1. Spence, Search for Modern China , p. 508.

2. The following information is from Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," pp. 98-99, unless otherwise noted.

3. Ibid.; Liao, Xu Beihong (1987), pp. 324-325.

4. For the text of Mao's note to Xu, dated November 29, 1949, see Li Song (ed.), Xu Beibong nianpu , p. 106; and the Red Guard broadside Meisbu fenglei (Art storm), no. 3 (Aug. 1967), reproduced in Red Guard Publications ( Hongweibing ziliao ) (Washington, D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Materials, Association of Research Libraries, n.d.), 15:4862. Mao's calligraphy is reproduced in Meishu fenglei and in "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianyuan sanshiwunian jishi," p. 5. Mao's calligraphy remains part of the school's logo today.

5. The school adopted an official English name, Central Institute of Fine Arts, in the early 1980s, but most English writers still refer to it as the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Although perfect consistency is impossible, I prefer to use the term "academy" to refer to teaching institutions and the term "institute" to refer to organizations that focus primarily on research or creative activity.

6. Guo Moruo, Zhou Yang, Shen Yanbing, Qian Junrui, Tian Han, and Ouyang Yuqian were speakers; see "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianyuan sanshiwunian jishi," p. 4.

7. Ibid. and interview with D, who recalls that Mao greeted every group whose banner was legible.

8. JFNB, p. 322; Liushinian wenyi dashiji, 1919-1979 (Sixty-year record of major events in literature and art), ed. Disici wendaihui choubeizhu qicaozu (Drafting Group of the Preparation Group for the Fourth Congress of Literary and Art Workers) (Beijing: Wenhuabu wenxue yishu yanjiuyuan lilun zhengce yanjiushi [Theory and Policy Research Center of the Ministry of Culture's Literature and Art Research Institute], October 1979) [hereafter Liushinian ], p. 123. Yang Mingsheng (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai huajia zhuan, shang , p. 218, xia , p. 611.

9. Liushinian , p. 123.

10. JFNB, p. 322.

11. Zhou Enlai xuanji (Selected works of Zhou Enlai), vol. 1 (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1980), pp. 351-357.

12. Jiang Feng, "Jiefangqu de meishu gongzuo" (Art work in the liberated zones), reprinted from Zhonghua quanguo wenxue yishu gongzuozhe daibiao dahui jinian wenji (Collected texts in commemoration of the All-China Congress of Literary and Art Workers), 1950, in JFMSLJ , pp. 16-22.

13. Other artists mentioned were Zhu Dan, Li Qun, Sha Fei, Yin Shoushi, Shi Zhan, and Chen Shuliang.

14. Liushinian , p. 124.

15. This information was reported by Cai Ruohong at a meeting in his honor in the spring of 1990 and was recited to me by several witnesses soon after. The existence of such documents has been independently confirmed by senior arts administrators who did not attend the meeting at which Cai spoke.

16. Meishu zuopin xuanji (Selected artworks), ed. Zhonghua quanguo wenxue yishu gongzuozhe daibiao dahui xuanchuanchu (Propaganda Department of the Chinese National Literary and Arts Workers Congress) (Beijing, 1949).

17. Li Song, "Zhongguohua fazhan de daolu" (The Road of Chinese Painting's Development), MS 1984, no. 10, p. 8.

18. Introduction to Meishu zuopin xuanji , n.p.

19. Dong Xiwen's design and other handbills, including designs by Li Hua, are in the collection of Hou Yimin, one of the student organizers.

20. Yan Han's published recollections would establish the priority of the traveling woodcut teams' production of new nianhua over that of artists working at Yan'an, including Jiang Feng. Bo Songnian believes that the two groups made new nianhua at about the same time, in 1939; see Zhongguo nianhua shi , pp. 177-178. In any case, Jiang Feng's administrative efforts at Yan'an were important. See Yan Han, "Yi Taihangshan"; Hu Yichuan, "Huiyi Luyi muke gongzuo tuan zai dihou"; and Yan Han, "Jiang Feng tongzhi de banxue chengjiu,'' p. 375.

