For my final exhibition I will examine the modernist woodcut movement in China and its unique relationship with communist politics. 

The woodcut movement in China was revived by Lu Xun to produce a more socially-aware art medium for the people. He combined the traditional Chinese print form with Western techniques to introduce a new style for the woodcut print that criticized the social and political circumstances in China. Lu Xun and many other left-wing scholars started to believe that the woodcut print was the best medium to portray the social and political upheaval in China. Not only was it cheap and easy to mass produce, but the raw aesthetics helped promote powerful messages. The characteristics of linearity, sharp contrast of black and white, and Western realism presented an influential design that had a persuasive impact on its audience. Lu Xun started to use this medium of art as an educational tool, where he could communicate his ideas and reshape what people thought of China. This became a vigorous weapon of the people that Lu Xun used to reveal the harsh realities of imperialism and feudalism to promote socialist modernity.

The woodcut print became a revolutionary new medium of art that diverged from Chinese traditionalism and promoted modernity. The woodcut print had soon developed activist traditions that provided the common people of China a voice. In Lu Xun’s final years of his life he became a patron, where he promoted this socially-aware art form to help better the Chinese society. However, after Lu Xun’s death in 1936 and subsequent years of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) the woodcut print began to experience radical new developments.

Although Lu Xun was never an official member of the Communist Party, his emphasis on the exploitation of peasants and the working class coincided with the political aims of the Communist party (CCP). As a result the Communist party (CCP) adopted the woodcut print and repurposed it to be used as a weapon against their political enemies. This transformed the art of the people into communist propaganda. In Mao’s Yan’an Talks (1942), the leader of the Communist party redefined the role of art in China. The modernist woodcut movement was now strictly used for political purposes only. Chinese woodcuts became associated with the Communist party, which consisted of two types: nationalistic– which attacked the imperialists and GMD, or socialistic– which praised the CCP (Hung 1997,  p.35). After Lu Xun’s death, the woodcut print was controlled by the Communist party, which restricted artistic freedom and reshaped its purpose to align with communist politics.

Through several works the audience can see the transition of woodcuts before and after it was adopted by the Communist party…

Li Hua, Roar, China! woodcut, 1938.

Li Hua, Raging Tide I: Struggle, woodcut, 1947.

Li Hua, Arise, woodcut, 1947.

Yang, Yanbin, Mao Zedong, woodcut, 1945.

Li Qun, To Live in Abundance, woodcut, 1944.

Gu Yuan, Protect Our People’s Troops, woodcut, 1944.

Citations:

Lin, Pei-Yin. “Print, Profit, and Perception : Ideas, Information and Knowledge in Chinese Societies, 1895-1949,” edited by Weipin Tsai, BRILL, 2014.

Hung, Chang-Tai. “Two Images of Socialism: Woodcuts in Chinese Communist Politics.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, no. 1 (1997): 34-60. 

For my research project I aim to focus on the cultural impacts that propaganda posters create and sustain in both the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. I plan to focus primarily on the ‘cults’ associated with each state, conducting a comparative analysis between the two to demonstrate the vast similarities, while simultaneously noting the differences between the two. As such, my primary focus will be on the span of time when Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin were the respective leaders of these nation-states. Within this particular short essay I aim to focus primarily on China, as if I were to discuss both China and the Soviet Union in depth I would likely spill over the word limit by a large margin.

China, during Mao’s reign as the Chairman of the People’s Republic, suffered significant economic and social catastrophes. As a result, the communist party needed ways in which to appease the public, or at least pacify them during these calamities. One of the solutions Mao and his party devised was an intense political campaign focused around the idea of class struggle. A particular quote from Mao which helps to demonstrate this was “‘never forget class struggle’” (Young, 40). By focusing upon this class struggle, Mao and his cohorts were able to effectively shift malice for their failing state away from themselves, and redirect it towards capitalists (Young, 43-44). By pumping propaganda posters out that stressed the idea of class struggle and the glorification of the proletariat, citizens were less likely to question the continuous state of revolution that was harming their state and themselves (in particular, the Cultural Revolution). 

Propaganda in China also played a major role in sustaining Mao’s cult of personality (a cult of personality being a regime that uses a variety of techniques to create an idealized image of their leader, allowing for facile manipulation of the public). By using propaganda to facilitate this cult (and other social engineering techniques that I will discuss in greater detail in my final project), Mao was elevated to an almost god-like status. This obviously was problematic for a plethora of reasons, but with the most prevalent being the refusal of anyone to question his authority, even on matters that others possess far superior knowledge (Buruma, “Cult of Mao Zedong”). This in turn helped to facilitate the various economic and social catastrophes during Mao’s rule. Unsurprisingly, Mao actually adopted much of his political ideologies from Stalin, whom he met with numerous times. As such, it is rather important to examine the Soviet Union when analyzing the People’s Republic, as they are quite similar (yet also different) in many regards. 

