ART AND IDEOLOGY IN THE

PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Introduction
Following the communist revolution in 1949, along with the drive for
economic development and social revolution in the Peoples Republic
of China (PRC), there was active official patronage of the arts, but also
control over content. Lenin viewed art as an important component of
the gears and wheels of the revolution and this attitude was certainly
embraced by the Chinese Communist Party. While this expression sounds
crudely mechanistic in China today, it does express the ideological and
didactic function of art during the era of Mao Zedongs rule in China from
1949 to 1976.
Ideology was in important aspect of the arts and Mao pointed out that
new China should produce an art that is socialist in content and Chinese
in style. The rich cultural legacy of traditional China, and how this would
be adapted in Communist China was more than a passing political interest.
The twin themes of Chinese style and socialist content were an important
issue for the Chinese Communists even before the founding of the Peoples
Republic of China. In 1942, at the Yanan Forum on Art and Literature,
Mao stated that the Party wanted to take over all the fine things in our
literary and artistic heritage, critically assimilate whatever is beneficial,
and use them as examples when we create works. . . . Therefore, we must
on no account reject the legacies of the ancients . . . or refuse to learn from
them, even though they are the works of the feudal or bourgeois classes.
However, uncritical transplantation or copying from the ancients . . . is
the most sterile and harmful dogmatism in literature and art. Artists and
writers must therefore ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole
revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful
weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and
destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with
one heart and one mind.
Soviet Style Socialist Realism
of the Early 1950s
Art during
the first three
decades of the
PRC was not only
heavily political in
content, but also
very un-Chinese
in style. Painting
closely followed
the Soviet style of
socialist realism
and used Western
oils instead of the
traditional Chinese
brush and ink.
Themes included
international
The Founding of the Nation, Dong Xiwen ,oil, 1953
socialist
solidarity, industrialization,
and land reform that focused
attention on the revolutionary
transformation underway in
China. The Soviet inspiration is
evident in paintings that depict
Communist Party leaders, the
mechanization of agriculture
and industrialization.

The Furnaces Flames are Really Red, Gao Quan, oil, 1964
 The revolution-
ary war and the figure
of Mao Zedong were
also common sources
of inspiration. The
direct political content
was made more ap-
parent by the focus on
heroic themes and the
emphasis on depicting
the implementation of Mao Zedong Reporting on the Rectification in Yanan, Luo Gongliu, oil, 1951

Party policies.
Sculpture, using Soviet socialist
realism style became common. The surge
of construction of public spaces (like the
enlargement of Tiananmen Square flanked
by the Great Hall of the People and the
Revolutionary History Museum) created a
demand for massive public sculptures of
peoples heroes and massive statues of
Chair Mao were placed in front of most
public buildings. Not since the arrival of
Buddhism a millennium and a half earlier had
Chinese sculpture been so directly affected
by foreign examples, although now the style
mimicked Soviet style and was charged with
political symbolism.

Mao statue
Folk Arts and
Popular Tradition
However, even at the height of Soviet
influence certain native art styles, especially
those with a popular flavor, remained in favor.
Woodblock prints, used for patriotic and
social protest art in the 1930s and common
during the Yanan period (1936-1949),
remained popular too. After 1949, themes of
suffering, oppression, and imperialist invasion
were replaced with the political change
and socialist construction. The emotional
power of art depicting the common peoples
rebellion against the tyranny of the old society
common in pre-1949 art gave way to rather
banal political propaganda depicting the
collectivization of agriculture and industrial
construction. Traditional Spring Festival
art (nianhua) is an example of folk art that
was mass produced but now depicted the Youth, Xin Bo, woodblock, 1961

abundance of
socialism. Papercuts
were praised as
folk art and most
remained quite
traditional in style
and subject matter,
but also depicted
new political
themes.

Traditional Papercut

The Army and the People are One, Hang Guangzhou,

traditional Chinese painting, 1973
The Survival and
Revival of Chinese
Traditional-Style
Painting
Although folk art and Russian
socialist realism prevailed from
the 1950 to 1960s, the great
tradition of Chinese paintings
did not entirely disappear. For
several years its survival was
mainly represented by a handful
of famous established painters.
By far the most famous, and
Qi Baishi, Butterfly, ca. 1950
most lionized by the new regime,
was the 90 year old master Qi Baishi. The
high praise showered upon him was partly
justified by calling him a peoples painter
because of his fairly humble social origins
(he had once worked as a carpenter) but
his paintings, mostly of small life and
mostly done in the Chinese brush and
ink style so highly esteemed by literati
painters remained entirely traditional.
The other traditional master who received
much acclaim and continued to paint
completely apolitical traditional scenes was
the landscape artist Huang Binhong. His
landscape painting showed no sign of the
political transformation of China.

