Introduction 3:11
Wang Huaiqing, Long Live Gutian Spirit, 1967 1:58
Tang Xiaohe, Strive Forward in Wind and Tides, 1971:47
Jiang Tiefeng, Using Mao’s Thought to Fight with the Storm, 1973-74 1:29
Muli Tang, Smash the Gang of Four, 1976 1:07
Han Xin, Sinner, 19711:47
Shi Lu, Pines at Hua Shan, 19721:08
Shen Jiawei, Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland, 1974 2:01
Chen Danqing, Untitled (Boy), 19751:13
Art, History, and Politics 2:08
Long March Project / Conclusion 1:38

Do you have personal stories or memories of this important time in history? Please share them here.

When Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in May 1966, it signaled the end of my dreams of studying at an art academy. But at the same time, the Cultural Revolution turned me into a painter, and, what is more, a painter who achieved fame at a very young age.
………………
I grew up in a small provincial city and never had the chance to be trained in the fundamentals of art. My only influence was an uncle who had studied art in the past. So, before I became a painter, I had never done life drawing, plaster modeling, or still lifes. In fact, many artists of my generation were able to become oil painters only because of the Cultural Revolution. Before 1966, most Chinese households could never have afforded to buy oil paints for their children who studied art; most people’s monthly salaries amounted to the cost of only a few dozen tubes of paint. But during the Cultural Revolution, all work units needed people to paint portraits of Mao Zedong. Once we completed the paintings, we were allowed to keep the leftover paints to do our own work. This is why oil painting (western painting) subsequently became so widespread in China; it was one of the more positive by-products of the Cultural Revolution.
……………………
I completed my work [Standing Guard] in July 1974. In keeping with the practice of the times, I did not sign the painting, but wrote only my name and work unit on the back of the canvas. In September, I was notified that this work had been selected for the national art exhibition. In October, I went on leave and used my own money to travel to Beijing to see the exhibition. On the train, I used my scrapbook of source material to write and copy notes on the process I followed in creating the painting. These notes were half true and half fabricated. This was because at that time any kind of writing, even personal diaries, could be subjected to public reading. Any politically incorrect word could bring disaster in its wake. So I had to make sure that even my notes on my creative process were in keeping with official standards.

When I [arrived in Beijing and] walked into the National Art Gallery, I discovered that my painting was hanging in the most prominent position in the exhibition hall, on the center left. But when I moved in for a closer look, I was in for a shock: the faces of the two soldiers had been reworked. It was obvious that my efforts to paint a picture as close to reality as possible had not been acceptable to the authorities.
……………………………….
In 1981, a friend in the Heilongjiang Provincial Artists Association in Harbin told me that Standing Guard had been sent back by the National Art Gallery and was being kept in the art association’s storage area. He said that I could go and pick it up. The next year, when I went to get it, I discovered that both the outer and inner frames were gone. The canvas has been improperly rolled (outside in) and tossed into a rubbish heap in the basement. I unrolled it just a bit and saw that flakes of paint were coming off. When I got it back to Shenyang, I did not dare to open it all the way and just stuck it under my bed, where it stayed for many years.

In 1989, I emigrated to Australia. In 1997, I was invited by the Guggenheim Museum to lend it my painting for a major exhibition, “China: Five Thousand Years.” I asked someone to bring the rolled-up painting from China to Sydney for me. I took it to the conservation department of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and there, for the first time, I unrolled it completely. Everyone in the room at that moment was in shock: the painting was covered with soot and had suffered water damage; two-thirds of its surface had come off. Under the guidance of the professional conservators [there], I slowly and painstakingly restored the painting. However, there were two sections of the painting that I was glad were damaged: the two faces that had been repainted on the orders of Wang Mantian were completely obliterated. Referring to photographs I had of the original work, as well as my extensive notes, I was now able to restore them to their original appearance.

Translated by Valerie C. Doran

The full essay is printed in the exhibition catalogue, Art and China’s Revolution, available at AsiaStore.

