The Anti-Rightist Campaign
Just as art students rallied to defend Jiang Feng, in the spring of 1957 college students at Beijing University demonstrated on behalf of Hu Feng, whom Mao had imprisoned two years earlier. Antiparty posters and demonstrations were widespread.[39] The Hundred Flowers campaign turned against Mao himself by the end of May. Either in alarm at the unexpected vehemence of the anti-Communist feeling remaining in China or as a cynical response to a well-laid trap, on June 8 Mao Zedong and the other party authorities moved to silence the critics they had flushed into the open. A nationwide purge of intellectuals and party officials began in the summer of 1957. Jiang Feng was named "number one rightist in the art world" and accused of leading an antiparty group. Yan Han was identified as "number two rightist." Ministry of Culture officials took over the party administration of CAFA in order to supervise the political campaign. The academy became a national model for implementation of the Anti-Rightist campaign in the art world.
The case against Jiang Feng, who was stripped of his titles and expelled from the party in June, was set out in two meetings conducted on July 28 and 30, 1957, by the Ministry of Culture.[40] The weeks between Jiang Feng's purge and the formal statement of his crime were presumably devoted to convincing his colleagues that he really was a rightist and to soliciting their testimony. Even those who had reason to resent Jiang Feng, such as former CAFA party leader Hu Yichuan, found the charges of rightism incredible. When informed of Jiang's demise by a reporter in Moscow during the summer of 1957, Hu voiced the indiscreet opinion that whatever one thought of Jiang Feng, one could hardly call him a rightist.[41]
It is probably safe to assume that no one of Jiang Feng's rank in the party hierarchy could have predicted the devastating results of maintaining a principled stand on an artistic question. Moreover, most critics of the "rightists," whatever their motives, could not have foreseen that their colleagues might be punished as harshly as they were. Some artists testified against so-called rightists for purely opportunistic reasons—to win favor with the leadership. However, some of those who were reluctant to testify were threatened. A prominent administrator who had once shared an office with Jiang Feng was visited repeatedly by party authorities who sought information on the "Jiang Feng Antiparty Group." When he failed to provide material, maintaining that
no such group existed, he was given a final warning: if he did not testify, he would be identified as a rightist in the following day's newspaper. He still had nothing to say and was consequently condemned as a member of the Jiang Feng Antiparty Group.[42]
In a typical political campaign, well-organized speeches would be prepared under supervision of party authorities before the meetings. Party officials from outside the academy were sent in to direct the campaign against CAFA administrators.[43] The report of the July anti-Jiang Feng meetings, published two weeks later, describes erroneous opinions held by those who supported Jiang Feng. Some artists, including Jiang Feng himself, considered his so-called antiparty actions and speech to be an academic matter, which would have made them exempt from interference by nonspecialists. Wang Xun, a leading art historian at CAFA, was criticized for a statement made at the May 25 rectification meeting that referred to Jiang Feng's differences with other party leaders as being merely academic. Wang had reported, "We know that the opinions of several of the leaders of the CAA differ. The party meeting of the Democratic Alliance at CAFA considered inviting Jiang Feng, Cai Ruohong, and Shao Yu to meet to exchange some academic ideas. However, because this work later proved to be difficult to do, we gave up the idea."[44] Wang was declared to be a rightist.
The very sensible opinions voiced by Wu Zuoren at the May 25 conference became evidence of Jiang's pernicious influence. "We must acknowledge that there are debates between the old and the new guohua principally over whether one wants a basis in drawing or rejects a basis in drawing. This is an issue that is scholarly and involves academic traditions .... It is not a 'You die, I live' situation."[45] The official report continues ominously to comment that since Jiang Feng's problem was not academic but rather was antiparty, it was indeed cause for a "You die, I live" struggle. Xu Beihong's protégé Wu Zuoren was protected by decision makers high in the party, and Jiang Feng, not the speaker himself, was blamed for Wu's mistaken ideas. Xu's widow, Liao Jingwen, was similarly forgiven her mistakes.
