This thesis looks at the Chinese Paintings of Political theme in the People's Republic of China by dividing them on the basis of theme and examines their character and significance. The People's Republic of China carried out the radical reform policie...
This thesis looks at the Chinese Paintings of Political theme in the People's Republic of China by dividing them on the basis of theme and examines their character and significance. The People's Republic of China carried out the radical reform policies in all sectors in order to establish an ideal Socialist State and these policies changed according to political situations. Art also was so contingent thoroughly on social-political consideration that the government directly controlled not only art creations but also art administrations, art executions and art criticisms.
For these reason, in understanding arts in the People's Republic of China, it may be key point of view to examine relation between arts and politics. Unlike oil painting affected by western, the keynote that art should serve Party and People is hard especially for the traditional chinese paintings to follow, as it had been developed and refined focusing on the xieyi(寫意) style by the literati or scholar-official class. Therefore this thesis has examined how the traditional chinese paintings reflected political demands and theoretical premises were practically applied to the traditional chinese paintings. I focused on the period, from establishment of the People's republic of China in 1949 to the death of Mao Zedong(毛澤東) and the end of Cultural Revolution in 1976, when political constrains upon arts was the strictest.
The theoretical guideline of arts in the People's Republic of China based on Mao's Yan'an Talks on the Literature and Art in 1942. That laid the foundation for artistic policy after establishment of the People's Republic of China, and artistic policies between 1949 and 1976 were thoroughly executed according to his theory. The most important points were that art should unify and educate the masses and should serve for the masses. He defined arts as a political weapon, stressed politic was prior to arts and proposed Socialist Realism as a artistic model. Socialist Realism derived from the Soviet. Its most important character is the Revolutionary Romanticism that means art should participate in Socialist construction actively and consciously, have optimistic view and express the bright sides of the society
Following Mao theory, the government resolutely took steps to reform the art world and changed artistic policies on political considerations. Artistic policies were applied to art organizations, education, exhibitions and publications in order to carry out party policies systematically. Art was used as a mean to justify and propaganda party policies under government control. In the case of traditional chinese paintings, the core of reform movement was combining traditional chinese materials and techniques with Socialist Realist themes and styles. Traditional chinese painters applied optimistic themes reflecting new society and western realistic techniques to figure paintings, landscape paintings, and flowers and birds paintings so as to follow new demands for traditional chinese paintings.
The traditional chinese paintings which were produced under the party's control showed themes reflecting new society demands in accordance with the guideline. Most works tended to fall into one or more of the four categories according to political content. First, chinese paintings that glorified party leader Mao Zedong produced reflecting the stress upon Mao's personality cult. Mao was depicted as a deification, heroic leader, people's great teacher, party's theorist, kind leader image according to various political situations and his images changed accordingly. Second, the chinese paintings that symbolized Communist Party and Revolution were produced. In those works, the red color was mainly used as a symbol of the Communist Party and Revolution. Most of them adopted Mao's poem as the title or represented the content of Mao's poem as various symbolic motives so that they could get the political justness. Third, the traditional chinese paintings that depicted a ideal Socialist State were produced. Those works exaggeratively depicted the scene of constructing a Socialist State, the result of constructing a Socialist State and scene of an ideal Socialist State in which people live peacefully harmonizing with nature. Finally, the works depicting socialist heroes or ideal people expressed the people who accomplish their revolutionary projects for the party and nation. In those works, children and women were used as a main icon to present ideal people. All themes which mentioned above are characterized that the bright side of Socialism, far from the realities of life, were represented and they followed party policies in order to suit for the mean of political propaganda.
As is generally known, the political arts in the People's Republic of China were influenced by Soviet Socialist Realist art. Although chinese paintings were influenced by Soviet art, they didn't give up traditional chinese materials based on ink and brushwork and kept original characters of traditional chinese painting. Therefore, the chinese paintings of political theme have the significance in the sense that they ensured the original field as well as followed political demands.