In the second half of the Cultural Revolution (early
1970s), the works of amateur artists among workers and peasants were
given nation-wide attention and support. These amateurs were promoted
as representatives of the innate creative genius of the masses, as
living proof that everyone could and should practice art. As such, they
became eminently emulatable models. The most well-known were the
workers from Shanghai, Yangquan and Lüda, who mounted a successful
exhibition in Peking in 1974; and the peasant painters from Huxian,
Shaanxi Province. The latter even became internationally acclaimed for
their naive, colorful style in painting when they were given the
opportunity to exhibit their work in Paris in 1975.
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Although touted as amateurs, it was later admitted
that the peasant painters had received extensive professional help and
assistance in "the composition of their pictures, as well as with the
conception, presentation and skillful rendering" in their work. The
advice and assistance was often provided by precisely those
professional artists who were no longer allowed to work themselves. The
professional influences are particularly evident when one compares
'Huxian art' created during the Cultural Revolution with the examples
of their work from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The flat,
single-dimensional figures of the early paintings were replaced with
more three-dimensional figures, and the later works testify to a
greater use of perspective.
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The Huxian painters excelled in the portrayal of
local and national heroes and deep-space landscapes for propaganda
purposes; and a strong geometric organisation and repeated patterns,
for decorative purposes. Their highly political paintings provided
idyllic slices of the good life in the rural areas, and were peopled
with happy and enthusiastic peasants engaged in agriculture, political
meetings and study sessions.
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Various books and journals that supplied information
on how to represent human beings, agricultural machinery, and others,
were published in the early 1970s. Without doubt, these publications
functioned as sources of inspiration for the amateur artists. They
contained concise close-ups of workers, peasants and soldiers, young or
old, male or female, at work or engaged in some other meaningful
activity, sometimes from posters that had already been published, and
were intended to provide good examples of how to represent human beings
in art. In all probability, these source-books were responsible for the
stereotyped and standardised quality of the propaganda posters
published in this period.
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Sources:
Jutta Bewig, Bauernmalerei aus Huxian [Peasant Paintings from Huxian] (Frankfurt/M: Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Chinesische Freundschaft 1979)
Fine Arts Collection Section of the Cultural Group Under the State Council of the People's Republic of China (eds.), Peasant Paintings from Huhsien County (Peking: People's Fine Arts Publishing House 1976)
Stewart E. Fraser, (ed.), 100 Great Chinese Posters: Recent Examples of "the People's Art" from the People's Republic of China (New York N.Y.: Images Graphiques, Inc. 1977)
Maria Galikowski,, Arts and Politics in China, 1949-1984 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press 1998)
Guowuyuan wenhuazu meishu zuopin zhengji xiaozu (eds.), Shanghai,
Yangquan, Lüda gongrenhua zhanlan zuopin xuanji [Selection of
Works from the Exhibition of Workers' Art from Shanghai, Yangquan and
Lüda] (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe 1975)
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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