Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro García, Victoria H. F. Scott

• Editorial: Manchester University Press
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526117496
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Arte
• Categoría: Storia dell'arte contemporanea

This is the first book to explore the global influence of Maoism on modern and contemporary art. Featuring eighteen original essays written by established and emerging scholars from around the world, and illustrated with fascinating images not widely known in the west, the volume demonstrates the significance of visuality in understanding the protean nature of this powerful worldwide revolutionary movement. Contributions address regions as diverse as Singapore, Madrid, Lima and Maputo, moving beyond stereotypes and misconceptions of Mao Zedong Thought's influence on art to deliver a survey of the social and political contexts of this international phenomenon. At the same time, the book attends to the the similarities and differences between each case study. It demonstrates that the chameleonic appearances of global Maoism deserve a more prominent place in the art history of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

1
Realising the Chinese Dream: three visions of making China great again

Stefan R. Landsberger

The founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949 ended a long period of imperialism, internal strife and war. Under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), modernisation became the most important task. During the first three decades of CCP rule, propaganda posters were part of a concerted media strategy to mobilise the population to contribute to China's reconstruction. Ideological purity and revolutionary motivation were considered to be important factors to help regain the nation the greatness it had enjoyed during the imperial era. By 1978 more pragmatic policies had replaced the Maoist revolutionary goals, turning China into today's economic powerhouse.

Many propaganda posters featured hyper-realistic, ageless, larger-than-life peasants, soldiers, workers and youngsters in dynamic poses battling for development, or exposing class enemies. Not all served strictly utilitarian, abstract goals, glorifying work and personal sacrifice for the greater well-being, and some rather seemed to offer a moment of repose. An analysis of three paradigmatic posters that were published in 1958, 1967 and 1975, respectively, will show that despite the hold that ideology in the form of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought had on culture, there was space for more fantasy-inspired visions of the future than those that the materialist outlook on development suggested.

Reconstructing the nation, educating the people

Once reconstruction got underway in 1949, no aspect of political, social or cultural life was excluded from the modernisation project that was inspired and fuelled by Marxism-Leninism, applied to the Chinese conditions in the form of Mao Zedong Thought. The CCP needed to convince the population that establishing socialism was the solution.¹ This was not an unprecedented task, but art and government had never been more intertwined than in the early 1950s.² Like most of the ruling elites that had preceded it over the millennia, the party was obsessively concerned with guiding the morals and behaviour of the population and educating the people. The political and moral exhortations and messages were communicated through diverse media, including newspapers, films, radio broadcasts, literature, poetry, painting, stage plays, songs and other artistic expressions. In a country with as many illiterates as China had at the time, propaganda posters worked particularly well to educate the people, giving concrete expression to the many different abstract policies and the many visions of the future that the CCP proposed and entertained.

Propaganda posters were produced cheaply and easily, and this added to their use as a vehicle for government-directed communications. They were widely available through bookstores and work units, and could be seen everywhere, providing colour to the otherwise drab places where most of the people lived. Posters penetrated every level of social organisation and cohabitation, and succeeded in reaching even the lowest ones: the multicoloured prints adorned the walls not only of offices, meeting rooms and factories, but of private houses and dormitories as well. Many people liked the posters for their colours, composition and visual contents; the intended political message or the slogans that might be printed underneath often went unnoticed. When the state moved into heavy campaign mode and poster contents were politicised to the extreme, as happened during the Cultural Revolution, having a correct poster on display did help in proving one's correct political standpoint.³

But what exactly is a propaganda poster? According to many artists and designers, the term ‘propaganda art’ (or ‘poster art’) cannot be used indiscriminately to signify all art that has been produced in the PRC. In their opinion, poster art should be divided into discrete genres such as nianhua (New Year prints, 年画), youhua (oil paintings, 油画), shuifenhua (gouache, 水粉画), mubanhua (woodcuts, 木版画), Zhongguo hua (traditional paintings, 中国画), xuanchuan hua (propaganda posters, 宣传画) and so on. This classification is inspired largely by the bureaucratic way in which the arts sector was and is organised in China. Water colourists did not mix with oil painters, woodcutters worked separately from traditional painters, and propaganda poster artists were at the bottom of the hierarchy. Artists insisted, then and now, that art can be called propaganda art only when it is specifically designed for a campaign and contains at least one politically inspired slogan. Nevertheless, all these definitions complicate the matter rather than provide answers. Some posters have explicit political or propagandistic contents, while others do not. Similarly, some contain one or more politically inspired slogans, but not all of them do. Many artists acknowledged that they themselves had mixed up the fine distinctions between the various styles in the days of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, when all art had to have propaganda value.

On the basis of the incomplete statistics provided by Renmin meishu (People's Art, 人民美术) in April 1950, one can calculate that in 1949, 379 different poster designs were published, with a total print run of almost 6.8 million copies. Some 10 per cent were devoted to the founding of the PRC, and 13 per cent had the deep love of the people for the leadership as their subject. Another 10 per cent showed the close relations between the army and the people, and a staggering proprortion of 31 per cent was devoted to agricultural production. Such data point to the political priorities at the time.⁴ Shen Kuiyi has calculated that the Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, one of the dominant poster publishers until the 1980s, published more than 2,000 poster designs in 40 million copies between 1954 and 1966, whereas the Beijing People's Fine Arts Publishing House published 500 poster designs in some 28 million copies between 1951 and 1959.⁵ Another source, Meishu (Fine Arts, 美术), published in 1960, reported about a single publisher's poster output. The Tianjin Fine Arts Publishing House produced 17 different poster designs in 1957, with a total print run of 144,000 copies; 130 posters in 1958, totalling 13.2 million copies; and 120 posters in 1959, with total print numbers of 3.4 million copies.⁶ On a side note, the huge increase in the numbers of posters published in 1958, the year in which the Great Leap Forward started, is correlated to the mobilisational effects that were ascribed to propaganda posters at the time, and a testimony to the productive enthusiasm of the poster-producing field.

Designing posters

After 1949 the state assumed the responsibility of allocating jobs to all Chinese citizens. This in effect meant that one could become an (officially recognised) artist only when one was employed in a (state) art academy, art publishing house, museum, art association, or similar institution. As employer, the state was guaranteed ideological and artistic control over artists and their works: if cultural producers did not behave as ‘salaried company men (or women)’, and failed to follow the directives from above or to apply self-censorship (also termed as ‘the [artist's] appreciation of the social significance of culture’) to make their art comply with these directives, they faced ostracism and their livelihood would be at stake.⁷ Established artists from many disciplines were co-opted to produce the inspiratio...