National Exhibitions of 1972-1975

The 1972 exhibition, the first official exhibition of the Cultural Revolution, was unprecedented in both organization and the nature of the works exhibited. Beginning in 1971, Gao Jingde visited the local art centers twice, first for the difficult task of initiating exhibition submissions and later to survey progress. As a result of his discussions with local leaders, artists were returned from farms and factories to their studios to prepare submissions. Many recall that the revival of official sponsorship for art, restrictive though it was, and the liberation of artists from their years of manual labor led artists to work diligently and even enthusiastically on their paintings. By the time works were shipped to Beijing in March 1972, Gao Jingde was confident that his standards would be met.

A jury of well-known professional artists, including the printmaker Gu Yuan, the illustrator Shao Yu, and the cartoonist Ying Tao, was formed to make the final selection from the large numbers of pictures submitted by provincial authorities. However, the dual mandate of high technical standards and "serving the people" led to an odd combination of professional and amateur works. Despite Gao's efforts to include some professional artists, the Cultural Revolution's emphasis on proletarian art by workers, peasants, and soldiers ensured that most of the successful submissions were by amateurs.

The inherent contradiction between the technically weak but politically correct entries of workers, peasants, and soldiers, on the one hand, and Gao's mandate to seek high standards, on the other, was resolved by forming "painting correction groups." In this system, a prominent young oil painting professional accompanied the paintings submitted by each major geographic region when they were shipped to the capital. When an amateur work that might have interesting subject matter but was poorly painted was criticized by jury members, officials, and other artists, the professional from the artist's own region would "correct" it, simply repainting problematic sections. If the officials

still found the work inadequate, artists from other regions might complete the repainting. Among the professionals selected for this task were the most highly skilled realists of the younger generation. They included, from Beijing, Jin Shangyi, a young oil painting professor at CAFA trained by Maksimov; from Shanghai, Chen Yifei, who had studied at the Shanghai Art College; from Wuhan, Tang Xiaohe, a graduate of the Hubei Art Academy; from Kunming, Sun Jingbo, a graduate of the CAFA middle school; from Guangzhou, Chen Yan'ning, a graduate of the Guangzhou Academy of Arts; from Qinghai, Zhu Naizheng, a talented CAFA graduate; and from Shenyang, Guang Tingbo, from the Lu Xun Academy of Art. Several other Beijing artists were tapped for special assignments. Most of the artists were recalled from labor camps or prison to participate in the exhibition.

It was widely accepted among Cultural Revolution-era artists that images of Mao should be "red, smooth, and luminescent." Many of these conventions were developed during the Red Guard art movement and go beyond any oil painting conventions imported from the Soviet Union. While Soviet socialist realism is still the most evident stylistic source for such compositions, details of color and texture may also be related to the more elegant of preliberation new year's pictures. Cool colors were to be avoided; Mao's flesh should be modeled in red and other warm tones. Conspicuous displays of brushwork should not be seen; Mao's face should be smooth in appearance. The entire composition should be bright, and should be illuminated in such a way as to imply that Mao himself was the primary source of light. If Mao were in the center of a group of people, all surfaces that faced him should appear to be illuminated. In this way, slogans such as "Mao is the sun in our hearts" could be made tangible.

He Kongde's Gutian Meeting (fig. 123), which was prominently hung in the oil painting section of the 1972 exhibition, does not specifically fulfill all the requirements of the "red, smooth, and luminescent" formulation, for the artist, unlike many graduates of Maksimov's class, never abandoned the loose, textural handling of paint common to many Soviet-trained Chinese artists. Nevertheless, he was particularly favored by the art administrators because he combined two important qualities: as a member of the People's Liberation Army, he could be considered a worker-peasant-soldier, but he was, at the same time, a professionally trained history painter. In Gutian Meeting , the artist made few concessions to Cultural Revolution styles: he did not banish cool colors from his palette, modify his rough brushwork, or employ irrational sources of illumination. Even so, the work does not contradict the underlying aesthetic of the Cultural Revolution, for red tonalities dominate, Mao is the most brightly lit figure in the composition, and the oil painting correction group repainted Mao's face so that it is more smoothly rendered than the rest of the painting.