21. Ding Ling, "Dao Jiang Feng," p. 365.

22. JFNB, p. 323.

23. Interviews with BA and F.

24. See Jiang Feng's "Lu Xun xiansheng yu 'yiba yishe,'" in JFMSLJ , pp. 134-135, for a tale of Tian Han's hypocrisy and stinginess.

25. Jiang Feng, "Huihua shang liyong jiu xingshi wenti," p. 10.

26. Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 99. Hu Yichuan was discussed earlier for his activities as a radical student in Hangzhou and Shanghai and for his leadership of woodcut activities behind the Communist lines after 1938. The Hangzhou-trained Luo Gongliu had worked on Hu Yichuan's woodcut team during the anti-Japanese war; after the Japanese surrender he worked as a propagandist with Jiang Feng and others in Hebei. The sculptor Wang Zhaowen had, like most of the others, worked with Jiang Feng in Yan'an and Hebei. As we have already mentioned, Zhang Ding, a woodcut artist who had made the long trek by foot from Yan'an to Manchuria in 1945, moved to Beijing to edit propaganda publications after liberation.

27. Zhu Jinlou, "Zai Huadong wenhuabu zhuban benyuan xinnianhua guanchahui shang de baogao" (Report presented at the viewing of our college's new nianhua sponsored by the East China Department of Culture), Meishu zuotan , no. 1 (Nov. 18, 1950): 5. I am grateful to the late Professor Zhu for providing me with this material.

28. Arnold Chang, in his Painting in the People's Republic of China: The Politics of Style (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980), discussed the opposing principles of popularization and raising of standards as ideological foundations for Chinese painting. See especially his conclusion, pp. 73-76.

29. Mo Pu,"'Huazhong Luyi' meishuxi de huiyi" (Recalling the art department of the Central China Lu Xun Academy), in Xinsijun meishu gongzuo huiyilu (Recollections of New Fourth Army art work), ed. Yang Han (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Art Press, 1982), p. 15. Mo Pu and his colleagues established the Central China branch of the Lu Xun Academy in late 1940 under orders from Chen Yi and Liu Shaoqi, but the institution was short-lived because of an unfavorable military situation.

30. Mo Pu, "Yi Sha Jitong (Chen Zhengxi) tongzhi—yige guozao bei cuizhe de qingnian huajia" (Remembering Comrade Sha Jitong [Chen Zhengxi]—a prematurely broken young artist), MS 1983, no. 2, pp. 22-23; and "Nanyi mibu de shunshi—dao Jiang Feng" (An irreplaceable loss—mourning Jiang Feng), reprinted from Wenyibao , 1982, no. 11, in JFMSLJ , p. 334.

31. Conversations with G, 1981 and 1982, and personal observation. The issue may be more complex than this description suggests. Yuan was considered a member of Jiang Feng's group in the highly factionalized art world of the early 1980s. He, like Jiang Feng, had been condemned as a rightist in 1957 and 1958. His return from Manchuria to the capital was made possible by a mural commission, but he was subsequently attacked because his mural depicted a few female figures in the nude. Some of these events will be described in chapter 7. See also Joan Lebold Cohen, The New Chinese Painting, 1949-1986 (New York: Abrams, 1987), pp. 39-41, for discussion of the controversy. It was believed by Yuan and by others in Jiang Feng's group at the time that the attack was factionally motivated and that Yuan was being used as a surrogate for an attack on Jiang Feng. That Jiang Feng criticized him just as his mural was being partially covered with plasterboard was an extreme demonstration that as a public figure Jiang Feng's artistic principles came before factional attachments or personal feelings. He compensated for his public rigidity with flexibility and even kindness on the personal level.

