{"id":1291,"date":"2021-07-09T10:58:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T10:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/?p=1291"},"modified":"2023-10-25T17:11:41","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T17:11:41","slug":"the-art-of-the-propagandist-visual-approaches-to-understanding-revolutionary-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/the-art-of-the-propagandist-visual-approaches-to-understanding-revolutionary-china\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Propagandist: Visual Approaches to Understanding Revolutionary China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Written by Steven F. Jackson<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy. Angry. Inspired. Grateful.\u00a0 The emotions expressed in Chinese propaganda posters between 1949 and 1990 were not subtle or complex, nor for all of the embrace of \u2018socialist realism\u2019 in communist art were they realistic.\u00a0 These posters, with their vivid reds, yellows, oranges, blues and greens were not Chinese people as they were\u00a0\u2014<\/em>\u00a0they were the Chinese people as they ought to be<\/em>, at least according to the Communist Party. The fascination is that this proscriptive line in posters shifted frequently over the first four decades of the People\u2019s Republic of China, and these artefacts can give us insight into this period for teaching, learning and research.<\/span><\/p>\n

Founded in 1977 by writer and journalist John Gittings when we worked in the Chinese section of the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL), the China Visual Arts Project at the Contemporary China Centre of University of Westminster has assembled an impressive collection of over 800 of these posters and posted them to the university archive site.\u00a0 The site is searchable and categorized based on Gittings\u2019 original 17 thematic categories.\u00a0 The collection is an invaluable tool for teaching about modern Chinese history and politics, as well as about the political role of visual arts in societies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this blog, I describe three core ideas that emerge across the collection and reflect on their pedagogical value in the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

1.Transforming Society.<\/strong>\u00a0Revolutionary governments seek to change the societies they govern, to make a break from the past and to create new, ideal citizens. Social relations, such as gender and age are challenged. A good example of this can be seen in the quiet confidence of the face of the woman in Fig. 1.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fig. 1: Women can hold up half the sky (1975), by Wang Dawei. Source: University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2.Transforming Nature.<\/strong>\u00a0Another aspect of communist societies (and indeed many societies prior to the 1970s) was the relationship of people to nature. In contrast to the near-universal concerns for the environment in the 21st<\/sup> century, Chinese posters showed a frequent theme of transforming nature for humanity\u2019s benefit. The second title of the \u2018Women hold up half the sky\u2019 post is \u2018Surely the face of nature can be transformed.\u2019\u00a0 The next poster \u2013 \u2018The bank of the Yangzi river\u2019 (Fig. 2) is particularly interesting because it uses a traditional shan-shui<\/em>\u5c71\u6c34 ink wash painting technique for a familiar theme \u2013 the Yangtze River \u2013 but the banks of the river are now crowded with petrochemical facilities, an old-fashioned medium for a modern message: the river and its banks are being used for industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fig. 2: The bank of the Yangzi river (1973), by Song Wenzhi.\u00a0Source: University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3.Recalling the Revolution.<\/strong>\u00a0Fifteen years after the 1949 revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong realized that a new generation was growing up that had no memory of pre-revolutionary China or the conditions that gave rise to the communist party. The poster \u2018Don’t forget class struggle, forever make revolutionary people\u2019 (Fig. 3) was part of a party effort to remind the new generation of that legacy. The central figure, a peasant man speaking earnestly to the fresh-faced youth uses posters to show what had happened.\u00a0 Thus, the poster is about revolution, but also depicts posters and their use.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fig 3: Don’t forget class struggle, forever make revolutionary people (1964), by Chen Mou; Shu Dong. Source: University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chairman Mao, however, wanted more than posters to create a new revolutionary generation; he wanted the youth of China to take action against what he regarded as the parts of China\u2019s leadership who were \u2018revising\u2019 communism into something else, and thus he launched the Cultural Revolution.\u00a0 About one quarter of the collection covers this period (1966-76), and these are quite distinct.\u00a0 Unlike posters from the previous political campaigns in which smiling workers, grinning peasants, and stalwart soldiers are constants, the Cultural Revolution faces show anger and defiance, bravery and suspicion.\u00a0 Fig. 4 shows an example of the period, where we see workers, peasants and soldiers, and the central figure of a Red Guard, one of the youth Mao recruited to \u2018make revolution.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fig. 4: Revolutionary proletarian right to rebel troops unite! (1967), by unknown artist unknown. Source: University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pedagogy.<\/strong>\u00a0Posters are natural discussion and essay prompts, and I have used several as quiz prompts for years.\u00a0 In class, I usually employ the simple opening technique of showing (via PowerPoint) a poster, and asking students to look at it for about two minutes, and then they make comments using \u2018I like\u2026\u2019 \u2018I noticed\u2026\u2019 and \u2018I wonder\u2026\u2019 as the prompts.\u00a0 A more detailed questionnaire is also used for the two-day version of the in-class discussion assignment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, a little context for these posters is necessary for students who were born decades after the tumultuous periods of Chinese history from 1949 to 1990.\u00a0 After the Communist Revolution in 1949 there were multiple political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and a dozen or more shorter and more specific campaigns.\u00a0 It helps that many of the posters at the China Visual Arts Project website have dates to help place the pictures in the context of specific campaigns or events.\u00a0 The posters\u2019 text is also translated so that the phrase is clear (though not always the meaning).<\/span><\/p>\n

