Innovation

As older artists strove to reestablish the art bureaucracy, they found themselves weighed down by the burden of the past. Zhou Yang issued a public apology for his role in the Anti-Rightist campaign. Although the suffering that all had shared at the hands of the Red Guard tempered old animosities, conflicts between Jiang Feng, Cai Ruohong, and Hua Junwu were almost inevitable. When the political shackles were removed from the art world, no innovations sprang forth. As though permanently molded by the pressure of the past, exhibitions overflowed with works painted twenty years before, or ones that looked as though they might have been.

If this backward-looking trend was obvious in official art, it was even clearer in private painting. Even the most talented guohua artists of Beijing and Shanghai failed to produce major work. A few older artists, most notably Li Keran and Cheng Shifa, had continued to develop during the Cultural Revolution. Most of those who survived that tormented decade, however, stagnated, an unsurprising result of the dreadful psychological pressure under which they had lived. When they picked up their brushes again, many simply repeated successful compositions of the 1950s and 1960s. Publications of the early 1980s were devoted to retrospectives aimed at rehabilitating the reputations of guohua artists who had been condemned during the Cultural Revolution.

Nevertheless, three important trends appeared in the works of young and middle-aged artists in 1979. Each was developed in reaction to past standards; each was related to foreign art, but was used for particularly Chinese ends; and each marked the beginning of a movement that would sweep the nation in the 1980s. The three trends were an Art Deco-inspired figure painting style of largely ornamental intent; a new sympathetic realism identified with "Scar" literature, which lamented the personal tragedies of the Cultural Revolution; and the politically engaged modernism of the Stars. The artists in the first group, the most conservative, were middle-aged academically trained painters; those in the second group were mainly rusticated youth who had become professional artists; and those in the third were nonprofessionals, including former Red Guard, who challenged the art world from outside its territory. The fullest development of each of these trends occurred in the 1980s, but we will briefly describe their origins.

The most important early exemplar of the decorative school of painting was Yuan Yunsheng. Early in 1979, the Ministry of Light Industry commissioned a group of artists to execute interior decorations for the new Beijing airport. The project was under the general direction of Zhang Ding, director of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. He enlisted forty-odd artists from seventeen cities to collaborate on the project, which was to take the form of painted or ceramic murals. The thematic sources of the decorations were varied, ranging from literary texts to minority festivals. Although the artists came from all over China, most of them had some connection with CAAC. The project was considered sufficiently important that its opening ceremonies were attended by Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, and Gu Mu, as well as by officials of the Ministries of Light Industry and Culture.

It is likely that Yuan Yunsheng became involved in the project through the recommendation of his brother Yuan Yunpu, a professor at CAAC. Yuan Yunsheng had studied with Dong Xiwen in the late 1950s and early 1960s, had been declared a rightist student, and, upon graduation, had been assigned to a job in distant Jilin province. Yuan's airport murals were the first major project he had undertaken since his 1962 graduation picture, Memories of a Waterside Village , a work that was criticized during the political movements preceding the Cultural Revolution, stolen, and eventually lost. The linear style he developed for the airport project is related to Dong Xiwen's preliberation Kazak Herdswoman (fig. 34). It was thus linked to ancient Chinese mural decorations, to painting in the "national tradition," to the academy styles of the 1950s, and to what modern Western art Yuan had seen as a student in Beijing and in exile in Jilin province.^[35]

His mural, Water Splashing Festival (fig. 134), is typical of the new apo-litical painting for interior design. Here, compositional beauty is the primary pictorial motivation.^[36] Linear patterns dominate the surface. Human figures

Image not available

Figure 134
Yuan Yunsheng, Water Splashing Festi-
val, 1979, acrylic on canvas mural,
Beijing International Airport.

are elongated and distorted for aesthetic purposes, political themes replaced by a celebration of humankind and the natural world. This style of painting should probably be traced to the Art Deco movement of the 1930s,^[37] but after its suppression in China for many decades, this innocuous decorative modernism assumed new meaning. For artists and critics trained in socialist realist styles and subjects, work such as Yuan's was most notable for its avoidance of explicit political subject matter and its distortion of the human form. Although traces of Soviet socialist realism may be found in the well-muscled forms of Yuan's figures, the work is an open rejection of those values and of the standards of the Cultural Revolution. An issue that later embroiled the artist in controversy was his substitution, on the far righthand wall, of nude women bathing for the clothed figures that had been approved when his draft was submitted to the arts authorities. Whether the artist meant it or not, his nudes constituted a "formalist" or "rightist" challenge to Cultural Revolution politi-

cal standards. Thematically, of course, such images were justified, for the subject of the mural was a bathing festival in which everyone did remove their clothing. By the following year, however, some party authorities had concluded that the mural was obscene, and the part with the naked women was boarded over.^[38]