32. Xingxing is a politically laden term that is difficult to translate. It is sometimes translated literally as "Star Star." The duplicative acts as a diminutive, and thus means little stars, distant stars, or even tiny points of light. The name of the group thus contrasts its amateur artists with famous professional artists. More important for this generation would be its immediately recognizable reference to the title of a 1930 article written by Mao Zedong, "Xingxing zhihuo, keyi liaoyuan" (A tiny spark can set the steppes ablaze), reprinted in Mao Zedong xuanji (The collected works of Mao Zedong), vol. 1 (Beijing: n.p., 1952), pp. 101-111. This phrase was frequently cited during the Cultural Revolution, and many Red Guard groups took the name Prairie Fire (an alternative translation of "steppes ablaze") in reference to it.

33. These events will be discussed further in chapter 7. Wang Keping's sculpture Idol , which satirized Mao and the Cultural Revolution, was hidden from Jiang Feng at the preview of their next show, in 1980. Not surprisingly, Jiang Feng was angry when he found out. Interview with VV. Also see Cohen, New Chinese Painting , pp. 59-63. The context of the event is, again, complex. The exhibition emerged from the Democracy Wall Movement, which was supported by Hu Yaobang and, briefly, by Deng Xiaoping as a means to overthrow the Maoist faction. See Ruan Ming, ''Why It Happened," in Liu Binyan, Ruan Ming, and Xu Gang, " Tell the World": What Happened in China and Why (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), pp. 78-85. Jiang Feng was victimized by Mao, as we shall see, so he was undoubtedly on the pro-Deng side of the struggle.

34. Huang Shanding, in JFMSLJ , p. 400.

35. Jiang Feng, "Lu Xun xiansheng yu 'yiba yishe,'" in Li, Li, and Ma (eds.), Zhongguo xinxing banhua yundong wushi nian , pp. 188-189; and in JFMSLJ , p. 230.

36. Kao, "Beginning," pp. 392-383.

37. Interview with H.

38. Now in the Chinese National Art Gallery collection, it is reproduced in Tao Yongbai, ed., Zhongguo youhua, 1700-1985 (Oil painting in China) (Nanjing: Jiangsu Art Press, 1988), no. 47.

39. Mo Pu, "Nanyi mibu," in JFMSLJ , p. 334.

40. Interview with L.

41. Pang Xunqin, "Ta dailaile Yan'an zuofeng" (He brought with him the Yan'an work style), reprinted from Meishujia tongxun (Artists' circular), 1982, no. 4, in JFMSLJ , pp. 373-374.

42. Jiang Feng, "Guoli Hangzhou yizhuan tongxue chuangzuoshang de wenti" (Creation problems of students at National Hangzhou Art Academy), reprinted from Renrnin meishu (People's art) [hereafter RMMS ], no. 5 (Oct. 1950), in JFMSLJ , pp. 23-28.

43. Interviews with H and I; and Yishu yaolan — Zhejiang meishu xueyuan liushinian (The cradle of art—sixty years at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang meishu xueyuan, 1988), p. 25. Ni Yide was a Japanese-trained oil painter who had worked in avant-garde styles in the 1930s. By 1949, however, he had subjected himself to Communist party discipline. He later worked as a critic and editor. Liu Wei, a female administrator, does not appear in standard biographies of artists, although she is listed as a faculty member of the academy and served in important party posts in the 1950s. See Yishu yaolan , pp. 302, 28.

44. Yishu yaolan , p. 28.

45. Xiao Feng, "Guanghui de yeji shanlan de weilai," p. 5.

46. Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 99.

47. Interview with I.

48. Lin Fengmian rarely dated his work. The example reproduced here was probably painted after 1949, but an earlier work may be found in Zaoqi lüfa huajia huiguzhan zhuanji, Zhongguo-Bali (China-Paris: seven Chinese painters who studied in France, 1918-1960) (Taibei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1988), p. 80, fig. 15.