Shen Jiawei 沈嘉蔚 (born 1948)
Drawing portrait of Private Wang Shu-ja, March 5, 1974. Charcoal on paper, 15 5/16 x 10 5/8 in. (39 x 27 cm)
Collection of Shen Jiawei

Enlarge

Shen Jiawei 沈嘉蔚 (born 1948)
Drawing portrait of Company Director Wang De-zhong, March 5, 1974. Charcoal on paper, 12 3/8 x 8 1/2 in. (31.5 x 21.5 cm)
Collection of Shen Jiawei

Enlarge

Shen Jiawei 沈嘉蔚 (born 1948)
The first composition sketch for Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland, December 15, 1973 (original caption written October 1974). Charcoal on paper, 10 1/4 x 7 1/8 in. (26 x 18 cm)
Collection of Shen Jiawei

Enlarge

Shen Jiawei 沈嘉蔚 (born 1948)
Study for Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland, February, 1974. Charcoal and color on paper, 11 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (28.5 x 26 cm)
Collection of Shen Jiawei

Enlarge

Asia Society Presents First Comprehensive Exhibition Devoted to Revolutionary Chinese Art from the 1950s Through 1970s

Art and China’s Revolution

September 5, 2008 through January 11, 2009

Asia Society presents Art and China’s Revolution, a groundbreaking exhibition that considers the artistic achievement and legacy of one of the most tumultuous and catastrophic periods in recent Chinese history: the three decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The exhibition brings together large-scale oil paintings, ink paintings, sculptures, drawings and artist sketchbooks, woodblock prints, posters, and objects from everyday life, many never before shown in the United States. It is the first exhibition to examine in-depth the powerful and complicated effects of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary ideals on artists and art production in China.

“Art and China’s Revolution chronicles the formation of a new visual culture in China, considering the direct impact of politics on art making in this era,” says Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu, a leading authority on Chinese contemporary art and co-curator of the exhibition. “Chinese contemporary art today cannot be properly contextualized without understanding the influence of Mao’s revolution both on the artists who lived during this period as well as on successive generations.”

Exhibition co-curator Zheng Shengtian, who was an artist and teacher of the Zhejiang Academy Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) during this time, shares his recollections of the period in a catalogue essay. Zheng belongs to the generation of artists who grew up during the 1950s. Critical of the Red Guards for their violence and destruction of cultural artifacts in 1966, he was imprisoned in a detention center on campus called a “cowshed.” “I was detained with other established artists and teachers, where we were made to participate in self-criticism sessions and our ability to paint was restricted. Even though this is a period many would prefer to forget, it is nevertheless one that produced a visual culture that continues to permeate contemporary Chinese art.”

Art and China’s Revolution is organized into six sections that explore themes important to artistic production and document the history and politics of this period. One section addresses artists who went against the prevailing style. These artists—including Pan Tianshou, Lin Fengmian, Zhao Yannian, Li Keran, and Shi Lu—were sometimes persecuted and called “black artists.” Other sections include works by a younger generation of artists that reflect personal accounts of their experiences, including leading contemporary artists such as Xu Bing, Chen Danqing, and Zhang Hongtu, who attribute many of their artistic influences to their years spent in the countryside as part of their “reeducation.” A full-color, 260-page book has been published by Yale University Press to coincide with the exhibition. It includes essays by leading political and social historians, art historians, interviews with and recollections by artists, and translations of primary documents from the period.

Background and Context
From the 1950s to 1970s, when China was led by Mao, a new visual culture emerged that was part of a broader national program of modernization. Artists were encouraged to create art that reflected the revolutionary spirit of the time, in Mao’s words to create “art for the people.” Oil painting in a socialist realist style replaced ink painting—which had previously been one of the most revered art forms in China—as the preferred style. Revolutionary heroes such as workers, soldiers, and peasants replaced traditional subjects such as landscapes, birds, and flowers.

State influence over artists and art production reached a height during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. During this time, art was often used as propaganda to deliver a political message to a mass audience. Well-respected older artists, whose ink paintings had been revered, found their work not only out of fashion but scorned as examples of bourgeois decadence. These older artists sometimes modified their works to accommodate revolutionary themes.

Many artists, however, saw their works destroyed, and were persecuted and imprisoned, while others found their works denigrated in “black painting” exhibitions. At the same time, younger artists reveled in new found opportunity, and aspired to have their paintings become “model works” that would be reproduced hundreds of millions of times in posters and newspapers.

Art, History, and Politics
One section of the exhibition is devoted to the history of the period, providing an important context for the exhibition’s artworks. Archival photographs, printed materials such as magazines and newspapers and a detailed timeline provide an historical account of China, beginning in 1949 when the Communist Party established The People’s Republic of China, chronicling the Cultural Revolution from 1966–76, and ending in 1979 when a major program of economic reform was initiated. Conservative estimates of the number of people who died from persecution during the Cultural Revolution are in the tens of thousands, while some recent studies have claimed the death toll to be as high as three million. Photographs document events—such as rallies and the destruction of property and cultural relics—rarely depicted in artworks. Also on display are household objects and personal effects adorned with revolutionary imagery and Mao icons, which came to permeate all aspects of daily life.

