Liberation: Communists and Academics Unite

After Communist troops captured Tianjin in January 1949, the Nationalist general of Beiping surrendered.^[1] The People's Liberation Army (PLA) peacefully entered the city on January 31, 1949,^[2] and the task of bringing non-Communist artists under the control of the new regime began. The decisions made during this critical transition period irreversibly altered the lives and careers of many artists, Communist and non-Communist alike.

On March 8, 1949, by order of the military official in charge of administering Beiping, Ye Jianying, National Beiping Arts College was taken over by the military. Sha Kefu, who had served as vice-director of the Yan'an Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Arts and later as director of the College of Arts and Literature of the Jin-Cha-Ji North China United Revolutionary University, was sent as military representative to the school. A "Cultural Takeover Small Group," composed of former administrators from the same college, was assigned by the military to direct the transfer. The group consisted of vice-director Ai Qing, the art department head Jiang Feng, the art theorist and sculptor Wang Zhaowen, and the composer Li Huanzhi. They were assisted by younger Communist artists Ding Jingwen, Hong Bo, and Li Qi, who served as office administrators. The small group decided—probably on orders from Zhou Enlai—to keep Xu Beihong as director and to retain faculty at their original salary levels.^[3] The college would be funded by the Beiping Municipal Military Affairs Committee.

Communist artists from North China United University, which had absorbed the Yan'an print movement, had spent the three previous years producing pro-Communist propaganda in the Hebei countryside. They followed

the People's Liberation Army into the city and established themselves in an old church occupied by the New China News Agency. Art cadres from the liberated zone began conducting classes on principles of the new art at the National Beiping Arts College. The printmakers Zhang Ding and Gu Yuan came to Beijing from Manchuria to work in editorial positions. Their colleagues Yang Jiao and Zhang Xiaofei remained in the northeast, where they had, in 1946, helped establish the Northeast Lu Xun Academy of Arts. In September, the military affairs committee decided to formally combine the North China United University art department with the National Beiping Arts College.

Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the new People's Government from atop the imperial palace's Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) on October 1, 1949. On November 2, the preliberation positions of the Hangzhou and Beijing academies were reversed: the Beijing school was renamed the National Art Academy and became the country's primary art college. At Xu Beihong's request, Mao Zedong personally inscribed the new name, Guoli meishu xueyuan , as a logo for the school.^[4] It may have been at this time that it attained the high administrative status it now enjoys, answering directly to the national Ministry of Culture rather than to a local cultural affairs bureau. As part of the reorganization, the music department and its director, Li Huanzhi, were removed to the National Conservatory in Tianjin. The Hangzhou academy was demoted to a subsidiary campus of the Beijing school, a status it retained until 1958.

On January 1, 1950, the new Government Administration Council changed the name of the National Art Academy in Beijing once again. For most of the succeeding period, it has been known as the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Zhongyang meishu xueyuan , hereafter CAFA).^[5] CAFA was formally dedicated on April 1, with high officials of the Government Administration Council, the Central Propaganda Bureau of the CCP, and the Ministry of Culture in attendance.^[6] As marchers from CAFA filed past Tiananmen on October 1, 1950, Chairman Mao read their banner, waved, and shouted, "Long Live the Central Academy of Fine Arts."^[7]

Establishment of the Art Workers Association, 1949

The All-China Congress of Literary and Arts Workers (Zhongguo quanguo wenxue yishu gongzuozhe daibiao dahui ) opened on July 2, 1949. It was attended by 753 cultural leaders from all parts of the country. At its conclusion on July 19, the All-China Federation of Literary and Arts Circles (Zhonghua quanguo wenxue yishu jie lianhehui ; FLAC) was founded, with revolutionary printmakers Jiang Feng, Yan Han, and Hu Yichuan elected members of the national committee.^[8] The All-China Art Workers Association (AWA, forerun-

ner of the Chinese Artists Association) was established at the same time. The chairman of the AWA was Xu Beihong, director of the National Beiping Arts College; the two vice-chairmen were Jiang Feng and the cartoonist Ye Qianyu (see appendix I).^[9] Jiang Feng concurrently held the post of secretary of the party group,^[10] thus controlling the young association.

Vice-Premier Zhou Enlai, who promoted harmonious relations between Communists and non-Communist intellectuals throughout his career, delivered an important speech at the congress on July 6. He gave theoretical guidance in five areas. First, he said, unification of all China's literary and art workers was essential. Zhou identified several different types of art workers, including those in the PLA, those in PLA-controlled areas, and those in areas controlled by the Nationalists. He urged delegates to promote a united spirit among all cultural workers in their home regions. Second, artists were to serve the people, especially the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Third, popularization was to take precedence over raising of standards. Fourth, old literature and art were to be remolded. Old contents were to be remolded first, but attention should also be paid to old forms so that contents and forms might be unified. Fifth, artists and art leaders must avoid particularism but instead consider the needs of the whole country in their art. To carry out these cultural policies, he announced plans to form popular associations such as the Art Workers Association to train artists, expand artistic activity, and undertake the remolding of art. The government planned to set up its own structures to organize arts and literature, but intended to rely on the cooperation of popular associations to implement its activities.^[11] Although Zhou claimed that the AWA and other such organizations were "masses' groups," they were in fact, as we saw in the introduction, the cultural arms of the Chinese Communist party. The art bureaucracy was thus envisioned as a two-part cooperative structure administered by the party and the government.

