Art and China's Revolution

Ann Morrison of Time has an interesting online article called Seeing Red about and exhibit of art from the Chinese Revolutionary period being held at the Asia Society in NY. The exhibit runs through January 11, 2009. The art work cover the period of the Revolution between 1949 and the period of economic liberalization and an more openness to the west in 1979.

Morrison reports As Mao Zedong saw it, art was to be accessible to the masses and not the exclusive province of an intellectual élite. Painting and sculpture, as well as fiction, music, theater and ballet, were to reflect new common values, not individual ideas or feelings. The products of this "art for politics' sake" were mostly optimistic in spirit and patriotic in purpose. Though they were produced in murderous times, the works at the Asia Society are almost uniformly cheery, following the dictum of Jiang Qing, Mao's fourth wife and ultimate cultural arbiter, that art be "red, bright and shining." In other words: propaganda. Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu and co-curator Zheng Shengtian argue in the show's excellent catalog, however, that, didactic or not, socialist art represented a "significant cultural movement in China" — one that produced some "truly great art," especially paintings, and that such works "continue to influence Chinese visual culture."

The article also relates how a small group of Chinese artist refused to paint in the propaganda style during the cultural revolution. Many of these quality artist were not allowed to paint, or the completeed work was destroyed as it was not deemed worthy and failed to promote the greatness of the Revolution. Morrison continues During the Cultural Revolution academies were shut and aspiring artists were sent to the countryside while lesser talents, with better party credentials, were given high-profile assignments. Established painters often saw their work destroyed or were themselves subjected to "struggle sessions" of abuse and public humiliation. Artists who rejected political pressure and continued to produce "art for art's sake" did so discreetly, forming an underground movement later called the No Name Group.

The Asia Society exhibition also has a collection of display of No Name Group. To read the seeing Red Article, click HERE. It is very interesting and a form of art we as appraiser typically dont see.