On July 30, Zhang Ding, professor and party secretary in the color-and-ink department of CAFA and a practitioner of new guohua in his own painting reported the following evidence against Jiang Feng:
In 1954, when I first arrived in the color-and-ink painting department, the old guohua artists had not yet been assigned to teach; they were still studying drawing and undergoing reform. Studying drawing is fine, but Western-style artists were put in charge. The old guohua artists could not hold up their heads at the academy. Among the young artists, nihilism [indifference to Chinese culture] is serious; they suspect that the national painting legacy has nothing to inherit and they have no faith in the future
development of guohua. Students chosen for the color-and-ink specialty try to get out of it. The color-and-ink curriculum cannot be established by [its instructors] but must be set up with that of the oil painting instructors. In that year, Jiang Feng supported Li Zongjin to hold a conference for painting department professors about guohua, and the meeting was really a siege against guohua. Jiang Feng and those who agree with him plan to "reform" guohua according to their own methods. Since that meeting, Western-style and Chinese-style artists are not united. Jiang Feng prohibits the study of tradition. He is separated from the present situation of guohua and says simplistically that if one develops upon new year's pictures, that is guohua. Landscapes and birds-and-flowers are left out. The painting department teachers say that Chinese classical painting usually lacks anatomy, perspective, texture, weight, space, and so forth, and some of them laugh at the guohua teachers .... One old painter said, "I would rather sell from a tarp on the street than teach guohua at the academy."[46]
Zhang went on to testify that Jiang Feng had rejected both Zhou Yang's ideas about guohua presented in the second CAA directors meeting, held in 1955, and Qian Junrui's suggestions of October 1956 that the academy institute a two-track guohua program, one to teach traditional techniques and the other based on Western drawing. The article further accused Jiang Feng of believing that the party's policy of developing the national tradition was opposed to revolution and that Ministry of Culture support for guohua translated to a rejection of oil painting.
Jiang Feng was accused in testimony by others of rejecting the party's Hundred Flowers policy by undervaluing guohua and by calling it unscientific, unable to represent reality, and unable to serve politics. Hua Junwu reported that at the October 1956 meeting of the CAA Jiang Feng defended his previous policies regarding guohua. His alleged comments that guohua was useless during the Korean War insulted many old guohua artists such as Yu Feian.[47]
According to the report, Jiang refused his chance to repent when he was criticized by the party organization in April 1956. Arguing that the new policy advocated tradition, not revolution, he said to CAFA students: "Before, guohua artists were traitors and they oppressed us. Now the Ministry of Culture wants to let them continue to oppress us." Comments made in front of foreign visitors included, "The Ministry of Culture is uncultured," the Ministry of Culture officials "don't understand art," and the party officials of the ministry are "amateurs" who intend to "harm" him. Efforts to correct him were met with the rejoinder "Every sentence uttered by the premier [Zhou Enlai] is not necessarily correct."[48]
Other alleged evidence of insubordination was that Jiang had failed to transmit party policy in support of the Hundred Flowers Movement to the
CAFA party branch. The ideas in question were presented in a speech by Mao Zedong to national propaganda officials on March 12, 1957, and then passed down, presumably in written form, to high-ranking party functionaries. Instead of conveying Mao's policy, Jiang discussed his own feelings, saying: "I previously agreed with Chen Qitong. Now, because my head is not a lantern, it cannot rotate with the wind."[49] Chen Qitong was an army propaganda official who had organized publication of an article that criticized the Hundred Flowers policy of liberalization in the January 7 People's Daily. Chen's group complained that some people were using liberalization to oppose the guideline of art and literature in service of politics and especially that some wished to revive old literature rather than create new socialist literature.
Chen's hard-line support of socialist realism, however, was a common one in the upper reaches of the party propaganda apparatus; indeed, it was not rebuffed by the People's Daily until March, two months after the publication of Chen's article. Mao's other important speeches of February and March, for that matter, were not published by the official newspaper until April.[50] Apparently, as Roderick MacFarquhar has described, the editorial staff of the People's Daily, certain high party officials, and many lower-level officials were feeling considerable uncertainty and resistance to Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign.[51] Jiang's refusal to jump on the bandwagon seems less extraordinary in this context, particularly since he seems to have viewed those who did so as opportunists.