Image not available

Figure 123
He Kongde, Gutian Meeting, 1972, oil
on canvas, 186 cm × 360 cm, Chinese
People's Revolutionary Military
Museum.

The emphasis on rusticated urban youth, particularly in the 1972 oil painting exhibition, left the final selection of paintings sent to Beijing with comparatively few portraits of Chairman Mao. He Kongde's Gutian Meeting was prominently hung in the main room of the gallery in the 1972 oils show. A monumental work by the young Wuhan artists Tang Xiaohe and Cheng Li depicted Mao Zedong on the occasion of his famous 1966 swim in the Yangzi near Wuhan (plate 10). This theme became a mandatory decoration for all China's swimming pools. Gao Jingde also commissioned another, more explicitly political portrait, We Must Implement the Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the Finish (fig. 111).^[132] In the interest of quality and speed, he managed to free a group of professional artists from nearby labor camps—Hou Yimin, Deng Shu, Jin Shangyi, Zhan Jianjun, Luo Gongliu, Yuan Hao, and Yang Lin'gui—to execute this reworking of a Red Guard composition discussed earlier in this chapter (fig. 110). All but one of these artists were trained in the Soviet mode and was a teacher or alumnus of CAFA. The painting lacks the fervor of the original version, but it is far more consistent in technical

quality. A major iconographic change is that the Cultural Revolution leadership has been removed from the composition so that Mao crosses the bridge alone. Zhou Enlai reportedly insisted that his own image be removed from the painting, which may have precipitated the revision. Most artists who participated in the 1972 exhibition testify to their great joy at being allowed to paint, even under such peculiar circumstances.

National exhibitions were conducted annually between 1972 and Mao's death in 1976. In 1973, the national exhibition of serial pictures and guohua was held by the State Council. Organizing the guohua section of the exhibition proved more difficult than the preparatory work for the oil painting show the previous year. First, local authorities generally believed that guohua was part of the "four olds" to be eradicated by the Cultural Revolution. Only after Gao received explicit authorization from Wang Mantian to permit guohua painting was he able to persuade local art circles to submit such works. As was the case with oil painting, a painting correction group was assembled to help prepare the exhibition. It, too, consisted of academically trained guohua painters from each of China's major regions, including: from Hangzhou, Fang Zengxian, a guohua figure painting professor at the Zhejiang academy; from Xi'an, Liu Wenxi, a graduate of the ZAFA guohua figure painting program; from Guangzhou, Wu Qizhong, a graduate of the Guangzhou academy; from Shenyang, Xu Yong, a professor at the Lu Xun academy; and from Beijing, Zhou Sicong, a graduate of the guohua figure painting program of CAFA.^[133]

Faulty sections of a work painted in permanent ink on paper could not be overpainted, of course, as they might be in paint on canvas. The correctors were thus required to make new paintings based on the amateurs' compositions. Zhou Sicong, for example, recalls being assigned to fix a painting by a worker in a shoe factory. The amateur artist had attempted to depict the actress of a model opera trying on her new ballet slippers at the factory. The theme was appealing to authorities at all levels: not only did it flatter Jiang Qing and her model operas, but it also documented how the shoe factory was contributing to the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately, the subject was difficult for an amateur to paint with any semblance of anatomical accuracy. Zhou therefore completely repainted the work, based on the worker's composition, and it was exhibited under the worker's name. The relatively few flower paintings in the exhibition had to fulfill strict iconographic requirements: because Wang Mantian found boulders, the conventional companion for blossoms in Chinese painting, unrevolutionary, their absence from Cultural Revolution guohua paintings is almost total.

The most beautiful guohua exhibited were relatively traditional: Guan Shanyue's plum painting (without rocks) and coastal landscape; and Yangzi River landscapes (with power lines or steel bridges) by the Nanjing painters

Image not available

Figure 124
Shaanxi Municipal Art Creation Group,
The Hearts of Yan'an's Children Turn
Toward Chairman Mao, 1973, ink and
color on paper.

