In cultural terms, Chinese revolutionary zeal is often remembered more for what it destroyed — temples, monuments, reputations, lives — than for what it created. But “Art and China’s Revolution,” an exhibition at the Asia Society in New York City until Jan. 11, presents a fascinating look at an artistic development that came into being between the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 and its economic liberalization in 1978 — namely, the new visual aesthetic of socialist realism with Chinese characteristics.
As Mao Zedong saw it, art was to be accessible to the masses and not the exclusive province of an intellectual élite. Painting and sculpture, as well as fiction, music, theater and ballet, were to reflect new common values, not individual ideas or feelings. The products of this “art for politics’ sake” were mostly optimistic in spirit and patriotic in purpose.
Though they were produced in murderous times, the works at the Asia Society are almost uniformly cheery, following the dictum of Jiang Qing, Mao’s fourth wife and ultimate cultural arbiter, that art be “red, bright and shining.” In other words: propaganda. Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu and co-curator Zheng Shengtian argue in the show’s excellent catalog, however, that, didactic or not, socialist art represented a “significant cultural movement in China” — one that produced some “truly great art,” especially paintings, and that such works “continue to influence Chinese visual culture.” The contemporary installation artist Xu Bing, whose Cultural Revolution – era drawings are on display, supports the idea that the production of propaganda led to legitimate artistic achievement. “If you want to probe deeply into the underpinnings of contemporary Chinese art,” he says in the catalog, “you have to consider the influence of the Cultural Revolution on my generation because it was an entirely unique experience.”
Aside from a group of identical stainless-steel sculptures of Mao, created by Qu Guangci in 2003, the exhibition displays no contemporary works, nor does it attempt to explain the link between the paintings and posters on view and the current Chinese art scene that draws so much from them. The label accompanying Chen Yifei’s 1972 painting of a single sentry in a monumental landscape, Eulogy of the Yellow River, fails to note that Chen became one of China’s most commercially successful artists before his 2005 death.
Yet the connections are striking. You can’t look at the black, red and white poster Resolutely Adhere to Execute the July 3rd and July 23rd Proclamations (artist unknown) without wondering if contemporary painter Wang Guangyi would add a Rolex or Coca-Cola logo to it. Zeng Fanzhi’s 2005 Chairman Mao with Us looks similar to many of the show’s large-scale paintings in which the Great Helmsman marches through fields with peasants (Chairman Mao Inspects the Guangdong Countryside by Chen Yanning) or waves benignly in his bathrobe (Strive Forward in Wind and Tides, by Tang Xiaohe, which commemorates the aging leader’s famous 1966 swim in the Yangtze River). And all the happy, smiling faces — of peasants, soldiers and political leaders — are reminiscent of the toothy smiles of the current art sensation Yue Minjun.
Unlike their contemporary counterparts, revolutionary artists painted without cynicism and with plenty of socialist ardor. That doesn’t mean that their work was immune from interference or mishandling. When Shen Jiawei’s Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland — a heroic masterpiece of three guards in a watchtower high above a snowy landscape — was first exhibited in Beijing in 1974, the faces of the soldiers had been made fuller, fiercer and pinker on Jiang Qing’s orders. In the present exhibition, the painting has been restored to the image intended by the artist, now a highly acclaimed portraitist in Australia.
In a video that accompanies his Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan, Liu Chenhua explains that he started painting pictures of Mao when he was a child “because I have always had deep feelings for him.” Those sentiments come through in his depiction of Mao as a handsome young scholar standing on a mountaintop under swiftly moving clouds. With Jiang Qing’s endorsement, it became a “model artwork” and was reproduced more than 900 million times. In the video, Liu explains that a group of printers came to him apologizing that his given name, Chenghua, had been misspelled as Chenhua on the first batch of reproductions. He told them not to be wasteful, that it didn’t matter what he was called. Then he adds: “I have been using this girlie-sounding name ever since.”
This was hardly the worst fate for an artist of the time, of course. During the Cultural Revolution academies were shut and aspiring artists were sent to the countryside while lesser talents, with better party credentials, were given high-profile assignments. Established painters often saw their work destroyed or were themselves subjected to “struggle sessions” of abuse and public humiliation.
Artists who rejected political pressure and continued to produce “art for art’s sake” did so discreetly, forming an underground movement later called the No Name Group. One of the genuine surprises in the Asia Society show is a collection of works from these largely overlooked artists, such as Ma Kelu’s Morning Snow, a delicate Impressionist-influenced winter scene in blues, browns and white.
As befits the subject, the Asia Society show has not been without controversy. China’s Culture Ministry refused exit papers for several works, suggesting lingering unease about the Cultural Revolution. That sensitivity is not shared by art collectors, however. Some model artworks have sold in Beijing for over $1 million. One wonders what Mao would have made of that.
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