Most artists believe that even Mao understood the aesthetic value of the nude human form, and those who would ban nudes are considered leftist extremists. As we saw in chapter 5, Culture Ministry officials banned the drawing of nude models in the academy shortly before the Cultural Revolution.^[39] According to senior art administrators, Mao overturned this decision. Meishu fenglei quoted him as saying, "Male and female and old and young nude models are the necessary basic training for painting and sculpture. Not having them won't do. Feudal thought, the banning of [this practice], is inappropriate. Even if some bad things happen, that's not important. For the study of art, don't worry about small sacrifices."^[40] Perhaps he later changed his mind, for the nude remained banned until 1977. In the late 1970s, Mao's approval, qualified as it was, was raised as justification for reviving the practice. In such a context, CAFA administrators could portray opponents of the nude as being more leftist than Mao, a political stance reserved for Jiang Qing and her allies. Depicting the nude, even in a provocative manner, is thus considered a politically healthy activity in most academic circles.

A number of Yuan Yunsheng's contemporaries, including some who claim to have invented the style, worked in a similar brightly colored linear fashion on thick Chinese paper. Among the most notable were Ding Shaoguang, a 1962 graduate of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. Ding claims to have acquired his taste for decorative figure painting from the CAAC teacher Zhang Guangyu, who worked before liberation as a book designer and illustrator. He attributes the interest in Modigliani that is particularly evident in his work to Pang Xunqin, who continued to teach at CAAC after being declared a rightist.^[41] Another influential artist of this school was Jiang Tiefeng, a 1964 graduate of Huang Yongyu's printmaking studio at CAFA who was similarly interested in book design and illustration. By 1979, Ding, Jiang, and a small group of academically trained artists who had worked in Yunnan since the 1960s were recognized as a regional school. They specialized in local themes executed in this decorative style. Jiang Tiefeng, like Yuan Yunsheng, claims to have been profoundly influenced by the mural paintings of Dunhuang and Yonglegong.^[42] In 1980, the group executed a large painting for the Yunnan Room of the Great Hall of the People. Two key figures in the Yunnan school soon left for California, Ding Shaoguang in 1980, and Jiang Tiefeng in 1983. Yuan Yunsheng moved from Beijing to New York in 1982. Their linear figurative style was adopted all over China for decoration of interior spaces, especially hotels and banks.

Image not available

Figure 135
Gao Xiaohua, Why?, 1979, oil on
canvas.

The second movement of the late 1970s may be labeled "new realism,"^[43] its most famous proponents being students who entered the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1977.^[44] Sichuan had seen some of the worst violence of the Cultural Revolution, with hundreds of citizens reportedly killed in clashes between Red Guards and the People's Liberation Army.^[45] Like all artists of their generation, these students had seen the ideals with which they had been indoctrinated as children smashed by the political turmoil of their adolescence; they had also, like most of their contemporaries, learned to paint in the socialist realist style of the late Cultural Revolution. Some were also influenced by the photographic realism of Chen Yifei and Wei Jingshan. What was new, therefore, was less their style than their imagery: they depicted not the glories of socialism but the human cost of the Cultural Revolution. Cheng Conglin's X Day X Month, 1968 , for example, depicts the carnage following a Red Guard battle.^[46] We reproduce Gao Xiaohua's Why ? of 1979 (fig. 135). In this work two young men, one wearing an armband inscribed "Rebel Faction," guard a street corner

against attack. One mans a machine gun, the other, his head bandaged, clutches a rifle. Two comrades may be seen, one idling away the time playing solitaire; another, wounded and covered in a Red Guard banner, lies on the sidewalk near a storm sewer. The boys look exhausted, but they obviously intend to fight on. And for what purpose?

Gao Xiaohua, the son of a high-ranking military officer, had worked beside his father in a labor camp in 1970. He was later able to gain a position in the PLA himself, where he became a staff artist. He participated in the 1972 national exhibition, and later became a military photographer. Such experience may have facilitated his shockingly realistic rendering of the machine gun in Why ?, a piece of equipment most artists would not have had the leisure to photograph or study so carefully. Admitted to art school in 1977, he began work on this painting in the summer of 1978.

