 |
 |
In the Yan'an era,
the use of leader portraits for propaganda purposes was first put into
practice. The genre, derived from Soviet practice and used from 1943
on, featured local, national and international figures, military and
political leaders (Mao Zedong, amongst others), and labour and hygiene models. These pictures were sold, but they could also be awarded as prizes.
|
|
The attempts to create leader-worship, as with Mao Zedong since the late 1940s, reached a crescendo during the Cultural Revolution. After Hua Guofeng tried to fill Mao's shoes by using the same visual idiom in the late 1970s, however, it disappeared completely in the 1980s.
Instead, in line with Deng Xiaoping's dictum that
leaders and their glorious deeds should remain in the background, while
at the same time trying to bolster the flagging support for the CCP,
the stress was on subjects that portrayed
the glorious deeds of the past. Posters concentrated on the formative,
pre-1949 period, and on glorious, departed leaders, in particular Zhou Enlai.
Only one or two posters therefore were published in the 1980s that
showed the representatives of the leading group of the times, be they Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Hu Yaobang, or Zhao Ziyang.
The older leaders, including Deng and Chen, however,
did appear in posters that showed group photographs, or paintings, of
the members of the CCP-leadership of the 1950s, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De.
This
was an obvious attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Deng-line.
In these posters, Deng and Chen are often given a higher profile and
position than history would suggest. 'Chairman Mao Zedong and his
comrades-in-arms,'
is an artist's impression of the well-known photograph of the reception
of Zhou Enlai at Beijing airport in the 1950s, to which Deng Xiaoping
and Chen Yun have been added.
 |
 |
Deng Xiaoping decided to do away with the leader
worship as it had been practised in the past. Before the Cultural
Revolution started, he had been one of the few who criticized Mao for
basking in the adoration of the masses. He himself succeeded in
becoming a Chinese supreme leader who only rarely appeared on
propaganda posters. The decision initially posed a problem for the
visualization of political power, and therefore of the Party itself.
Non-personalized symbolism was found in the emblem of the State
(Tian'anmen); the CCP's logo of hammer and sickle; and the symbol of
the nation (five yellow stars on a red background). The only exceptions
to Deng's veto on leader portraits were those featuring the leaders who
had collaborated with Mao during the revolution. Of course, in selected
places the image of Mao, whether in painted or sculpted form, remained
to be used; Mao's portrait overlooking Tian'anmen Square is probably
the best known example.
 |
 |
Only with Deng's retirement from public life after
the Tian'anmen Incident in 1989, the Propaganda Department finally saw
an opportunity to build up a cult around the "Chief Architect" of
reform. In November 1992, after Deng
had made an inspection tour of the most advanced and prosperous
provinces in the South, a portrait of him was released as a poster,
done in typical brushwork style. A year later, posters appeared that
featured Deng's more
remarkable remarks ("We should do more, and engage in less empty talk",
amongst others), against a backdrop of either a photo montage of a
modern city skyline, or flower arrangements reminiscent of the 1950s.
 |
 |
In a way which resembles the famous Mao Zedong/Hua Guofeng posters of 1976, Deng's chosen successor Jiang Zemin
appeared, together with his patron, in a poster released in 1992. With
Deng's demise in February 1997, the market was flooded with "Deng
posters". It seems as if Deng, with his health declining, was unable to
keep the Party propaganda machinery—and Jiang Zemin—from using him as a propaganda object.
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
|
search this site!  |
International Institute of Social History