49. Qiu Sha, "Shenchen de dahai—ji Lin Fengmian xiansheng" (A deep, dark sea—records on Lin Fengmian), Xin meishu , ser. no. 31 (1988, no. 1): 53.

50. Stylistic characterizations come from interviews with former students. Other teachers were Ni Yide, Li Chaoshi, and Lu Xiaguang. See Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 96.

51. Interview with k

52. Xiao Feng, "Guanghui de yeji shanlan de weilai," p. 5.

53. Interview with k

54. Ibid.

55. The date of his application to leave is unclear. His French wife left China in 1956. Zhou Enlai, whom he met in Europe, and Ai Qing, who studied with him before going to France, are said to have assisted him after he left the academy. Interviews with I and J.

56. Interview with K.

57. Qiu Sha, "Shenchen de dahai," p. 54.

58. Some of Lu Xun's writings on the subject of lianhuanhua are collected in Lu Xun lun lianhuanhua (Lu Xun on serial pictures), ed. Jiang Weipu (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1956; 2d ed. 1982).

59. Jiang's many articles about Western art are collected in JFMSLJ, xia .

60. Zhou Enlai, "Political Report to the National Congress of Workers in Literature and Art" (July 6, 1949), in Selected Works of Zhou Enlai , vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981), p. 392.

61. Li Keran, "Jiang Feng weifan dang dui minzu chuantong de zhengce" (Jiang Feng violated the party's policy toward the national tradition), MS 1957, no. 9, p. 19. Jiang's opinion was allegedly pronounced in the 1949 art delegates' meeting, and reportedly disheartened guohua painters. It does not appear in the published text of his 1949 speech.

62. Kao, "China's Response," pp. 21-22.

63. Beijing waiyu xueyuan yingyuxi (English Department of the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute), ed., Hanying cidian (Chinese-English dictionary) (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1979), p. 257.

64. Kao, "Beginning," p. 373.

65. See chapter 3 for Ai Qing's derogatory use of the term. For a discussion of the National Essence Movement, see Laurence A. Schneider, "National Essence and the New Intelligentsia," in The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China , ed. Charlotte Furth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 57-89.

66. In 1957, Zhou Enlai proposed that the Beijing Guohua Institute be renamed the Beijing Chinese Painting ( Zbongguobua ) Institute, which was done.

67. The Nanjing guohua painter Xu Lei exhibited one such work in the February 1989 "China/Avant-garde Exhibition"; he mounted ink rubbings of a section of the street as a set of hanging scrolls.

68. Zhu Jinlou, "Guanyu zhongyang meishu xueyuan huadong fenyuan de jiaoxue zhongzhong" (Various things on the teaching at the East China campus of the Central Academy of Fine Arts), a speech given on April 27, 1951, at the East China Department of Culture, Meishu zuotan , no. 4 (June 1951): 2.

69. Pan Tianshou, "Sheishuo zhongguohua biran taotai" (Who says Chinese painting must die out?), Meishu yanjiu , 1957, no. 4, p. 22.

70. Oral report by Huang Binhong, prepared for publication by Wang Bomin, "Gudai renwuhua de goule fangfa" (The outline methods of ancient figure paintings), Meishu zuotan , no. 8 (Feb. 15, 1953): 9-10.

71. The painting department was divided into specialties devoted to color-and-ink painting, oil painting, and printmaking in 1954, but the formal split into three departments came only the following year. See Yishu yaolan , pp. 28, 295. The former director of the color-and-ink painting department has confirmed the date of the division as 1954; an account published in 1957, which dates the split to 1952, appears to be in error. See Deng Ye, "Jiang Feng fandang jituan zai huadong meishu fenyuan ganle xie shenme" (What the Jiang Feng antiparty clique did at the East China branch campus), MS 1957, no. 9, pp. 16-18. I accepted Deng Ye's erroneous version in my article "Traditional Painting in New China," Journal of Asian Studies 49, no. 3 (Aug. 1990): 569.