His work, like that of Cheng Conglin and their classmate Luo Zhongli, challenged the status quo because it was the wrong kind of realism. Never before had artists been permitted to express their criticism of any aspect of the Communist experience in paint. The history of Gao's painting exemplifies the uncertain standards of the period. He wrote in 1979 that his draft had already passed through three "historical periods" in the eight months since its inception. When the draft was completed in September 1978, people told him that by revealing the "black side" of things he had entered "forbidden territory." In the next period, the Tiananmen demonstration to commemorate Zhou Enlai was given a positive reevaluation, and the literature, drama, and film worlds began revealing the evils of the Gang of Four. Thus, for a time, the work was fashionable. Finally, in 1979, with the country now concentrating on the Four Modernizations, artistic subject matter was expected to switch to modern and positive themes. Gao lamented that art could no longer depict tragedies or reveal the dark side of things and that his painting was already out of date. He concluded by asking why this flower, thorns and all, should not bloom along with the others?^[47]

Gao Xiaohua's painting is closely related to "Scar" literature, so named after a short story about the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. The most influential example of this art appeared not on the canvases of Sichuan painters, but in lianhuanhua form, the visual art most closely tied to literature. Three young painters, Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian, and Li Bing, who had spent most of the Cultural Revolution with Shen Jiawei on the military farms of Heilong-jiang, emerged as the most influential artists in this genre. In 1979 they submitted a set of illustrations and an adaptation of the short story "Maple" to Lianhuanhuabao (Serial Pictures Gazette), which, like all periodicals at that time, was state run. The story's narrator, a young high school teacher, describes the tragic deaths of two of his students, the young lovers Lu Danfeng (whose given name means Crimson Maple; fig. 136) and Li Honggang, as a

Image not available

Figure 136
Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian, and Li Bing,
"Maple," lianhuanhua, 1979, after a
short story by Zheng Yi, published in
Lianhuanhuabao.

result of battles between contending Red Guard factions. Despite their passion, the two broke ties when their political groups split. After a decisive and particularly bloody clash, Danfeng threw herself from the roof of a building rather than surrender to Honggang's victorious troops. The story closes with Hong-gang's arrest for her murder and his public execution. Red maple leaves appear throughout the story as tragic images of Danfeng and her fate.^[48]

The artists wrote that they characterized the hero and heroine as typical children of the time, diligent students who knew little of worldly matters. Dan-feng and Honggang were typical as well in that they threw themselves totally into Mao's Red Guard movement, even at the cost of their lives. The artists strove for complete historical accuracy, hoping only that their pictures would not suffer the same fate as Dong Xiwen's Founding of the Nation . Cultural Revolution slogans and benevolent-looking posters of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing served as backgrounds to the figures.^[49] In the changing climate of late 1979, these images of the now-out-of-favor leaders were considered too neutral, and this issue of Lianhuanhuabao was banned. The journal editors ignored the order prohibiting sale, however, and apparently got away with their disobedience. The controversy caused sales to skyrocket, making the paintings among the best-known of the post-Cultural Revolution period.

A third example of the new realism from the Sichuan academy, Father by Luo Zhongli, became notorious in 1980 largely for its ambiguity (fig. 137).^[50] This enormous rendering of an old peasant, which is almost z.5 meters high, is clearly influenced by the style of the American photo-realist Chuck Close. The juxtaposition of such a postmodern mode of painting with standard Communist subject matter is a bit perplexing to the Western viewer. Few Chinese observers, however, would have been aware of the stylistic source; to them, the work most closely resembled the enormous portraits of Chairman Mao that ornamented every public space in the nation. Replacing the ageless Chairman Mao with a weather-beaten man who has suffered from his work was more than a bit mischievous, however. While Luo's challenge to the status quo was encouraged by the administrators of his school, it was opposed by the print-maker Li Shaoyan, who suggested that Luo add a ballpoint pen behind the peasant's ear; then the viewer would know that the subject was a progressive contemporary peasant, not an oppressed preliberation one. Such critical dialogue is evidence that the Yan'an veterans who continued to regulate art either failed to understand the younger generation's challenge to their legacy or sought to waylay them by pretending to miss the point.

