The Prints of the Great Northern Wastes

The woodblock print movement of Heilongjiang shares several characteristics with other regional art. Its rise to national fame was made possible by strong support from local authorities, by favorable attention from national arts administrators, and by the political circumstances associated with the Great Leap Forward. The works themselves are filled with local color, both literally and figuratively. What is unique about the Heilongjiang printmakers is their youth and the circumstances of their artistic activity, for they constitute an extreme example of transplanted artists developing a new regional style.

In March 1958, one hundred thousand demobilized soldiers were sent to the virgin forests of China's northeastern border, an area that came to be known as Beidahuang, the Great Northern Wasteland. The primary purposes of this relocation were to solve the soldiers' employment problems and to promote agricultural development.^[211] In keeping with the mandate of the Great Leap Forward, it was claimed in a 1960 slogan that the Great Northern Wasteland had been converted into the Great Northern Granary (Beidahuang, beidacang ) in only three years.^[212] Beyond these economic goals, some settlements were envisioned as contributing to national defense and to social stability.^[213] Increasing tension with the Soviet Union was of course the primary military concern behind moving settlers into the border areas. As for social stability, that reference pertained not only to issues of employment but also to the rightists who were sent to work alongside the soldiers in Beidahuang.^[214]

Organization of the demobilized soldiers lay in the hands of the local agricultural reclamation bureau, which retained many aspects of its military origins. Soon after arriving in Heilongjiang, the regional authorities made inquiries of their superiors at the Agricultural Reclamation Ministry in Beijing about initiation and administration of cultural activities. Permission was granted to organize personnel for the purpose of publicizing the production and construction projects in Beidahuang. By the following year, almost five hundred people had been assigned to various art, drama, film, and cultural work teams, an organizational structure modeled on that of military districts. From the beginning, Beidahuang printmakers received strong support from the highest levels of regional government.^[215]

In late 1958, the leading arts administrator of the region was Zhang

Zuoliang (b. 1927), a Shandong native. Zhang had joined the Eighth Route Army in 1944 and subsequently worked for the military as a propagandist. In 1952 he was appointed an art editor of Beijing's Jiefangjun huabao (Liberation Army Pictorial).^[216] Zhang volunteered to move to the border region in early 1958; immediately upon his arrival in Heilongjiang that March he was assigned to organize publications and propaganda in the area.

The most important artist in the border region was the young printmaker Chao Mei (b. 1931), who had recently been transferred to Heilongjiang from Harbin. Though originally sent to do farm labor, upon Zhang Zuoliang's request in late 1958 Chao was assigned to the newly established Beidahuang Pictorial Publishing House. Chao Mei, also a Shandong native, had grown up in Nanjing. He joined the People's Liberation Army in 1949 and, like Zhang, worked in art propaganda. During the 1950s he was an art cadre at the Harbin Military Engineering Academy.^[217] After their relocation to Heilongjiang the two young men oversaw an active print movement. Indeed, prints by Zhang Zuoliang and Chao Mei came to represent the new territory.^[218]

In September 1958 it was decided to publish two new propaganda periodicals, Beidahuang Literature and Arts (Beidahuang wenyi ) and Beidahuang Pictorial (Beidahuang huabao ), which, moreover, would boast reproductions of original prints on their covers. The earliest such images were collaborative works, most frequently designed by Zhang Zuoliang and executed by Chao Mei.^[219] Their standard format was a dramatic steppe or forest landscape altered in some way by human activity. Beidahuang Literature and Arts first appeared in November 1958,^[220] and Beidahuang Pictorial , a glossy publication modeled on Beijing's China Pictorial and originally intended for national and possibly international distribution,^[221] in July of the following year; both were under Zhang's direction. The latter, however, ceased publication after one issue, probably because of the region's economic difficulties.

Chao Mei's Beidahuang prints were grabbed up for publication in national magazines soon after he began making them. His Sea of Grain , for instance, which depicts wheat fields being harvested by tractor, was reproduced in the April 1959 issue of Banhua (Prints ),^[222] and his Golden Sea was selected for the August issue.^[223]Golden Sea depicts two figures wearing striped knit shirts, the informal uniform of the Chinese navy, standing in front of a vast wheat field. The theme of both works is the agricultural success of the demobilized troops. Golden Sea was reproduced in a 1959 anthology intended to record the best prints of new China's first decade.^[224] Thus the Beidahuang printmakers were deemed historically significant by the national art establishment within the first year of their activity.