72. Between 1935 and 1937, Zhu edited a left-wing magazine, for which he produced striking cover designs. See Minick and Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design , pp. 80-81, 157.

73. Interview with Y.

74. Li Keran, "Jiang Feng weifan," p. 19.

75. Jiang Feng, "Jianjue jinxing sixiang gaizao, chedi suqing meishu jiaoyu zhong de zichanjieji yingxiang—dui zhongyang meishu xueyuan cunzai de wenti de yige lijie" (Resolutely carry out thought reform, thoroughly eliminate bourgeois influence in art education—one understanding of problems remaining at the Central Academy of Fine Arts), reprinted from Wenyibao , 1952, no. 2, in JFMSLJ , p. 46.

76. Interview with U.

77. Information about the plan is from interviews with H and J.

78. Kao, "China's Response," p. 72. Kao's translation is from Shanghai meishu zhuanke xuexiao ershiwu zhounian jinian yilan (Survey of the Shanghai Art Academy in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary) (Shanghai, 1936).

79. Chu-tsing Li, Trends , p. 3.

80. Ibid., p. 33.

81. Liu Haisu, "Shanghai meishu zhuanke xuexiao ershiwu zhounian bianyan," pp. 172-173.

82. Yah Wenliang , p. 179.

83. It is possible that some administrators intended it to be permanent. Spence ( Search for Modern China , p. 518) describes the hostility of Rao Shushi, head of the Shanghai Municipal Committee, to the softness of Shanghai's urban population. Rao suggested dispersal of the population to China's interior, along with a transfer of schools and factories. Lü Meng, one of the top Communist arts administrators in Shanghai at the time, considers the transfer, in which he participated, a mistake.

84. Yan Wenliang , p. 180.

85. Yishu yaolan , p. 28.

86. Among them may be counted Mo Pu, Jin Ye, Deng Ye, and others. According to Yishu yaolan , pp. 25-2-6, forty-seven of the academy's original faculty were retained. As in Beijing, Zhou Enlai is credited with particular concern for the staffing of the academy. It is possible that the appointment of two French-trained artists, Liu Kaiqu and Pang Xunqin, to high positions was a result of his attention. Twenty-five new faculty members, most of whom came from the liberated zones, were added after the military takeover of the academy.

87. Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 98.

88. Interview with M.

89. According to Chu-tsing Li ( Trends , p. 98), Xu Beihong was largely incapacitated by a stroke in this year.

90. Interview with BA.

91. Interview with N.

92. "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianyuan sanshiwunian jishi," p. 4.

93. Others, whose works we are unable to reproduce, include Gu Qun and Feng Zhen.

94. Interviews with O and P.

95. Hong Bo, "Huainian geming meishu shiye de kaituozhe," pp. 432-433.

96. The list is mentioned in RMRB , Sept. 5, 1952, p. 3.

97. Zhu Jinlou, "Zai Huadong wenhuabu," p. 5; and idem, "Guanyu nianhua chuangzuoshang de 'danxian pingtu' wenti" (On the problem of "single outline and flat color" in new year's picture creation), Meishu zuotan , no. 3 (Feb. 28, 1951): 8.

98. Zhu Jinlou, "Guanyu nianhua," p. 8.

99. Huang Binhong's study of outline techniques in classical figure painting was clearly a response to such impulses.

100. The carefully modeled visages painted by the late-Ming portraitist Zeng Jing come immediately to mind. See Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 119.

101. Interview with Q.

102. RMRB , Sept. 5, 1952, p. 3.

103. German Nedoshivin (Heiermen Niduxuewen), "Xianshi zhuyi shi jinbu yishu de chuangzuo fangfa" (Realism is the creative method of the progressive artist) (translated from the Russian), RMMS , no. 4 (Aug. 1950): 11-13.

