Julia F. Andrews. Painters
and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994.
In this substantial
contribution to the field of PRC studies, Julia Andrews convincingly
demonstrates that painting and politics were thoroughly intertwined throughout
the first three decades of communist rule in China. Her focus is primarily on
painting techniques, and secondarily on the content of the works. She brings a
sophisticated art historical approach to the periodicals, paintings, and
personal interviews that make up her sources.
Two major forms of painting
dominate her study: socialist realism, inspired by Soviet models and executed
mostly in oil paints; and guohua (national art), based on traditional
media but "reformed" to accommodate the more "scientific"
method of painting from real life. Led by revolutionary artist Jiang Feng, the
art bureaucracy in the early years engaged mainly in the popularization of art,
in the promotion of socialist realism, and in the reform of guohua
painting. Painting subjects also came under reform: "apples, bananas, and
women's thighs" (p. 43) were replaced with depictions of "real"
people engaged in their daily and extraordinary activities.
The profound ambivalence with
which Mao and other Chinese communists viewed China's past is dramatically
illustrated in Jiang Feng's cold treatment of guohua artists and his
subsequent purge in the Anti-Rightist Movement, an event Andrews ties
positively to Mao's own support of guohua (p. 197). During the Great
Leap Forward, commissions for the newly constructed Ten Great Buldings provided
high visibility for guohua paintings, as in the unprecedentedly large This
Land So Rich in Beauty, composed by Fu Baoshi and Guan Shanyue in honor of
Mao's poem "Ode to Snow."
Perhaps the most interesting
section of the book deals with the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, a time
when bureaucratic weakness allowed for numerous innovations. Andrews discusses
in turn developments in urban oil painting in the socialist realism style, the
ink drawings for lianhuanhua (serial story pictures) composed by
Shanghai illustrators, the reemergence of such regional artistic styles as
found in the guohua paintings of Nanjing and Xi'an and the prints of
Sichuan and Heilongjiang, and finally the fleeting appearance of
"individual" artistry exemplified by the eccentric Shi Lu.
Andrews' treatment of the
Cultural Revolution is both sensitive and sophisticated. While always
maintaining a critical eye for artistic failings, Andrews takes seriously the
paintings of individuals and committees, and offers interesting details on the
specific constraints under which artists worked – as in the correct colors,
brush strokes, and even pallette organization for painting Mao's face. Andrews
also describes Zhou Enlai's attempts after 1971 to provide room again for guohua
and the significant consequences this move entailed for Zhou in the closing
years of the Cultural Revolution. The book concludes with a chapter on
"The Transition to 'Artistic Democracy.'" While old-school artists
continue to control the formal art organizations, a milder political climate
and new markets overseas have encouraged a diversification of artistic forms
and even a significant, if dangerous, space for subversive art.
As other reviewers have noted
(see, for example, Lynn White in China Quarterly 144: 1186-9), Andrews'
narrative not only makes a significant contribution to art history, but also
provides depth to (and at times challenges) previous understandings of the
period under investigation. Andrews shows that while the Hundred Flowers
Movement's encouragement of diverse styles (including guohua) produced
some of the period's "most aesthetically pleasing art" (p. 401), it
also "produced less pluralism than factionalism" (p. 185), with
negative impacts on artists' work and lives. With regard to the Cultural
Revolution, she notes that for the art world, the trauma of this era truly began
with the cultural rectification campaign of 1964. In a further destabilization
of accepted histriography, she challenges the idea that the Cultural Revolution
was a "ten-year gap." Rather, the events of 1964-1976 wreaked perhaps
more havoc on works produced in earlier times as artists rushed to destroy
potentially incriminating evidence. The perceived "ten-year gap" was
then itself created through subsequent destruction of art produced during the
Cultural Revolution (p. 315).
Contemporary reviewers found
little to quibble with in this formidable contribution to the literature. The
most serious charge came from Craig Clunas (Art History 19.1:160-2), who
felt that Andrews was not critical enough in her use of living informants,
especially when it came to the extremely sensitive Cultural Revolution period.
I cannot concur. My only request would be a more thorough engagement in the
persistent question of whether art can or should be apolitical, or whether it
is always driven by politics, "high" or "low."
Sigrid Schmalzer
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