The Hundred Flowers was interpreted by Zhou Yang, Qian Junrui, Cai Ruohong, and their supporters as a mandate to revive traditional painting. The State Council's establishment of new work units to support traditional artists suggests that this view became the official line. Although the CAA supported this policy, perhaps over Jiang Feng's objection, the academies he led encouraged only those aspects of Chinese tradition that could be harmonized with socialist realism. The specific "rightist" error for which Jiang Feng was condemned, in short, was his recalcitrance in fully implementing the Hundred Flowers guohua policy. His point of view had been rejected by the party when it criticized him in 1956, but he refused to back down. He consistently resisted outside interference in administration of the academies, be it from the Ministry of Culture or from local party organizations.
The procedure followed in the campaign against him was to apply the 1956-1957 party line as a standard for judging his previous career, going all the way back to Yan'an. One report asserts that Jiang Feng, Mo Pu, and Yan Han were unhappy with the Yan'an party rectification and believed that the party lacked faith in them and was too harsh with intellectuals.[52] Jiang Feng's concern for Sha Jitong, who died during the 1942 campaign, suggests that the accusation may be partly accurate, but its relevance to his administrative practices fifteen years later is not immediately obvious. During the Hundred Flow-
ers campaign, Jiang Feng's colleague Yan Han announced his opposition to the rectification procedure as practiced in Yan'an and revived several times in the 1950s on the grounds that people were publicly condemned without proper investigation of the allegations against them.[53]
The emphasis given to a Western curriculum at the academy in Hangzhou between 1949 and 1955 was blamed on Jiang Feng and his "antiparty" group, which included Vice-Director Mo Pu; color-and-ink instructors Jin Lang, Zhu Jinlou, and Jin Ye; and the oil painter Wang Liuqiu.[54] Jiang's criticism of old artists such as Pan Tianshou and Wu Fuzhi in the early 1950s was cited as evidence that Jiang Feng intended to break the continuous history of Chinese traditional painting. Requiring depiction of the "typical," concentrating on figure painting, drawing, and outline and color techniques, and abolishing the copying of old paintings were further errors, even though committed in the early 1950s. The targets of the campaign in Hangzhou were the Communist administrators Jiang Feng had installed in 1949. The Zhejiang Provincial Committee thus completed its sweep of leaders appointed before the province assumed control.
Various other policies were allegedly aimed at abolishing guohua: replacing old faculty with young, a suggestion attributed to Jin Ye, for example; and calling the specialty cairnohua rather than guohua. Guohua masters Pan Tianshou, Wu Fuzhi, and Zhu Leshan were reportedly not given teaching assignments at Hangzhou until the Zhejiang Provincial Committee criticized Mo Pu in 1955. The cairnohua department, moreover, was staffed with Western-oriented painters such as the "Three Golds [Jin ]," Zhu Jinlou, Jin Ye, and Jin Lang, all of whom were declared rightists. Wu Fuzhi had despaired, "Those who don't understand [guohua ] pretend they do, so those who do understand had better pretend they don't."[55]
While the broad outlines of the campaign were defined by the party, professors from the preliberation academies provided its elaboration. All members of the art world, that is, were called upon to express their opinions about Jiang Feng's "rightism" as a test of their own loyalty. Even for those who were not explicitly threatened themselves, previous campaigns had taught that if one did not condemn the errors of the accused, one might be considered a supporter of his viewpoint and so become a target oneself.
As the charges against Jiang Feng were publicized, artists, art teachers, and critics were expected to prepare statements supporting the predetermined verdict. The variety of topics discussed in articles condemning Jiang Feng indicates that a certain amount of creativity in supporting the party line was encouraged. As one might expect, the earliest attacks were by Cai Ruohong and his allies. Evidence collected during the May rectification meetings was used to identify other rightists, to be supplemented by new testimony collected during the months that followed.