104. Meishu zuotan , no. 2 (Dec. 1950): 9-10.

105. Meishu zuotan , no. 3 (Feb. 1951): 1-7.

106. Interviews with M and O. The name given here, Zhongyang geming bowuguan , appears in a 1958 exhibition catalogue, Shehui zhuyi guojia zaoxing yishu zhanlanhui: zhonghua renmin gongheguo zhanpin mulu (Exhibition of Plastic Arts from Socialist Countries: list of exhibited works from the People's Republic of China) (n.p., 1958), no. 88. It is possible that it was called by a different name in earlier years. The museum was a forerunner of the current Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History, which was officially opened in 1961 in a building built in 1959. Some paintings from the 1951-1952 group have been on display at the current museum, though many were created specifically for the new building in 1959.

107. See China Reconstructs , no. 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1952): frontispiece, for a standard oil portrait of Mao Zedong. CAFA graduates report painting large portraits, similar to the one at Tiananmen.

108. Ni Yide, "Tantan hua lingxiuxiang" (A chat on painting portraits of leaders), Meishu zuotan , no. 1 (Nov. 18, 1950): 3.

109. See, for example, "Huihuaxi jiaoxue dagang—Sulian gaodeng meishu xuexiao jiaoxue dagang" (Painting department curriculum—Soviet high-level art schools curriculum), Meishu zuotan , no. 7 (Oct. 15, 1952): 13-18; and "Yinian de zongjie—ping yijiuwuyi nian quansu meishu zhanlan hui" (A year's conclusion—critiques of the All-Soviet Art Exhibition), ibid., pp. 19-23.

110. Interview with M.

111. Liushinian , p. 140.

112. Jian An, "Yijiu wuling nian nianhua gongzuo de jixiang tongji" (Some statistics about 1950 nianhua work), RMMS , vol. 1, no. 2 (Apr. 1, 1950): 52.

113. Zhu Jinlou, "Shanghai xinnianhuazhan yu qunzhong yijian" (The Shanghai New Nianhua Exhibition and the opinions of the masses), RMMS , vol. 1, no. 2 (Apr. 1, 1950): 39.

114. Selected illustrations of the republican period are reproduced in Bai Chunxi, Liang Zhi, and Jin Guang, "Zhongguo lianhuanhua fazhan tushi, xu" (Illustrated history of the development of Chinese serial pictures, cont.), in Lianhuanhua yishu , ser. no. 12 (1989, no. 4): 77-128. A few more may be found in A Ying, Zhongguo lianhuan tuhua shihua (A history of China's serial pictures) (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1984), figs. 25-28.

115. Jiang Weipu, "Zhongguo xin lianhuanhua yishu de sishinian" (Forty years of China's new serial picture art), in Lianhuanhua yishu , ser. no. 11 (1989, no. 3): 5.

116. Ibid., p. 6.

117. Xia Yan, "Cong xindili huainian women de hao shizhang" (Missing our good mayor from the bottom of our heart), in Huiyi Chen Yi (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1980), pp. 188-192.

118. Interviews in Shanghai with R, S, T, and U.

119. Zhongguo xiandai meishujia mingjian , vol. 1 (N.p., n.d. [Chinese Artists Association, 1984?]), p. 82.

120. The director of the consortium was an AWA official, Shen Tongheng. His name is not mentioned in Shanghai lianhuanhua administration after the consortium was reorganized in 1951 and 1952.

121. Interview with S.

122. Interviews with S and T.

123. Interviews with S.

124. Interview with R.

125. Interviews with T and V.

126. Interview with S.

127. Interviews with T and V.

128. Lu Yanshao published two long lianhuanhua in the mid-1950s; see Li Lu, "Wushi niandai zhongqianqi Shanghai lianhuanhua gongzuo zayi" (Miscellaneous recollections of Shanghai serial picture work in the early and mid-1950s), in Lianhuanhua yishu , ser. no. 12 (1989, no. 4): 55. Cheng Shifa's lianhuanhua include several Lu Xun short stories, including "Kong Yiji" and "The Life of Ah Q," and the Ming novel The Scholars .

