We have started 'closing' Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages. Pages on www.iisg.nl/landsberger will be redirected to their equivalent on chineseposters.net, starting with the artists' biographies. All content from the Landsberger pages has been transferred to this domain already, much more has been added only there. Layout and navigation are different, of course, but we hope you will find your way there as well.
A 286-page book with 250 color illustrations of Chinese propaganda posters from the Landsberger/IISH collections is available now for € 19,95, US$ 24.95, £ 14.99. You can order online at Amazon and other web bookshops - or go to your local bookstore!
This site is dedicated to the Chinese
propaganda
poster as it has been produced from 1937 till the present day.
So-called propaganda art has played a major supporting role in the many
campaigns that were designed to mobilize the people, and throughout the
People's Republic, the propaganda poster has been the favored vehicle
through which art conveyed model behavior. I've been collecting
these Chinese political posters for many years now, and have brought
together quite a nice collection of some 2,000 titles, spanning almost
six decades of Chinese poster production. From time to time, new
sections will be added to the site, devoted to the political, social and economic
movements and developments that have found their way into visual
propaganda over the years. As my collection expands over time, existing
sections will expand as well in order to include more or more exciting posters
that I have acquired.
For more general information about the genre of Chinese propaganda art,
try the sections on Visualizing
the Future and New
Year Prints (and chubby babies). The sections
devoted to artists and designers — (A-M)
and (N-Z)
— provide details about a great number of people engaged in
poster design. Other sections of this on-line exhibition
are listed below; alternatively, you can consult the SiteMap for an
overview of the site's contents.
Due to the enormous visual impact these posters have even today, they
literally cry out to be exhibited.
Moreover, in a society that has been changing as fundamentally as the
Chinese since 1949, propaganda posters enable us to witness these
historic and aesthetic changes from up close. The first 50 years of the
People's Republic have left us with a body of materials that give an
idea of how China saw itself, and its future, over the years. By
showing a breathtaking glimpse of the way in which the country has
developed over the past 50 years, these materials provide an
illustrated history of modern China in a nutshell.
The designers of many of the posters
shown on this website have been identified. More information about these artists
--short biographies, often including other examples of the works they
produced-- can be found by clicking on those images that have been
linked (for example, the posters above and below). The translation of
the slogans on the posters becomes visible when one hovers the pointer
over the images.
A small part of the collection
— mostly
materials from the early 1970s up to the early 1990s — has been
included in a book I published quite some time ago which traces the
development of Chinese propaganda art. Chinese Propaganda Posters —
From Revolution to Modernization (Armonk;
Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur: M.E. Sharpe 1996; The Pepin Press 1995,
1998, 2001), which contains many excellent color illustrations, is
still available. A more recent publication, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the
Collection of Michael Wolf (Taschen,
2003), contains a number of posters that can also be found on this
website.
Is anyone out there as interested in
Chinese
propaganda posters (1949 - present) as I am? Do you have any Chinese
posters stored away in your attic that you have no use for, or want to
get rid of? Care to exchange duplicates,
ideas, or views? The answers to most
of your frequently asked questions, in particular those concerning
places where you yourself can buy posters, or where and how to start
your own collection, or where and how to get high-resolution images,
all can be found on the new
FAQ-page. Please look there first! Only if you can't find the answers there, contact me at the address below!
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