In September 1959, the regional authorities decided to devote more financial resources to art for the purpose of mounting an exhibition. Administration of the project was assigned to the Beidahuang Pictorial Publishing House, with

Zhang Zuoliang as director and Chao Mei as vice-director. Zhang Zuoliang began to assemble artists from among the soldiers and other immigrants who had been assigned to work in the fields;^[225] individuals whose talent came to his attention were removed from the agricultural labor force, fed and housed by the local government, and assigned to make art. Even amateur artists, such as the young oil painter Hao Boyi (b. 1938), were given the opportunity to develop their talents as printmakers. Such local bureaucratic support for artists was undoubtedly an important element in the high productivity, high standards, and critical success of the group.

Works by the Heilongjiang printmakers appeared in the northeastern regional exhibition held in Harbin in September 1959. The exhibition was attended by Hua Junwu, chief of the national CAA secretariat, and the Beidahuang artists received favorable critical attention in Meishu .^[226] Hua Junwu came forward as a strong advocate of the group and, in his role as chief of the art and literature section of the People's Daily , was responsible for much of their favorable publicity.^[227] The exhibition opened at the National Art Gallery in Beijing the following April. In October 1959, prints by Zhang Zuoliang, Chao Mei, and their colleague Xu Leng were exhibited at the Fourth National Print Exhibition, the first time Beidahuang art had appeared in a national show. The Second National Military Exhibition of February 1960 and the National Art Exhibition of June 1960 included works by Zhang, Chao, and other Beidahuang printmakers. As evidence of their rising status, Zhang and Chao served as delegates to the Third National People's Congress in July.

Beidahuang suffered great natural calamities that severely diminished harvests in the fall of 1960. Zheng Kangxing, a high-ranking propaganda official at the time, recalled in 1988 that the weather reduced the Great Northern Wasteland to true desolation.^[228] Despite local criticism, however, party authorities continued to provide financial support for artists and other cultural workers throughout the famine and near economic collapse of 1959-1961.^[229]

During the latter part of 1960 and most of 1961, the printmakers were sent to live in Harbin, where they were assigned to decorate the Eastern Mansions, a hotel, with prints. This support presumably gave them adequate nourishment and time to complete works exhibited in the Second Northeastern Provinces Art Exhibition, held in October, and prepare for their greatest national triumph. The exhibition "Artworks from Beidahuang," which opened at the National Art Gallery on November 12, 1960, was cosponsored by the Chinese Artists Association and the local government, the Peony River Reclamation District. A national symposium was held in conjunction with the exhibition.^[230] The next summer a second exhibition under the same sponsorship was held at the National Art Gallery.^[231] An anthology of Beidahuang prints was published in 1962,^[232] and the group remained active and nationally visible until 1966.

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Figure 97
Chao Mei, Black Soil Steppe, 1960,
polychromatic woodblock print,
36.2 cm × 26.4 cm.

Chao Mei was the group's most influential artist, both because of the national reputation he developed and because many other Heilongjiang artists emulated his style. A typical example of his work is Black Soil Steppe of 1960 (fig. 97). Here the artist adopted a very low viewpoint, as though he were lying on the ground, in order to accentuate the dramatic expanse of earth and sky before him. The thick, tangled grasses and wildflowers in the foreground are juxtaposed against the dark gray earth of the newly tilled soil. Above them has been rendered a deep blue early-morning sky. The visual appeal of the work comes from the vastness and beauty of the natural environment, especially the chromatic and textural contrasts between the purple, white, and deep green steppe grasses and the rich black soil from which they grow. The political message of the image is that human labor, particularly labor aided by mechanization, is praiseworthy: the beauty of the deep black soil would remain invisible if the land had not been tilled; such glorious sights would remain unseen if the land had not been settled.

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Figure 98
Valentyn Lytvynenko, Ode to Hunting,
linoleum print, 37 cm × 47 cm.