129. Interview with V.

130. Interviews with T and V. The director of this section was the printmaker Yang Keyang. Best known of his staff artists were Zhang Leping, Yu Yunjie, Zhao Yan-nian, Cai Zhenhua, and Li Binghong.

131. Li Lu, "Wushi niandai," pp. 39-41.

132. Ibid., pp. 42, 45.

133. Interviews with R and T.

134. Interview with T.

135. Preliberation standards ranged between a few cents and fifty cents per page, according to R. Postliberation rates were several dollars per page, according to T. This anecdotal information is difficult to convert into meaningful statistics about differences in buying power.

136. Interview with T, whose family suffered greatly from having only one wage earner during the Cultural Revolution period.

137. Li Lu, "Wushi niandai," p. 43.

138. Ibid., p. 42.

139. Jiang Weipu, "Zhongguo xin lianhuanhua yishu de sishinian," p. 7.

140. Jiang Feng, "Sinian lai meishu gongzuo de zhuangkuang he quanguo meixie jinhou de renwu" (The situation of art work during the past four years and the current and future duties of the All-China Artists Association), MS 1954, no. 1, p. 6. A similar organization was simultaneously established in Beijing.

141. Interview with W.

142. A traditionally trained painter, W, recollects that he was able to sell paintings in the early 1950s. Lin Fengmian was believed by Shanghai artists to have had a good overseas market.

143. Among important local art leaders were Lai Shaoqi, Lü Meng, and Shen Roujian.

144. China Reconstructs , July-August 1952, p. 32.

145. Mi Gu, "Peng Boshan choushi caimohua de xinchengjiu" (Peng Boshan views the new achievements in color-and-ink painting with hostility), MS 1955, no. 6, pp. 10-11.

146. Interview with W.

147. Yu Feian, "Guohuajia de laodong zhi duoshao qian" (How much money is a guohua artist's labor worth?), RMRB , Sept. 24, 1956.

148. Interview with his student, BC.

149. This opinion is often repeated. Mo Pu, for example, attributes the success of the work, in part, to the energy and attention of Jiang Feng; see "Nanyi mibu de shun-shi," pp. 334-335.

150. Zhang Shaoxia and Li Xiaoshan, Zhongguo xiandai huihuashi (A history of modern Chinese painting) (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1986), p. 207.

151. Ding, in a 1990 interview, could not remember the date or the reason for the viewing, which he did not consider noteworthy at the time. In view of the painting's publicity blizzard of late September 1953, it may have occurred in September. Its publication coincided with the Second Congress of Literary and Art Workers, as well as with preparations for National Day on October 1.

152. On Wang Dongxing, see Spence, Search for Modern China , p. 651.

153. The photograph is reprinted in "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianyuan sanshiwunian jishi," p. 6. This source states that Zhou Yang was present, a claim that is not supported by the photograph and is disputed by Ding Jingwen.

154. In 1965 Jiang Qing responded to the question "Does the chairman view painting exhibitions?" in the negative. She is quoted by a Red Guard chronicle as saying, "The chairman has very little time. The chairman frequently looks at reproduction albums, even more than I do. He has many reproduction albums"; see Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 26.

155. RMRB , Sept. 27, 1953. It also appears as a color frontispiece to Wenyibao , ser. no. 95 (1953, no. 18), published Sept. 30, 1953.

156. "My Family," China Pictorial , 1953, no. 12, p. 34.

157. Only the prominent ear of the third figure in visible. Chen Yun, head of the Finance and Economics Committee, is a possible identification. The clearly visible fourth figure has a long white beard and protruding eyes. Several such elderly men were prominent in government line-ups of the time, but published photographs do not enable us to distinguish between them. The two most likely identifications are Shen Junru and Chen Shutong, both of whom, like Guo Moruo, became vice-chairmen of the Political Consultative Committee. Photographs of them are published in RMRB , Oct. 10, 1949.