Song Wenzhi and Wei Zixi.^[134] Most typical of the period, however, was a collaborative figure painting by the Shaanxi Municipal Art Creation Group entitled The Hearts of Yan'an's Children Turn Toward Chairman Mao (fig. 124). The work bears the unmistakable stylistic traces of Liu Wenxi (b. 1933), a Xi'an artist who had been two classes ahead of Gao Jingde in art school and who served on the painting correction group, even though Liu states that it is largely the work of a little-known painter named Zhou Guangmin (b. 1938).^[135] It depicts Mao receiving a group of peasants who have come to the capital from Yan'an. Since Yan'an themes were considered part of the regional

territory of Xi'an artists, the work combines two desirable subjects: a portrait of Chairman Mao and a scene based on the artist's life experience.

Trained in the caimohua socialist realist figure painting program at the East China campus of CAFA, Liu Wenxi went on to develop a personal style more closely related to the crisp nianbua aesthetic than to the xieyi aspirations of Shanghai and Hangzhou guohua painters. His guohua figures are carefully modeled with rich flesh tones and achieve a pronounced three-dimensionality. Such features are evident in figure 124. Moreover, as in Liu's own work, the garments are less heavily shaded than they might be in an oil painting, but are outlined with thick, black lines and have a similar volumetric quality. Although principles of Western perspective dominate the interior setting of figure 124, the background is paler and plainer than it might be in an oil painting. Liu was, in the heyday of this style, one of China's most technically competent socialist realist guohua figure painters, and if this painting does not come from his hand, it certainly shows his influence among Xi'an painters.

In October 1974, a large exhibition at the Chinese National Art Gallery celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the PRC. On this occasion Jiang Qing, then involved in a power struggle with the cancer-stricken Zhou Enlai, stepped up her personal involvement with the visual arts. She personally inspected the gallery before the opening of the exhibition (she did not do so for the 1972 exhibition) and spent most of one night studying the display. Members of the Politburo attended the opening, thereby giving unprecedented political importance to the event.^[136]

Shen Jiawei's painting Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland (fig. 125) reportedly won Jiang Qing's enthusiastic approval.^[137] Shen was, like Tang Muli, a rusticated urban youth, but because his job was on a military farm in Beidahuang he was considered a soldier. Born in 1949 in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, Shen was one of the four hundred thousand middle school graduates sent in 1968 to farm in Heilongjiang. He was assigned to the second regiment of the fourth division of the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps, which had its headquarters in Jiamusi. His farm, with a population of ten or twenty thousand demobilized soldiers, rightists, and rusticated urban youths, was located near the Muleng River in the eastern corner of Heilongjiang, an area of continual border conflicts with the USSR. Among the many young people in Heilongjiang were some who had aspired to enter art academies before the colleges were closed, including about thirty graduates of the CAFA middle school.

With the national leadership's decision to sponsor national art exhibitions, the authorities in Heilongjiang, like those elsewhere, began organizing painters. Hao Boyi, a young oil painter and printmaker who was himself trained by Chao Mei during the first great population influx of the Great Leap Forward,

Image not available

Figure 125
Shen Jiawei, Standing Guard for Our
Great Motherland, 1974, oil on canvas,
collection of the artist.

was assigned to recruit and supervise the young soldier-artists. In 1971, he ordered a select group of young farmers to attend an art creation class in Jiamusi.

Hao Boyi taught printmaking in the Beidahuang style, and at least one of his pupils has gone on to become a professional printmaker.^[138] Students who wished to work in other media experimented and taught one another. The program continued for the next five years, with artists dividing their time between art work in Jiamusi and manual labor on their farms. Heilongjiang prints were shown in most major exhibitions of the 1970s, and many were published in Chinese Literature and other magazines for distribution abroad. Shen Jiawei entered the group in 1973 and produced his vision of a heroic border guard during the next year. Because he was singled out by Jiang Qing, Shen Jiawei had an experience similar to that of Liu Chunhua. Rocketed to fame on the basis of his first major painting, he remained a celebrity for two years. After Jiang Qing's arrest, however, his reputation now tarnished, he spent most of the rest of the decade trying to prove to the art world that he really did have some artistic talent.^[139]