Chao Mei's work of the late 1950s and early 1960s is highly reminiscent of contemporary Soviet art. The similarities between the landscapes of Soviet Asia and northeastern China make such stylistic affinities natural, even in the absence of political factors. Yet in addition, both the USSR and China encouraged or mandated settlement of their border areas by citizens from the nation's heartland.^[233] The Siberian settlers and the Heilongjiang farmers thus embodied many experiential and political parallels that made Soviet art an obvious reference for Beidahuang artists.

One of many possible Russian counterparts to the prints of the Beidahuang artists, and particularly of Chao Mei, was published in a 1959 issue of Banhua .^[234]Ode to Hunting , by a Soviet artist who visited China in late 1958 and early 1959, is a romantic image of small human figures camping in a lonely forest (fig. 98). Against the evening sky appear in silhouette a pair of migrating geese and bare tree branches. The drama of the dusk is accentuated by the reflection of sky and trees in a foreground pond. The work is pervaded by a

lonely calm in the face of the wild winter landscape. Compositions in which the loneliness and beauty of the natural scenery envelop the human figures are fundamental to many Beidahuang prints as well. A second element that Chao Mei shares with Soviet artists is his low point of view. An extreme example of this device may be seen in Zhan Jianjun's Five Heroes of Mount Langya (fig. 73). A 1961 oil by V. N. Basov, Greetings, Earth , depicts a cosmonaut standing in an early spring wheat field.^[235] The viewer, as though lying on the ground, sees a low horizon and a very tall human figure. This perspective device increases the drama of the landscape scene by making foreground elements seem larger and the distant elements farther away.

The Beidahuang prints were funded by authorities who justified their production largely on the basis of their propaganda function. Pointing out the beauties of the new environment and the significance of their work might, it was felt, improve the settlers' morale. Indeed, such propaganda was believed to provide spiritual sustenance for the farmers. A second aspect of Beidahuang propaganda was aimed at a national and even international audience. The purported agricultural successes of the northeastern resettlement attested to the value of the Great Leap Forward, and the romanticized view of farm work conveyed by Chao's beautiful landscapes occasionally lured young people from other parts of China to migrate to Beidahuang.^[236]

In 1962 the Chinese Artists Association sent Chao Mei and several other Beidahuang artists on a sketching trip to Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan). The results of their journey were exhibited in Beijing the next year and were part of a nationwide propaganda campaign to resettle Han Chinese in this predominantly Muslim border area.

One of Chao's best-known prints, Apricot Orchard (fig. 99), was based on his Xinjiang experiences. For this print, in contrast to Black Soil Steppe , he adopted a greatly elevated point of view, so that no horizon line is visible. Instead, the female fruit pickers and their donkeys are completely ringed with heavily laden apricot branches. Colors and textures are simplified for dramatic effect. The yellow soil from which the trees grow is contrasted with the black shadows under them. Densely textured foliage and fruit emerge into the sunlight from the flat shadows. The exoticism of the inhabitants is suggested by their long veils, but the small scale of the figures prevents them from appearing threateningly foreign. While the subject of the picture is not only agricultural abundance but also backbreaking labor, the visual beauty of the picture negates all hardship. Here, Chao Mei's work would seem to combine revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism in yet another way.

The factors that lay behind the rise to national prominence of the Beidahuang printmakers range from international politics to personal ambition. Settlement of Heilongjiang occurred in the context of deteriorating Sino-Soviet

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Figure 99
Chao Mei, Apricot Orchard, 1962,
polychromatic woodblock print,
58.5 cm × 43 cm.

relations, including border disagreements, the grandiose economic schemes of the Great Leap Forward, and the exile of intellectuals marked as "rightists" in the ideological campaigns of 1957 and 1958. The strong tradition of cultural activity as a part of military propaganda within the People's Liberation Army opened the door to developing woodblock print artists. As in other provinces and locales, emphasis on regional artistic expression led to support of the artists by local authorities and recognition by national arts leaders.

Prints of the Beidahuang artists appeared on the national stage primarily because local and national leaders encouraged the production of propaganda. Their ideological approach was fitting to the Great Leap era, when their movement first emerged on the national scene. The romantic appeal of Chao Mei's landscapes, however, was suitable to a less ideological era as well; this stylistic trait permitted his work to maintain some measure of popularity, even when its political value had receded.