Among those who came forth to attack Jiang Feng were some who genuinely disagreed with his policies and administrative style. The bird-and-flower painter Pan Tianshou, for example, who had been demoted from his preliberation position at the Hangzhou academy, accused Jiang Feng of predicting at a meeting in 1950 that Chinese painting would die out and be replaced by oil painting. The reason Jiang allegedly gave for this art form's future demise was that Chinese painting failed to reflect reality, that it was unsuitable for large paintings, and that it lacked international character. Jiang was further accused of trying to make his prophecy self-fulfilling by combining the Chinese painting department at Hangzhou with the Western painting department. This new administrative unit, called simply the painting department, slighted traditional techniques and emphasized Western-style drawing.[56]
The guohua painters at CAFA, who had themselves been active in practicing and teaching various new forms of guohua, were less personal in their charges than those, like Pan Tianshou, who had suffered at the party's hands. According to the official report, color-and-ink painting department artists Ye Qianyu, Li Keran, Jiang Zhaohe, and the young instructor Li Qi supported Qian Junrui's reform of the guohua curriculum, and thus did not oppose party policy.[57] The following month their criticisms of Jiang Feng, which convey a strong sense of having been orchestrated by organizers of the anti-Jiang campaign, appeared in Meishu. Li Keran and Ye Qianyu, for instance, described the development of Jiang Feng's erroneous philosophy of teaching new guohua. According to Li, Jiang had criticized the venerable Qi Baishi at the first congress of art workers in July 1949 as follows: "Chinese painting, especially ink painting, cannot develop, with the exception of outline-and-flat-color painting .... Although Qi Baishi's paintings are good, they have reached the end of the road and cannot be further developed."[58] Even if this quote is accurate, Jiang's negative view of traditional painting merely reflects the party policy of popularization in the period immediately following the Communist victory. The party's elevation of Qi Baishi to the post of chairman of the CAA in 1953, however, symbolized official reversal of this policy. New legal standards were thus applied to Jiang's previous behavior.
By about 1955, with national adoption of Soviet drawing education, a new issue arose. Theorists who had Jiang Feng's ear, such as Wang Manshi, conceived the idea that traditional Chinese painting could be integrated with the Chistiakov drawing system and that the abstract values of Chinese painting should be combined with Western techniques.[59] The party's renewed emphasis on tradition was acknowledged, however, in Mo Pu's claim that Qi Baishi had unconsciously learned to draw without formal study during the course of his long life.[60]
Li Zongjin's critics accused him of conspiring with Jiang Feng to harm the cairnohua curriculum by teaching students a combination of Western and
Chinese techniques rather than emphasizing the traditional foundations of their art. A 1955 conflict over the issue of whether to teach drawing or traditional painting led to the interruption of classes at CAFA. Li Zongjin and Wang Manshi allegedly aggravated the conflict by concluding that too much tradition was being taught; they therefore opposed the instruction of traditional ink outline drawing.[61] Li Zongjin believed that in Chinese painting one should begin painting with a brush only after one's pencil drawing is completed.[62] Presumably this meant that the academic system of first drawing a detailed cartoon before beginning a major oil painting would be applied to guohua painting. A result would be eradication of the guohua tradition of spontaneous personal expression. A further implication is that traditional techniques, which involved use of laboriously mastered conventions for lines and texture strokes, would be abandoned in favor of western modeling.
Jiang Zhaohe supplied information about the terminology problem: "Jiang Feng says, 'Oil painting is not called Western painting, so Chinese painting need not be called guohua [Chinese or national painting]. Chinese people's paintings should not be divided into Western and Chinese on the basis of the tools they use; oil painting uses oil colors; guohua uses [water]colors and ink, so is called cairnohua, color-and-ink painting.' ... Jiang Feng's supporters called critics of his idea 'narrow nationalists.'" Jiang Zhaohe concluded, in the spirit of the Anti-Rightist campaign, "But now we know that his idea was intended to oppose the party central's directive to inherit the national tradition."[63]
Some essays by CAFA professors are creative to the point of losing credibility. Ye Qianyu took the reasonable position that the long-standing bias in Chinese art schools toward Western painting helped to explain Jiang's failings in the realm of guohua. His astounding conclusion was that Jiang's pro-Soviet position was conservative—that is, rightist—whereas those in the party who favored reviving traditional painting were progressive By placing Jiang in a long tradition of academics who lacked interest in guohua, Ye got away with supporting the party line without personally condemning the man. One of the biggest faults Ye Qianyu pointed out was that Jiang propagated the Xu Beihong school of Chinese painting, which was based on Western drawing.[64] This criticism may have been the party line, but it seems odd when one considers that Ye himself was originally hired by Xu Beihong and practiced a new guohua figure painting style based on Western sketching.