Huang Binhong, Landscape at Madangshan

ca. 1940s
 Equally famous, and equally
celebrated, was the Paris educated
Xu Beihong, considered by many the
foremost oil painter of Communist
China before his premature death in
1953. Xu was famous for his western
realist style as well as works using
Chinese brush. He was one of the
most successful 20th century Chinese
painters who blended Chinese and
Western techniques.
Despite the dominance of Soviet
style oil painting, in the 1950s there Xu Beihong Portrait of Jiang Biwei ca. 1924
was renewed interest
in traditional Chinese
artistic forms, especially
painting, and the
government gave much
more patronage and
praise to painting in
the traditional style.
Of course, artists were
officially encouraged to
put socialist content into
the old style. The policy Xu Beihong Four Horses, 1940

was that Chinese-style painting should

portray the new socialist realities, in
practice the majority of the paintings
by serious artists in the 1950s were
very traditional in content as well
as style and painters continued to The Thousand Crimson Hills, Li Keran,
traditional Chinese ink, 1963
work in a style more traditional than
modern (using ink instead of oils) and
portraying rather apolitical subjects.
 The most important and most praised
painters of China by the mid-1950s were
all working very much within the native
Chinese tradition. However, the didactic
function of art was never abandoned and
even classical material that could illustrate
political lessons was in great demand.

Socialist Art of the

Great Leap Forward
(1958-1960) Fighting in Northern Shaanxi, Shi Lu, traditional Chinese ink, 1959

With the repudiation of intellectual

critics of the regime during the Anti-
Rightist Campaign of 1957 and the
ideological zeal unleashed in the Great
Leap Forward the following year, the
mid-1950s revival of classical art forms
was countered by skillful paintings done
in the traditional style but depicting
imposing scenes of contemporary socialist
construction. Nature was no longer the
refuge for the solitary scholar; it was now
taken on by a Promethean socialist man
building dams, reclaiming wasteland, and
building modern industrial structures.

Meishan Reservoir, He Tianjian, traditional Chinese ink, 1959

The Renaissance of Traditional
Arts in the Early 1960s
The spirit of the Great Leap did not last. As economic
disasters piled up and the national morale sagged, a
revived interest and respect for the traditional art occurred
in the early 1960s. It was nowhere more apparent than
in painting where once again political content was
abandoned. The art was justified
in terms of patriotism, uplifting the
socialist spirit and other platitudes,
but the most striking aspect of most
of this art is the extent to which
it is traditional and apolitical.
Similarly the handicraft and folk
arts of traditional China flourished
in this more tolerant atmosphere.
Political content did not, of course,
completely disappear from the art
of the early 1960s, although it was
often very subtle.

New City in the Mountain, Qian Songyan, 1960

Art and the Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976)
As the economy recovered from mistakes of the
Great Leap Forward and the Party recovered its shaken
self-confidence, the lenience towards apolitical art
began to disappear. Warnings were sounded as early
as 1963, and in the summer of 1964 a major campaign
was launched to revolutionize art. Jiang Qing, Maos
wife, wielded control over
art and took an active role
in directly applying the
Thought of Mao Zedong to
art. The Cultural Revolution
policies of Jiang Qing and
the other members of the
Gang of Four completely
dominated art, imbuing
it with an unprecedented
political saturation previously
approached only at the peak
of the Great Leap Forward.
This meant the general
abandonment of the more Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Peoples Liberation Army Political Department, 1971
sophisticated traditional
techniques and revisionist Soviet influences were
even more suspect than traditional feudal influences.
The earlier infatuation with Soviet inspired oils was
abandoned after the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 and was
replaced during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) with
a unique Chinese genre of revolutionary art known as
revolutionary romanticism or socialist idealism.
Art for arts sake was condemned and only art that
idealized the workers, peasants, and the military was
sanctioned.
It was characterized by red in both color and
content. This was especially clear in the Peoples
Liberation Army art work which was held up as a
model for all artists. The subject matter generally
consisted of heroic scenes from the revolutionary
past and more typically paintings of Mao Zedong
as a young revolutionary striding purposefully
across the hills to organize workers or peasants, or
immortalizing Mao as the revolutionary savior of
China. At the peak of the Cultural Revolution,
most art was mass produced poster art Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan, Liu Chunhua, oil, 1967

vowing to liberate Taiwan, defend the sacred

motherland
against Soviet
invasion,
or support
the heroic
struggle of the
Vietnamese
people fighting
against American
imperialism.

Joint Defense by the People and the ArmyAn Iron Bastion, Peoples Fine Arts Publishing House, 1969
Some folk art was produced but it generally portrayed
clear revolutionary themes and was devoid of depictions
of folk customs and religion as in the original peasant art.
The art of the Cultural Revolution was largely self- Liu Jinlan, One Child is Good, papercut ca. 1978
explanatory and intended to make an unmistakable
political point in the most obvious way so that illiterate
peasants could immediately grasp the message.
Ideological Art reached its apex during the Cultural
Revolution and since
the late 1970s China
has been finding it way
back to more traditional
styles, unique styles
of modern art with
Chinese characteristics,
and modern western-
style art.
Carry Out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Peoples Fine Arts Publishing House, 1973