Cult of Mao
Exhibition artworks are divided into thematic sections beginning with Cult of Mao. This section examines large-scale oil paintings, woodblock prints, and posters created during the mid-1960s to mid-1970s that depict idealized images of Mao. The best of these were chosen as “model works,” toured around the country, and were reproduced extensively as posters, acquiring national fame and iconic status. Younger artists, mostly born in the 1940s, endeavored to create realist oil paintings that captured the new revolutionary fervor. Artist Chen Danqing recalled this time in an interview in 2006, “Nobody told you that you could paint only Mao’s portrait. Mao’s image was the only thing in the world that you knew you could paint… at the time, I felt that there was no difference between [me and] the Renaissance painters—they painted Jesus, I painted Mao.”

To Rebel Is Justified
Three months after the official launch of the Cultural Revolution in May 1966, one million youths gathered in Tiananmen Square to attend Mao’s first meeting with Red Guards, a mass movement initially made up of radical high school and university students. The exhibition section To Rebel Is Justified examines drawings, paintings, posters, and woodblock prints, which convey the sometimes destructive revolutionary fervor of this time when art schools and universities were shut down and cultural heritage destroyed. Red Guards were encouraged to be revolutionary through the destruction of the “four olds”: old ideas, old cultures, old customs, and old habits of the “exploiting” classes. Part of the famed Rent Collection Courtyard—a tableau of over 100 life-size sculptures depicting a landlord’s cruel exploitation of peasants that was copied and displayed throughout China and in other Communist countries—is on view in this section of the exhibition.

Never Forget Class Struggle
Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and her left-wing protégés claimed that there had always been class struggles in art and literature since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Many older, master painters were criticized and categorized as part of a “bourgeois reactionary line.” But the official “proletarian revolution line” was not followed by everyone. This exhibition section includes paintings by “black artists” whose works in ink were often considered too dark or foreboding for the new “red” China. A group of artists called the No Name Group, which has only recently come to light, painted landscapes in secret. Although many of these works may not appear to be radical in subject matter and form, the very act of painting them was considered transgressive and potentially dangerous.

Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages
After two years of violent clashes among Red Guard factions that disrupted classes in schools and universities across the country, students were sent to the countryside for “reeducation.” It is estimated that between twelve and sixteen million students were sent to rural China between 1968 and 1978. For many artists, this was a formative period in their lives and artistic careers.

This section of the exhibition includes model oil paintings, intimate drawings and small-scale paintings, shown here for the first time, created by today’s leading Chinese contemporary artists—including Xu Bing, Luo Zhongli, and Wang Jianwei—during their time in the countryside.

The Long March Project
The final section of the exhibition is an illustration of the connection between revolutionary art and today’s contemporary Chinese artists. The Long March Project began in 2002 with the formulation of “Long March Project—A Walking Visual Display.” This was the Long March Project’s first endeavor and was conceived by artist, curator, and Long March Project Founder Lu Jie along with artist Qiu Zhijie. It aimed to retrace the historical Long March—the 6,000-mile retreat of China’s Red Army from Kuomintang forces (led by Chiang Kai-shek), which took place between 1934 and 1936—and included performances and displays at 12 sites along the route. The Long March Project continues today as a Beijing-based art collective that explores revolutionary memory and historical consciousness. In this section photographs, documents, and objects from the project are shown.

Exhibition Funding
Critical support for Art and China’s Revolution comes from The Partridge Foundation, A John and Polly Guth Charitable Fund. Major support comes from Harold and Ruth Newman, Gaoan Foundation, an Anonymous Donor, Miranda Wong Tang, and Asia Society’s Contemporary Art Council. Additional support has been provided by The W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, Gina Lin Chu, Lisina M. Hoch, Will and Helen Little, Stephanie Holmquist and Mark Allison, Take a Step Back Collection, and Abel and Sophia Sheng.

Related Programs
Asia Society will present extensive public programming in conjunction with the exhibition to provide additional context and share first-hand personal experiences, including a curator’s talk with Zheng Shengtian, Thursday October 2 at 6:30 pm; a discussion between the author and prize-winning documentary filmmaker Xiaolu Guo and the writer and critic Ian Buruma on the legacy of the Cultural Revolution on contemporary China, Tuesday, October 14 at 7:00 pm.; a panel discussion titled “After the Revolution, The Making of Modern China,” October 29, at 6:30 pm; a performance by the renowned Shanghai Quartet on Friday and Saturday, October 24–25 at 8:00 pm.; and a discussion among four artists on how their experiences in the turbulent times of the Cultural Revolution affected their subsequent creative lives, Sunday, October 26 at 3:00 pm.