Another faculty member from Xu Beihong's academy, the oil painter Ai Zhongxin, attempted to prove that Jiang's personal virtues, such as "directness, strength of character, decisiveness, enthusiasm, vision, and personal austerity," were hypocritical means for reaching his antiparty goals. Their insidiousness was such, Ai maintained, that even after his "plot" was exposed people continued to say that he was a good person with no malice in his
heart.[65] Such convoluted criticism paints an image of Jiang Feng not as a tyrant, but only as a popular administrator. While the authors' motives were complex at the time and unfathomable today, one senses behind the rhetorical structure of their public statements glimmerings of opinions that do not entirely fit the party's rigid framework.
Attacks by Cai Ruohong's faction within the CAA, however, are unambivalent. Yan Han had accused Cai Ruohong of using political movements for factional advantage. Protestations to the contrary by Hua Junwu, a supporter of Cai Ruohong, are not convincing:
Yan Han claims to be second-in-command, a great general of Jiang Feng's Antiparty Group. He is a so-called Creation Cadre of the Artists Association. Since the 1953 reorganization, the party has allowed him free rein to devote himself to the creation of woodcuts. He has not been required to undertake any administrative work. Every month he receives a very high salary; moreover, he receives fees from the publication of his works. The party has given him superior material conditions, but Yan Han uses this freedom from going to a regular daily job to organize activities all over, to solicit people for the Jiang Feng Antiparty Group, to expand the ranks of the antiparty group, and to recruit support for Jiang Feng. Yan Han also claims that when Cai Ruohong and Hua Junwu of the CAA used "elimination of counterrevolutionaries" [sufan ] to rectify him they engaged in factionalism.... Yan Han says that Cai Ruohong and I changed twenty characters in his [self-criticism] conclusion, which is politically irresponsible He thinks he is a great artist, above the party's investigation.[66]
Among many other proofs presented of plotting by the Jiang Feng group, especially by Yan Han, Qin Zheng, and Jiang Feng himself, was the alleged fact that they were afraid to communicate openly with one another. They were said to identify themselves incompletely when making telephone calls, visit one another only after dark to avoid the notice of CAA officials who lived nearby, and hold meetings in parks and on street corners.[67] If such charges were true, their caution was clearly justified, if useless, since their movements were carefully observed by the opposing faction.
Yan Han's 1988 recollection of the events placed the 1957 rectification campaign in a continuum with the Yan'an campaign and the Cultural Revolution.
The 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement... the Yan'an rectification campaign ... Mao suggested these. Many people were rectified... like a little Cultu-
ral Revolution. Or you could say that the Cultural Revolution was a continuation on a large scale of the Yan'an zhengfeng [rectification campaign]. At the time, they rectified people, but because they were surrounded by the Nationalists they couldn't go on with it for very long .... Many people were rectified, including Jiang Feng, but it was concluded quickly .... I think, and so does everyone else, that the Cultural Revolution was an inevitable development from Mao's thought, to rectify the intellectuals, rectify the old cadres, and have the Black Painting exhibition [of 1974].[68] . . . So this class struggle continues to the death. The Yan'an zhengfeng, the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign, and the Cultural Revolution are thus related.
Both in Yan'an and in 1957, some people criticized the whole idea of struggling cadres as a method of party discipline. Especially putting on people's hats [labeling as a political criminal] without a careful investigation. You know how things work. First you put on their hats, but very often after you investigate you find that there was no problem to begin with. But I should be clear. We were rectified, but we also rectified other people. Because it was our [assigned] duty. We rectified other people; other people rectified us. We offended other people; and they offended us. But we say that we cannot assume responsibility because [Mao] was at the top and ordered this. This was a problem raised in 1957 ....
In 1957 the party central brought forth three items: (1) oppose subjectivism; (2) oppose bureaucratism; (3) oppose factionalism. These were raised by Mao. Everyone had to participate in this movement, and speak out, and help the party rectification. But actually they were just fishing. We were a little simple-minded. . . . So we all spoke out Many of us protected Jiang Feng.