Next Jiang Feng presented a report on art work in the liberated zones that praised the accomplishments of Communist artists and presented concrete goals for remolding the non-Communist art world.^[12] The uninspiring prose remains stilted even in summary, and it is clear that Jiang speaks for the Communist party, not for himself. Some policies, such as the party's promotion of the outline and flat-color painting style, contradict the views Jiang Feng expressed three years earlier.

Jiang dated the most important artistic activities of the liberated zones to the post—Yan'an Talks period. Forms of art that contributed to the War of Liberation included pictorial magazines, new nianhua , serial picture stories, wall paintings, and propaganda flyers. Woodcut artists, most notably Gu Yuan, Yan Han, and Wang Shikuo, abandoned strong black-and-white contrasts that the people could not appreciate and developed lively single-outline techniques.

Hua Junwu's political cartoons were particularly successful examples of their genre. Oil painting and sculpture began developing in regions where the war had ended, as part of national reconstruction. Mo Pu and Wang Zhaowen had contributed to this effort. Notable work producing pictorial magazines was performed by other artists, including Zhang Ding.^[13] Shijiazhuang Masses Art Press (Hebei) and Northeast Pictorial were the largest-scale publishers of new nianhua . Serial picture stories (lianhuanhua ) by future administrators Shao Yu and Cai Ruohong were also well received.

Jiang then described current policies and plans. As he had mentioned, many artists had begun, presumably under the party's direction, to use the single-outline and flat-color techniques of folk painting because effects of light and shade were difficult for the workers, peasants, and soldiers to understand. He urged the continued practice of this style. Art work should take its contents from life and should be educational. At the same time, it was crucial that artists study party policies. For example, pictures representing land reform should not depict people dividing up a rich man's silver and silks; instead they should emphasize redistribution of farming tools and domestic animals, because land reform policy was aimed primarily at developing agricultural production. Similarly, in depicting assaults by the People's Liberation Army on cities, artists who emphasized smoke and flames would contradict the PLA policy of nondestructive attacks.

Jiang pointed out that the new art was still much less widespread than the old nianhua and lianhuanhua , which promoted feudal superstitions and colonial ideology. Tianjin, for example, annually printed one hundred million nianhua and yuefenpai calendar pictures. Shanghai had eighty serial picture publishers and a thousand serial picture artists. Jiang estimated that about fifteen million copies of 4,800 lianhuanhua titles were printed annually in Shanghai.

Communist art workers had two tasks, according to Jiang Feng's speech. The first was educational: to quickly train many art cadres and to remold folk artists and guohua artists to serve the workers, peasants, and soldiers. The second was productive: to use modern printing technology to issue art in large quantities for the masses. The goal was to win over the large market for older types of art.

The newly founded Chinese government's policy toward literature and the arts was published in October 1949, three months after the Congress of Literary and Art Workers met. Literature and the arts should serve the people, should inspire the political enlightenment of the people, and should encourage the people's enthusiasm for labor. Excellent works of literature and art should be rewarded.^[14] The first document issued by the newly established Government Administration Council is believed to have been an order drafted by Cai

Ruohong at the request of Mao Zedong and Zhou Yang to promote the production of modern new year's pictures (xin nianhua ). Soon after, a similar order was issued about serial picture books.^[15]

First National Art Exhibition

The first National Art Exhibition was held at the National Beiping Arts College in conjunction with the July 1949 Congress of Literary and Arts Workers. The works of 301 artists exemplified the artistic concerns of the day. A catalogue published in October divided the works into five categories: painting, woodblock prints, new year's pictures, cartoons, and sculpture.^[16] The editors strictly avoided separating Western-style painting from works executed in the traditional Chinese medium of ink on paper or silk, but more recent accounts assert that only twenty-seven of the artists—less than 10 percent—exhibited traditional Chinese paintings.^[17]

In publishing the catalogue, the stated interest of the authorities was to reveal the gloomy outlook of Old China and the brilliant future of New China.^[18] Most compositions were figural, representing such themes as land reform, anti-Japanese parades, military heroes, and industrial workers. Although many artists who had previously worked in the Nationalist-controlled areas were not particularly skilled at depicting workers, peasants, or soldiers, their willingness to participate in this patriotic activity was more important to all concerned than the awkward results of their efforts. A further goal of the exhibition was to present successful models of the new art for artists and art administrators from all over the nation.