Targeting an often semi-literate audience, the symbols used in the posters were usually quite simple: wrenches and gears or blue overalls indicate workers; uniforms show soldiers, sheafs and hoes show peasants, (what I dub the \u2018holy trinity\u2019 of Maoist iconograph).\u00a0 Peasants in these posters are often shown wearing turbans, a common head covering among Han Chinese which some may mistake for ethnic minorities. \u00a0Workers are often shown with iron and steel workers\u2019 furnace observation glasses.\u00a0 A fourth figure begins to be seen in posters after 1976: a scientist or \u2018intellectual\u2019 who is always shown wearing eye glasses.\u00a0 Age was usually depicted by heavier facial lines and beard shadows for men, hair in a bun for women.<\/span><\/p>\n

Posters also are an opportunity for critical thinking, and nowhere is this more needed than the common posters involving China\u2019s 56 \u2018official\u2019 ethnic minorities, such as the 1975 poster \u2018Long live the unity of every nationality in this country!\u2019 (Fig. 5).\u00a0 The poster is remarkable in that it is a reproduction of a photograph, which is rare among Chinese posters of the period, though quite common for Soviet posters.\u00a0 Enthusiastic and grateful minorities are always shown in their distinctive national costumes, and a Tibetan woman wearing a pangden<\/em> (brightly-coloured apron) is invariably included.\u00a0 Mongols can be identified by wearing the deel<\/em>, a caftan garment, Koreans are invariably women in hanboks<\/em>. \u00a0Other minorities such as the Miao and Yi are depicted with their distinct dress.\u00a0 The typical portrayal is of a large group of minorities, with Han Chinese posed in the middle, all linking arms, grinning broadly and gratefully to be part of the People\u2019s Republic of China.\u00a0 Given the news out of Xinjiang of late about the treatment of Uighurs, students quickly recognize that the propaganda and the policies don\u2019t match.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fig. 5: Long live the unity of every nationality in this country (1975), by unknown artist.\u00a0Source: University of Westminster’s China Visual Arts Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Steven F. Jackson is professor of political science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 He writes primarily on Chinese foreign relations.\u00a0 He began his interest in Chinese revolutionary posters in 1980 as a student, and acquired more while teaching English in China 1981-83.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Steven F. Jackson Happy. Angry. Inspired. Grateful.\u00a0 The emotions expressed in Chinese propaganda posters between 1949 and 1990 were not subtle or complex, nor for all of the embrace of \u2018socialist realism\u2019 in communist art were they realistic.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138,146,148,168,194],"class_list":["post-1291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china-visual-arts-project","tag-pedogogy","tag-posters","tag-propaganda","tag-socialist-realism","tag-westminster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}