... I stood up in the big meeting [in 1957] and criticized the Ministry of Culture. I said that as far as an academic question goes, Jiang Feng did not sufficiently value Chinese painting. He urged the reform of Chinese painting. But wait, wait, this is an academic question. Regardless of whether he was right or wrong? it was an academic question. But the leaders of the time were taking names [of those who] criticized Jiang Feng. They said he used academic methods to oppose the Communist party. So I spoke. "This is wrong. In academics, you said one hundred schools should contend. People can contend, can express opinions. In politics, this becomes anti-party, counterrevolutionary. This is wrong, and should be investigated. There is time, no one will escape. We should heed the lessons of the Yan'an zhengfeng. " This is one item in my being declared a rightist.[69]
The Anti-Rightist campaign in the art world arose from a conjunction of political, personal, and artistic factors. To this day, even artists and administrators who participated firsthand are not entirely clear about why it happened and what its ramifications are. There is no question that Jiang Feng was a talented, energetic, and charismatic administrator, if prone to stubbornness on
large issues and micromanagement of small ones. Yan Han believes that Jiang Feng's purge was based not on his administrative performance but on personal relations. With the purges controlled by Zhou Yang's faction in the party, the group who originally followed Lu Xun, including Feng Xuefeng and Jiang's friend Ai Qing, were obvious targets. Nevertheless, Yan Han believes that Jiang Feng's position in the art world was such that no factional competitor could have unseated him. It was Mao's involvement, based on reports he heard from Qian Junrui and others, that led to Jiang Feng's purge. After complaints about Jiang Feng's administration of Hangzhou guohua artists had been reported to Mao, the Zhejiang Provincial Committee initiated an inquiry. Jiang Feng was ordered on two occasions to go to Hangzhou to submit himself to investigation. He denied any wrongdoing and insisted on staying in Beijing while he straightened out the matter. He was subsequently criticized for not going to Hangzhou, and when he later agreed to go it was too late. In a speech of October 13, 1957, Mao Zedong reflected upon the Anti-Rightist campaign. He cited several examples of anti-Communists produced within the ranks of the 'Communist party, including General Gao Gang (who had been purged from Dong Xiwen's 1952 Founding of the Nation ), the novelist Ding Ling, Feng Xuefeng, and Jiang Feng.[70]
It would be an understatement to say that the Anti-Rightist campaign, which sentenced young artists to labor camps for expressing opinions on such normal professional issues as critical standards, methods of art education, and the performance of art administrators, offends Western standards of justice. Rehabilitation of rightists in the late 1970s indicates that current Chinese authorities recognized the resentment it created within China itself. Not only the results, but the very process of "proving" the "crimes," is appalling. Most of the case against Jiang Feng is recorded in secret documents, but even the published accounts support the view that he and his supporters were victims of factional attack. He was charged retroactively for policy errors that, when implemented, were considered correct by the party and by many of his accusers. Insofar as the views of Cai Ruohong and Qian Junrui represented the party in 1957, however, Jiang Feng was guilty of breaching party discipline.
The Anti-Rightist campaign resulted in the expulsion from the CCP of party leaders and art professors who held "erroneous" views, particularly Jiang Feng, Yan Han, Hong Bo, Mo Pu, Wang Manshi, Li Zongjin, Jin Ye, Jin Lang, and Zhu Jinlou.[71] Non-Communist professionals such as Wang Xun, Liu Kaiqu, and Pang Xunqin were similarly attacked.[72] Every unit of the Chinese administration was required to purge itself of rightists—with, in many cases, a quota of 5 percent of all personnel set as a goal.[73] At CAFA the students and professors who had defended Jiang Feng or who refused to testify against him were easy targets. Testimony was collected, rightists were condemned, and many were shipped out by train to labor camps on the Soviet border of
Heilongjiang. A total of forty-four rightists were found at CAFA.[74] According to Naranarayan Das, a special police force was established to deal with these offenders.[75]
The carefully chosen and politically reliable oil painting training class led by Maksimov offered up many victims. It is hard to imagine that the class harbored serious antiparty sentiments, since the stiff competition for admission had undoubtedly involved close scrutiny of the students' ideological records as well as their artistic competence. Support for Jiang Feng was the downfall of many of the oil painters involved, however. The names of two delegates who represented the class at the Ministry of Culture, He Kongde and Qin Zheng, appeared in print and became targets for the campaign. From an art historical view, the most serious result of "wearing a rightist cap" was that the artists were effectively barred from official exhibitions until 1962. In practice, many were prohibited from painting and spent the most important years of their lives at hard labor.
