectives:
Discuss the precedent for political artworks in Chinese art history. Examine the socio-political context of China’s revolution.
Define elements of revolutionary nianhua prints and identify key examples.
Key Questions:
How (and why) was art viewed as a revolutionary tool during the early stages of the PRC? What are the main themes of state-sanctioned art between 1949 and 1953?
Key Terms:
nianhua, models, gong nong bing
Further Resources
Watch: Green, John. “Communists, Nationalists, and China's Revolutions: Crash Course World History #37,” Crash Course, Youtube.
Further reading:
Hung, Chang-Tai. “Repainting China: New Year Prints (Nianhua) and Peasant Resistance in the Early Years of the People's Republic,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no.4 (October 2000): 770–810.
Finding the Revolutionary Path (1953–1966)
Objectives:
Identify how changes to the political environment, including key political campaigns, manifested in paintings and posters. Define elements of Revolutionary Realism and identify key examples.
Key Questions:
How did the Chinese Communist Party seek to define a distinctly Chinese (and revolutionary) style of art?
Key Terms:
Socialist Realism, Great Leap Forward
Further reading:
Hung, Chang-Tai. “Oil Paintings and Politics: Weaving a Heroic Tale of the Chinese Communist Revolution.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49, no. 4 (2007): 783–814.
The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)
Objectives:
Examine the motivations for the Cultural Revolution.
Identify key artworks and styles from the Cultural Revolution period.
Key Questions:
What were the political motivations behind the Cultural Revolution?
How did art support the aims of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution?
Key Terms:
Cultural Revolution, Revolutionary Realism, the Mao Cult
Watch: “This photo triggered China's Cultural Revolution,” Vox, Youtube.
Further reading: Landsberger, Chang-Tai. "Mao Posters", The Mao Era in Objects, King's College.
Contemporary Art Reflections
Objectives: Analyse how contemporary artists have engaged with socialist-era visual culture.
Key questions:
How has the artistic legacy of revolutionary China reverberated across Chinese visual culture? How have contemporary artists addressed China’s socialist
history in their work? What is the difference between art and propaganda?
Key Terms:
Maocraze, Political Pop
Further reading: Dal Lago, Francesca. “Personal Mao: Reshaping an Icon in Contemporary Chinese Art.” Art Journal, vol. 58, no. 2 (1999): 46–59.