Within my final project I aim to include: a poster by Dadao Ribendiguozhuy that stresses the “evil” nature of capitalists, a poster by Ha Qiongwen that was widely criticized by the Communist Party for not depicting Chairman Mao and instead depicted a proletariat woman and child, and a poster by Naum Karpovsky that demonstrates the cult of personality in the Soviet Union. Obviously I need more political posters to reach the requirement of five, however as of right now I aim to gather more information regarding my thesis/theme before I determine which posters I will include (in the chance I discover some information I wish to represent along with a visual). 

Works Cited

Young, Graham. “Mao Zedong and the Class Struggle in Socialist Society.” The Australian Journal of 

Chinese Affairs, no. 16, 1986, pp. 41–80.

Buruma, Ian. “Cult of Mao Zedong.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Mar. 2001, 

www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/07/china.features11.

Liu Haisu was known was one of the earliest artists who had systematically trained by western art education. Liu was expertise in oil painting and Chinese traditional painting. Liu’s work maturely utilized both western and Chinese painting techniques, and contains the artist’s passion in art exploration and rebellious toward stereotypes about both Chinese and Wesrern paintings. This webpage wrote about the important  in Liu Haisu’s career, including his western art education, his controversy about nude painting, and his paintings about Huang Mountain. From learning about the career of Liu Haisu, the audiences are able to see the influence of both Chinese and Western art concepts on Liu’s paintings and drawings, which allow us to have a better understanding on Liu’s art works and his personalities.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/NM-e/162397.htm

Appeared in the early years of the 20th century and being one of the most popular magazines in China at that time, “Liang You” (internationally known as “The young companion”) had too few documents with the exact origin so that the postpartum generation can learn and research. One of the rare useful sites about this magazine is Wikipedia.This website provides relatively complete information about the origin of the newspaper, its history and its journey through 172 issues and its four editors.After the newspaper stopped publishing, there were many attempts to bring the newspaper back to the public and bring it abroad but were unsuccessful and until now there are not many specific sources of information about each article published in each issue. . However, the site has provided impressive cover images that brought to the magazines uniqueness and success. There are also attached links and related documents about the women appreared on the covers which gave an insight their stories and backgrounds.

Reference:

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/The_Young_Companion#cite_note-brill-4

An article posted by the Chinese Heritage Quarterly is titled A Century of Li Keran. The article is commemorating the life of Li Keran a century after he was born. The article gives an intensive biography about his life. For the centenary of his birth, there was a major exhibition and international seminar at the National Art Museum of China in 2007. The Li Keran Art Foundation is the organization that organized the commencement. The commemoration included an auction where some of Li Keran’s paintings and artwork sold for million of dollars. The article also states that li Keran is known for his black and red landscape artwork today, which he was criticized for when he was producing them.

http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=012_CenturyliKeran.inc&issue=012

This webpage differed from any previous webpage I had seen before. It is titled, “Feng Zikai’s Chinese Children’s Picture Book Award,” and talks about Feng and his impact on the children of China, something that most Chinese artists did not have. Feng is known for his cartoon art that inspired so many Chinese picture books for children later on, and this webpage emphasizes how important this particular art is to modern Chinese culture. What I especially like about this webpage is that it has a detailed timeline of Feng’s life, as well as when and why he created some of his cartoons and comics. This tells me more of what inspired him to create these unique cartoons.

The Award and Feng Zikai

Ai Weiwei is such a world renound artist and is so influential that as I was researching him this week no only where there several different video interviews he had taken part of on various new sources but their was also a very interisting article that poped up written about him by the Smithsonian Magazine in 2012. This article titled Is Ai Weiwei China’s Most Dangerous Man? instantly drew my attention. The writer Mark Stevens goes into great deapth on how the chinese government and Ai Weiwei have had a great deal of friction between them over the lifetime of the artist. With the articile comparing Ai Weiwei artistic attitude to that of Warhol, the message comes across clearly that Ai Weiwei has a statment he wants to make about China and the many wrongs that they have done or continue to do, Ai Weiwei will draw attention to them. For China having someone air that draws this much world wide attention to the negative aspects of your county this make him surley the most dangerous man.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-ai-weiwei-chinas-most-dangerous-man-17989316/

Chen Yifei is an extremely interesting artist because of his works during the rule of Mao as well as his shift in style after Mao’s death. To get a better understanding of Yifei himself I have been using the webpage www.artnet.com. Artnet has been very helpful as it gives a general biography for main points but it also gives a longer, more in depth review of Yifei’s life as well as his art. This webpage also has all of Yifei’s paintings with information on the medium, size, title and date of creation so that I can determine when he changed his style after Mao’s death and started to focus on his own style of realistic portraits, fashion and cinema.

Bibliography

http://www.artnet.com/artists/chen-yifei/

As, arguably the most well known female artist from 20th Century China, it is no surprise that Pan Yuliang is the only one of the artists I am studying that has an entire website dedicated to her. The website panyulin.org is extremely well rounded and includes everything from her biography to every newspaper article about her. It also includes a complete collection of every one of her works categorized by material and subject. Although the site is primarily in Chinese, it does have an English option to make it more accessible.  It can be very difficult to find information about many female artists of this time because their lives and works were so poorly documented so this website is very helpful as it is so thorough and accessible.

https://www.panyulin.org/index.php