The most notorious artistic event of 1979 was the "Stars" (Xingxing ) exhibition, the title of which was probably a naughty reference to a 1930 article by Mao Zedong that was often quoted during the Cultural Revolution: "A tiny spark [xingxing zhi huo ] can set the steppes ablaze."^[51] Open calls for "artistic democracy" filled the press, leading to the proliferation of quasi-official exhibi-

Image not available

Figure 137
Luo Zhongli, Father, 1980, oil on can-
vas, 240 cm × 165 cm, Chinese National
Art Gallery.

tions and such experiments as the publication of "Maple" in a state-run periodical. On September 27, 1979, during a preparatory display for the Fifth National Art Exhibition, planned to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the People's Republic, an unprecedented incident occurred.^[52] A group of young amateur artists hung their work on the fence and in the garden outside the Chinese National Art Gallery. Because the spot happened to be near a major bus stop, the pictures immediately drew huge crowds of spectators. The backgrounds of the organizers were somewhat different from those of artists associated with the quasi-official exhibitions; although most were children of party officials or high-ranking intellectuals, few were academy-trained or official artists. The participating artists, moreover, seem to have had different motivations: they did not gain official sanction, but instead openly defied both the art establishment and the government. While much of the exhibited art was naive, the event was politically and conceptually quite sophisticated. Wang Keping, one of the organizers, recalls that the point of staging the event at the National Gallery during an important exhibition was to show that artists

could emerge both from within the academy and from outside it. Possibly inspired by Moscow's dissident "bulldozer exhibition" of five years before, the demolition of which had been reported in the official translations of foreign news reports available to cadres, these artists presented themselves as dissidents. They did not seek to expand the boundaries of the official art world from within; rather, their intention was to invade from without. This effort attracted the attention of the art world, the masses, and the police.

According to Wang Keping, Jiang Feng was sympathetic to the group and gave permission to store their paintings in a lounge inside the National Gallery at night. After they set up their work on the second day, thirty policemen arrived to arrest them for the illegal posting of bills. When the artists explained that the Chinese constitution guaranteed artistic freedom, the police departed. On the third day, the artists arrived to find their spot occupied by five hundred policemen^[53] and a sign prohibiting exhibitions. They tried to regroup at the nearby CAFA middle school but found it full of policemen as well. When they attempted to remove their paintings from the National Gallery, they were prevented from doing so by still more policemen. The swelling crowd began arguing with the police, who finally withdrew. Before long, a crowd of hoodlums arrived to harass the artists. One of the artists believes that the hoodlums were temporarily released from jail for this very purpose. A CAA official finally persuaded the police to remove the hoodlums from the scene.^[54]

With the exhibition closed down, the artists posted a notice on Democracy Wall that if the police did not apologize for infringing their rights they would hold a protest march on October 1, their intent presumably being to mar the national day celebrations. No apology arrived, and on the appointed day a group of about seven hundred people set forth from Democracy Wall toward the municipal government buildings. Police blocked them from marching across Tiananmen Square but allowed them to continue by another route. Wang Keping recalls that most of the demonstrators disappeared when the police came. The artists finally reached the offices of the Municipal Party Committee, where Ma Desheng delivered a lecture from the steps. Huang Rui and Xu Wenli negotiated with bureaucrats inside, but no conclusion was reached. The matter remained unresolved until November, when the group was allowed to mount an exhibition at Beihai Park.

This event, linked with the Democracy Wall movement, was one of the few examples of dissident art in the first three decades of the PRC.^[55] The organization and timing of the exhibition reveal a remarkable sensitivity to political currents and a marvelous sense of humor. Wang Keping commented that their ragtag demonstration drew so much attention from the foreign media that journalists all but neglected to report an important national day speech.^[56] None of the artists was arrested, and the group became internationally famous.^[57] Although less polished than his later work, Wang Keping's

Image not available

Figure 138
Wang Keping, Idol, 1979, wooden sculpture.

Idol , which seems to combine an image of the late Mao with that of a corpulent Buddhist deity of late-Tang or Song-dynasty style, typifies the strongly political tone of the group's activity (fig. 138).

Events of this sort came to an end by 1981 with renewed political pressure on the arts. Nevertheless, the "new wave" or "avant-garde" movements of the late 1980s look to the Stars as models. The most important features of these successor groups are their rejection of official art, be it traditional guohua or Soviet socialist realism, and their enthusiasm for Western modernism or post-modernism. Although these groups initially proved less successful than the

Stars at attracting foreign attention, many individuals have found collectors and supporters abroad. In China, more to the point, they have often stirred up as much controversy as the Stars did a decade earlier.^[58]