He Kongde was sheltered somewhat by his position in the People's Liberation Army and managed to put his career back on track after his cap was removed in 1962. Qin Zheng did not reemerge until after the Cultural Revolution. Two irregular students in Maksimov's class, Wang Liuqiu, who was a professor from the East China campus of the Central Academy, and Yu Yunjie, an illustrator from Shanghai, were also singled out as rightists in Meishu magazine condemnations.[76] If the oil painting class had been assigned a separate quota for the production of rightists, it might have been as high as 20 percent; however, most students were counted toward the quotas in their home institutions, thus protecting someone else.
The most profound impact the Anti-Rightist Movement had on the arts lay in its condemnation of leaders one would under normal circumstances have described as leftists: those who advocated rapid development of revolutionary art at the expense of traditional painting and who were enthusiastic about Soviet models. A second important group of artists banished from public life were those who might logically be called rightists. Liu Haisu was condemned at a meeting of the Jiangsu Provincial FLAC held between October 22 and 26 and attended by members from five provinces; he was exposed by testimony from the preparatory committee for the Nanjing branch of the CAA. Liu held many honorary titles in the new regime, including Shanghai Municipal Committee member of the Democratic League, member of the Jiangsu Political Consultative Council, member of the Jiangsu Provincial FLAC, member of the directorate of the Shanghai branch of the CAA, vice-director of the preparatory committee for the Nanjing branch of the CAA, and director of the East China Arts Academy (Huadong yizhuan ), which included the remnants of his old Shanghai Art Academy. His primary crime was his refusal to move the East
China Arts Academy from Nanjing to Xi'an, as ordered by the State Council in 1956. When, shortly thereafter, the State Council canceled the move, he took credit for the policy change. During the party rectification campaign of May 1957 he spoke out in Shanghai in favor of moving the school back to Shanghai. He ridiculed the ignorance of party officials, referring to them disparagingly as "this bunch of Shandongers" and so forth, who "don't know anything but live off the [Communist] party." He opposed the study of Soviet art and uttered such sacrileges as "The best art in the world is not Soviet art; Soviet art has no stature on the world art scene." His motive was to restore his preliberation Shanghai Art Academy.[77] The charges against him, moreover, were probably true. One Shanghai Art Academy graduate who was a party official at the East China campus of CAFA is known to have held private discussions with Liu about combining the two schools in Shanghai.[78] It is ironic that both men were condemned as rightists for their exemplary demonstration of cooperation between party and nonparty administrators.
Many old guohua artists who gave vent to their outrage at shoddy treatment by the Communists were condemned for antiparty sentiments. Others were charged with economic crimes. Lu Yanshao was declared a rightist for having tried to negotiate a higher salary when he was offered a transfer to the Shanghai Institute of Chinese Painting. Zhang Shouchen, organizer of the Shanghai fan painting cooperative, was condemned, presumably for his efforts to resolve the conservative guohua painters' economic needs.[79] The newly founded Beijing and Shanghai Chinese Painting Institutes lost several recently appointed administrators. Of four top administrators at the Beijing Institute, the director, Ye Gongzhuo, and the vice-director, Xu Yansun, were branded rightists. Ye Gongzhuo's condemnation is particularly poignant from an art historical point of view, for the best traditional paintings in Mao Zedong's residential guohua collection were joint scrolls and albums organized by Ye as birthday gifts or national day presents for China's supreme leader.[80] Xu Yan-sun was declared the leader of an antiparty group in guohua circles; his alleged crimes included accusing the party of not understanding guohua and attacking the work of Li Keran and Zhang Ding as not being guohua, as well as preferring good hotels and lower train berths when traveling.[81] He, like Jiang Feng, failed to confess properly. The art historian, calligrapher, and painter Qi Gong was identified as belonging to his group.[82]
Before the Hundred Flowers campaign, the art world had been largely free of direct interference from higher authorities. Cultural directives were issued by the party, and art leaders such as Jiang Feng decided how they might be applied to artistic activity. In 1956, however, the CCP adopted the question of guohua in new China for larger political purposes. Decisions were made that flatly contradicted previous art policy and that could not be integrated into the
art bureaucracy. In such conflicts, as we have seen, central authorities easily overruled and purged individual bureaucrats. Overturning the entire system, however, was more difficult and was not attempted.