In 1975, the leading national art magazine of the late Cultural Revolution period, Meishu ziliao (Art Material), published an article in which Shen explained how he had come to create Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland .^[140] The overall theme of his painting, he wrote, was suggested by a patriotic song widely heard during the period. In 1973, he participated in a class for amateur artists, where he was given an opportunity to visit the Wusuli River. There he was permitted to climb a watchtower where soldiers were defending the Chinese border against the Soviets. The spectacular natural scenery reinforced the importance of the soldiers' patriotic duty.

Upon his return to the military camp, his sketch of the scene was approved by local authorities, who gave him permission to collect more material during a future visit to the site. His composition was guided further by principles of Chairman Mao, such as: "Our requirement is the unification of politics and art, the unification of contents and form, the unification of revolutionary political contents and the most perfect artistic form," and "The life reflected in artistic and literary works can be and should be loftier, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, and more ideal than ordinary actual life, thus it will be more universal [pubian ]."^[141] Shen claims additional inspiration from the study of revolutionary model operas, which emphasized heroic characters. Classmates, further, suggested that one soldier could be made more prominent by placing him against an empty sky. His height was emphasized by lowering the railing and by aligning his head and feet with the lines of architectural recession. This construction was indeed perfectly in keeping with one of Jiang Qing's revolutionary aesthetic principles, known as the "three prominences." As discussed in Meishu ziliao in 1973, the three prominences required that, in

figures, artists emphasize the positive; that, in positive figures, they emphasize the heroic; and that, in heroic characters, they emphasize the central figure.^[142]

The official art of the Cultural Revolution was stylistically and thematically uniform. The rather limited taste of Jiang Qing, to whom all art authorities ultimately answered, was the primary reason for this weakness. The standards set by the 1972, 1973, and 1974 exhibitions dominated the Chinese art world until 1979, where we will end our narrative. Artists who mastered the Cultural Revolution style, moreover, found it extremely difficult to shake off in later years. Several oil painters have complained that their eyes were ruined by the red-hued palette they used throughout the decade. Many of the figure paintings and landscape studies painted in the 1980s by professors at CAFA, for example, represent the artists' efforts to retrain themselves to paint colors as they see them.

Some artists, particularly those in pragmatic Shanghai, have confessed that their primary goal in painting was to please the leadership. Tang Muli, a well-educated, thoughtful boy from an artistic family, viewed painting as an art free of the dangers of self-expression; such was the dire intellectual and spiritual state of painting in China in the mid-1970s. The official exhibitions, nevertheless, did demonstrate high levels of technical accomplishment—a fact attributable to the training provided by the national art academies in the 1950s. Gao Jingde was a product of this system, and within the thematic limitations imposed upon him he promoted academic technical standards throughout the nation.

Jiang Qing, apparently unaware that her Cultural Revolution art was actually a form of the academic painting she had earlier castigated, set about reorganizing the national art academies in 1973. On orders from the Culture Group of the State Council, she was appointed director of the newly created May Seventh College of Arts. The art school was to be on the former CAFA campus and to employ some of its professors. A temporary party administrative team was appointed. Zhong Qiuyuan directed the team; Sun Zixi, a teacher at the middle school, was vice-director. Other team members included former administrators Gu Yuan, Zhang Qiren, Wu Biduan, Li Yiran, and Liu Wei.^[143]

In November, many art professors returned to a strangely reconstituted institution. The new curriculum was three years in length, students were required to be children of poor workers, peasants, or soldiers, and all instruction was to incorporate manual labor with the practice of art.^[144] The first class entered, without examination, in March 1974. Jiang Qing's experiment was later considered a massive failure, although one of the students from that class, Xu Bing, became a star of the late-1980s avant-garde movement. Meanwhile, artistic activity of a very different sort was occurring under the auspices of Zhou Enlai and the Administration of Foreign Trade.