One exception to the generally poor artistic performance of non-Communist artists was Dong Xiwen's Liberation of Beijing , a brightly colored painting in the nianhua manner (fig. 13). Dong was a professor at the National Beiping Arts College who had been hired by Xu Beihong. This work was not his first effort at pro-Communist propaganda, for he had earlier complied with the request of underground Communist students to design a woodcut handbill, "The Liberation Army Is the People's Savior," in preparation for the PLA entry into Beijing.^[19] Most such nianhua were painted by Communist artists from the liberated zones, however. Hong Bo's Joining the Army of 1947, for example, aimed at recruiting peasants for the Communist army, was a bright, cheerful composition strongly influenced by folk art (see fig. 7). And Yan Han, a veteran of the Yan'an nianhua movement, exhibited a handsome polychromatic woodcut on the theme of land reform, Down with Feudalism (fig. 14). Trained at the National Hangzhou Arts Academy in the 1930s, Yan was more fluent in Western idioms, as illustrated here, than in the folk print styles he adopted after the Yan'an Talks.

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Figure 13
Dong Xiwen, Liberation of Beijing,
1949, ink and color on paper.

Building a Party Structure in the Academies

Jiang Feng had been administrator of an artistic movement in the liberated zones that had considerable attainments. His collaborators, the printmakers Gu Yuan, Yan Han, and Hu Yichuan, among others, may have been responsible for innovations in the new art, particularly the effective way in which the aesthetic principles of folk prints were combined with revolutionary themes, but Jiang Feng certainly used his status to encourage such successful efforts.^[20] The novelist Ding Ling recalled that when Jiang Feng visited her in Yan'an his conversation was mainly about his students and issues in art.^[21] The role of educator and promoter of new art was one he would continue to play after 1949, as he abandoned his own artistic endeavors for a career in administration, teaching, and writing.

In September 1949, Jiang Feng was transferred to the National Arts

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Figure 14
Yan Han, Down with Feudalism, 1948,
woodblock print, 28 cm × 37 cm.

Academy in Hangzhou as vice-director and secretary of the party committee,^[22] a combination of administrative and CCP posts that gave him executive control of China's most prestigious art college. Jiang's southern assignment has been attributed to Xu Beihong's unwillingness to work with him,^[23] a situation probably influenced by both theoretical and personal factors. Jiang Feng disliked Xu's friend Tian Han,^[24] and his 1946 article in which he castigated the idea of bringing Western elements into Chinese painting might be viewed as an attack on Xu's Westernizing guohua .^[25]

The problems the Communist administrators faced in Hangzhou and nearby Shanghai were far more serious than those in Beijing, where the art academy staff was largely sympathetic to the Communists. Between 1949 and 1952, therefore, the task of reorganizing the key Nationalist art school, that in Hangzhou, was more challenging and probably more important than a leadership post in Beijing. In any event, Jiang retained an important party position at the Beijing academy throughout his two years in Hangzhou.

At the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, a new Communist party structure was created to replace the military administration. Although Xu Beihong remained director, the core of the party administration was a "five-man small group" consisting of veterans of the Yan'an woodcut movement. The group was headed by Hu Yichuan, secretary of the newly established Communist party branch committee; its remaining members were vice-secretary Luo Gongliu, Wang Zhaowen, Zhang Ding, and Jiang Feng, who was in Hangzhou.^[26]

Jiang Feng thus held high positions in the Art Workers Association, which oversaw the making and publicizing of art, and in the academic world, which trained new artists. The two structures were administratively distinct, though functionally related during the period 1949-1952. The Central Academy of Fine Arts was administered by the Ministry of Culture, a part of the civil government. The Art Workers Association fell under the FLAC, which was directed by the Propaganda Department of the CCP. A major distinction between the two organizations was that the AWA had very few paying jobs to offer; it was, in theory, a voluntary organization in which most members, and even its officers, received their salaries, housing, and other benefits from another work unit. Nevertheless, the AWA was crucial as a coordinating structure for national artistic activity and as an arm of the CCP. Jiang, as a key policy interpreter in both organizations, was in a position to mold the shape of China's new art, and to this task he was firmly committed. He immediately set about implementing the new arts policy outlined in his speech: training art cadres, remolding the thought of non-Communist artists, and eradicating the market for popular art of a feudal nature.

In practice, arts policy during the first decade of the PRC can be broken into two general periods. During the formative years of the new government, from 1949 to 1952, artists were required to popularize their art and to serve the people in practical ways, such as in land reform activities. In the 1949- 1950 school year, for instance, about 95 percent of faculty and students at the East China campus of CAFA (as the Hangzhou Arts Academy was then called) labored among the peasants.^[27] This period was dominated by the revolutionary ideals and aesthetics of Communist artists such as Jiang Feng. As for academic artists, they remained without much influence during this early period, even despite the new government's efforts to avoid alienating them.

From 1953 to 1957, a period that corresponds to China's first Five-Year Plan, specialization and the raising of artistic standards came to be emphasized.^[28] With the adoption of many aspects of the Soviet administrative system, Soviet painting and sculpture were now viewed as models for the new socialist art. Because Soviet socialist realism is founded on academic traditions of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European painting, there was no immediate conflict between the goals of the new art establishment and the

inclinations, training, and talent of non-Communist artists at Xu Beihong's academy.