Instead, the State Council created new institutions, most notably the Institutes of Chinese Painting, outside the existing art bureaucracy. The largely nonpolitical art produced by the privileged older artists in the Institutes of Chinese Painting was fragile, flourishing as long as men at the highest levels of the party were able and willing to protect it. It was only at the close of the decade that the party's ideological shift toward "national forms" in art was given a sound theoretical basis. Nevertheless, young artists assigned to work there in the 1960s still considered the Institutes of Chinese Painting a retirement club for old artists rather than an important cultural force.[83] The socialist realist mainstream, thus, remained vigorous, with a strong theoretical basis in Soviet and Chinese Communist doctrine and the support of a bureaucracy that continued to function, even after many of its founders were purged.
The Anti-Rightist campaign removed from professional life the most committed advocates of both the proreform and the protraditional points of view. It had disastrous personal consequences for many alleged rightists. Some artists were transported in special rightist trains to rural labor camps in Heilongjiang, the Chinese equivalent of Siberia, and were forced to leave their families behind. Others, like Jiang Feng and Yan Han, underwent labor reform in the Beijing suburbs, after which they were assigned to low-level jobs in the cultural bureaucracy. Worse than the economic privation was the fact that they were shunned by former colleagues, friends, and even some family members. Such stresses led to divorce and other family problems. Pang Xunqin hid his problems from his wife, who was in the hospital recovering from heart problems. His efforts to shelter her failed, however, for she had a fatal heart attack after hearing a radio broadcast that castigated him.[84]
Mao Zedong's campaign to squelch antiparty sentiment may have found its proper targets, but it was also used in factionally motivated attacks to ruin party art leaders. Conventional professional and human relations splintered as artists were coerced into testifying on academic questions, only to see their testimony used to exile colleagues like common criminals. With blind loyalty to the CCP being placed above all other virtues, fundamental principles of individual and social morality were eradicated. The administration of art in China has never recovered from this blow. Among the condemned were men and women of principle and vision. The art teachers and students who were labeled rightists with Jiang Feng tended to be those who possessed personal qualities we associate with the successful artist, including ambition, independence, outspokenness, self-confidence, stubbornness, even self-righteousness. The purge, however, undoubtedly made implementation of Mao's next cultural experiment somewhat less difficult.
Image not available
Plate 1
Dong Xiwen, The Founding of the
Nation, revised ca. 1967, oil on canvas,
230 cm x 400 cm, Museum of Chinese
Revolutionary History.
Image not available
Plate 2
He Kongde, A Letter from Home, 1957,
with later repairs, oil on canvas, collection
of the artist.
Image not available
Plate 3
Shi Lu, Fighting in Northern Shaanxi,
1959, ink and color on paper, Museum
of Chinese Revolutionary History.
Image not available
Plate 4
Luo Gongliu, Mao Zedong at Jingang
Shah, 1962, oil on canvas, 150 cm x
200 cm, Museum of Chinese Revolutionary
History.
Image not available
Plate 5
Ya Ming, Peddlers, 1958, ink and colors
on silk, 78.5 cm x 212 cm, collection of
the artist.
Image not available
Plate 6
Li Huanmin, Tibetan Girl, 1959, wood-block
print, 42.5 cm x 23.5 cm, collection
of the Chinese Artists Association,
Sichuan Branch.
Image not available
Plate 7
Li Keran, Ten Thousand Crimson Hills,
1963, ink and color on paper, Chinese
National Art Gallery.
Image not available
Plate 8
Lu Yanshao, Landscapes After the Poems
of Du Fu, I962, album leaf, ink and
color on paper, collection of the artist.
Image not available
Plate 9
Wu Hufan, Twin Pines and Layered
Green, 1959, hanging scroll, ink and
color on paper, Shanghai Institute of
Chinese Painting.
Image not available
Plate 10
Tang Xiaohe and Cheng Li, Follow
Closely Our Great Leader Chairman
Mao, Ride the Wind, Cleave the Waves,
Fearlessly Forge Ahead, 1972, oil on
canvas, collection of the artists.
Image not available
Plate 11
Chen Yifei and Wei Jingshan, The Taking
of the Presidential Palace, 1977, oil
on canvas, 335 cm x 466 cm, Chinese
People's Revolutionary Military
Museum.
Image not available
Plate 12
Wu Fan, Plum Blossoms and Tire
Tracks, 1980, woodblock print, 41
cm x 39-5 cm, collection of the artist.