The New Year picture (nianhua 年画) was the most
important influence on the propaganda posters produced by the Chinese
Communist Party. Employing various elements of folk art and symbolism,
these pictures catered to the tastes and beliefs in the countryside,
expressing wishes for happiness and good luck. According to the Chinese
nianhua
specialist Wang Shucun, "During the New Year festival, more than 20
varieties of New Year prints would be stuck on the front gates, doors
onto the courtyard, walls of a room, besides a room's windows, or on
the water vat, rice cabinet, granary, or livestock fold. Colourful and
floral prints would be everywhere in the house to express the hopes and
joy of the festival."
Nianhua derived from 'paper gods' and other forms of
utilitarian-magic art and made use of symbols that were traditionally
and conventionally seen as auspicious, including those for long life, a
government career, and wealth. This contributed to their popularity
among the people. Often, they featured mythological personages like the
Kitchen God, the Door God and the God of Longevity; this turned them
into magical charms to drive away bad luck.
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When the CCP appropriated New Year prints for
propagandistic purposes in the 1940s, artistic and aesthetic forms were
selected that the people had grown accustomed to, filled with new,
revolutionary content. But the revolutionary artists looked down on
these old forms of popular culture; they were more dedicated to the
cosmopolitanism of the cities. They considered traditional art forms to
be too intimately connected with the elements of 'feudal,' Confucian
superstition. Consequently, other types of images replaced them. These
still may have featured chubby boys (and girls) but they were permeated
with symbols that reflected the correct ideological standpoint.
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The nianhua produced by the Party were, on
the one hand, much too 'Chinese' and vulgar to please intellectuals and
the urbanites who considered themselves to be more sophisticated. The
masses, on the other hand, found them too Westernized and
over-simplified to be of great interest for them. 'New' nianhua, then, only existed because of the Party, for political reasons. They only replaced traditional nianhua
because the CCP succeeded in shutting the latter out by prohibiting
their production and distribution. This explains why propaganda posters
could be seen in many individual homes in the first decades of
CCP-rule.
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It also explains why other visual materials that
contained more traditionally significant symbolic contents, started to
replace them as soon as they became available on the free markets in
rural and urban areas in the 1980s.
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s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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International Institute of Social History