A film series on successive Fridays in September 12, 19, and 26, features The Morning Sun, a documentary combining rarely-seen newsreel footage, propaganda films, and first-person accounts by former Red Guards and their victims; Yang Ban Xi—Eight Model Works, depicting plays created under the leadership of Mao’s wife Jiang Qing to glorify peasants, soldiers, and the Party; and an award-winning documentary, Children of the Revolution, reuniting classical musicians who studied at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music who recall their experiences forming Red Guard units and criticizing their teachers during the Cultural Revolution. For more detailed program information and the latest information on events, please visit www.AsiaSociety.org.

About the Asia Society
Asia Society is the leading global and pan-Asian organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of the United States and Asia. The Society seeks to increase knowledge and enhance dialogue, encourage creative expression, and generate new ideas across the fields of policy, business, education, arts, and culture. Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonprofit educational institution with offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, and Washington, DC.

Asia Society Museum presents groundbreaking exhibitions and artworks, many previously unseen in North America. Through exhibitions and related public programs, Asia Society provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art.

Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City. The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and Friday from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm. Closed on Mondays and major holidays. General admission is $10, seniors $7, students $5 and free for members and persons under 16. Free admission Friday evenings, 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The Museum is closed on Fridays after 6:00 pm. from Independence Day to Labor Day.

# # #

Contact: Elaine Merguerian at 212-327-9271

To leave your feedback on the exhibition, click here.

Artists were encouraged to create art that reflected the revolutionary spirit of the time, in Mao’s words, to create art for the people. The impact of this directive on artists and art making was enormous. Oil painting in a socialist realist style replaced ink painting—which had been one of the most revered art forms in China for over one thousand years—as the preferred painting style. Revolutionary heroes, such as workers, soldiers, and peasants replaced traditional subjects such as landscapes, birds, and flowers.

While this shift toward new mediums and subjects began in the 1950s, it was adopted with greater rigor during the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. During this ten-year period—sometimes referred to as the decade of catastrophe—senior artists, especially ink painters, were subjected to public humiliation and sometimes torture, and their homes and artworks were seized and destroyed. This type of harassment was not confined to the art world, but occurred across the entire nation. Conservative estimates of the number of people who died from persecution during the Cultural Revolution are in the tens of thousands, while some recent studies have claimed the death toll to be as high as three million.

There is not one narrative of this complex period, but many different ones, as individual experiences varied greatly. Few members of the older generation, which included teachers and respected artists, escaped persecution and denunciations. Many of their works were included in “black painting” exhibitions as examples of works that did not reflect the political ideology of the government and therefore were not to be emulated by others. In contrast, younger artists reveled in new-found voice and opportunity. They aspired to have their paintings become model works that would be widely disseminated and reproduced hundreds of millions of times in posters and newspapers.

Until now, little effort has been made to take account of this period, during which art and politics were so closely intertwined. Artworks and materials produced during the Cultural Revolution are rarely exhibited in China and few original artworks from the period survive. This exhibition marks a first attempt, which we hope will be the start of many, to examine these artistic developments within an historical framework that prompts a discussion of their impact on Chinese culture today.

intro | Mao | To Rebel | Never Forget | Up to the Mountains | Archive | Long March

Intro | Mao | To Rebel | Never Forget | Up to the Mountains | Archive | Long March

Chen Yanning 陈衍宁 (born 1945)
Chairman Mao Inspects the Guangdong Countryside
1972
Oil on canvas
67 15/16 x 116 in. (172.5 x 294.5 cm)
Sigg Collection

Enlarge

Liu Chunhua 刘春华 (born 1944)
Drawing study for Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan
1967
Pencil and gouache on paper
11 15/16 x 11 1/16 in. (30.3 x 28 cm)
Collection of Liu Chunhua

Enlarge

Liu Chunhua 刘春华 (born 1944)
Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan
1969
Poster
41 1/2 x 29 7/8 in. (95.2 x 76 cm)
Collection of Yan Shanchun

Enlarge

Tang Xiaohe 唐小禾 (born 1941)
Strive Forward in Wind and Tides
1971
Oil on canvas
68 15/16 x 116 in. (172.5 x 294.5 cm)
Private collection

Enlarge

WU Yunhua 吴云华 (born 1944)
Mao Inspects Wushun Opencut Coal Mine
1972
Oil on Canvas
167 1/4 x 72 7/8 in. (425 x 185 cm)
Private collection

Enlarge

Intro | Mao | Cultural Diplomacy | Never Forget | Up to the Mountains | Archive | Long March