158. Hiroshige (1797-1858), Kinryuzan Temple at Asakusa (1856), in the "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" series. For one reproduction, see Richard Lane, Images from the Floating World: The Japanese Print, Including an Illustrated Dictionary of Ukiyo-e (New York: Dorset Press, 1978), p. 250, no. 307.

159. Suggestion of Han Xin.

160. Howard Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 233-235.

161. China Pictorial , 1955, no. 5, back cover.

162. ''Art of the Socialist Countries," Peking Review , Dec. 9, 1958, p. 21; Zhonghua renmin gongheguo zhanpin mulu , no. 88.

163. The painting was exhibited in a retrospective show by CAFA faculty at the Chinese National Art Gallery in the summer of 1992, presumably because of its historical importance rather than aesthetic or ideological value.

164. Interview with P.

165. Jiang Feng, "Meishu gongzuo de zhongda fazhan," reprinted in JFMSLJ , p. 92.

166. Liao, Xu Beihong (1987), p. 307.

167. Interview with Ai Qing, Beijing, 1990.

168. Seep. 34.

169. The painting is Prawns , reproduced in China Pictorial , 1953, no. z, p. 16; reprinted in Andrews, "Traditional Painting in New China," fig. 7. Beginning in his seventies, Qi added two or three years to his age; see Kaiyü Hsü and Fangyü Wang, Kan Qi Baishi hua (Ch'i Pai-shih's paintings) (Taipei: Art Publishers, 1979), p. 11n.1. Prawns is not dated, but is signed as a work of his eighty-ninth year, which was probably his eighty-sixth year in Western reckoning, or 1949.

170. Part of Mao's collection has been published in Mao Zedong guju cang shuhuajia zengpin ji (The Mao Zedong residential collection of gift works by calligraphers and painters) (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1983). Qi Baishi was born in the same town as Mao, which may have increased the chairman's interest in him.

171. Joan Lebold Cohen ( New Chinese Painting , p. 19) has suggested that the stresses of thought reform led to his stroke and premature death. Chu-tsing Li ( Trends , p. 98) mentions that the stroke followed Xu's participation in land reform.

172. Yan Wenliang, Meishu yong toushi xue (Use of perspective in art) (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Art Press, 1957).

173. The following account is based on interviews with X, one of the young painters who admired Yan's painting.

174. Qian Bocheng, "Yan Wenliang xiansheng nianpu," pp. 183-184.

175. Ibid., p. 185.

176. Letter from Hou Yimin to author, Dec. 1, 1986.

177. They include The Miner Becomes Manager of the Mine and The Fortunate Generation .

178. This information is taken from the following sources: Gong Chanxing, "Huajia Dong Xiwen nianbiao" (Chronology of the painter Dong Xiwen), Zhongguo meishu , 1979, no. 2, pp. 16-17; Zhongguo xiandai meishujia mingjian , p. 68; Yang Mingsheng (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai huajia zhuan, xia , pp. 534-543; and Zhongguo meishuguan cangpinji (Collection of the Chinese National Art Gallery), vol. 1 (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1988), p. 29. The first two sources disagree on the chronological sequence of his education.

179. A classmate who later became an abstract expressionist painter abroad considered Dong a comparatively conservative artist. Interview with BD.

180. It is likely that the renewed enthusiasm for mural painting in the post-Mao era, in many cases championed by Dong Xiwen's students, was not entirely based on ideological devotion to China's national folk art. Between 1980 and 1985 mural painting, for some artists, provided an ideologically acceptable way to explore modern Western aesthetic ideas. The works of Yuan Yunsheng, Ding Shaoguang, and Jiang Tiefeng are good examples. See chapter 7.

181. Liao, Xu Beihong (1982), p. 336/(1987), p. 288.

182. This account is based primarily on the biography in Yang Mingsheng (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai huajia zhuan, shang , pp. 352-355, and interviews. A thoughtful account of Li's work may be found in Arnold Chang, Painting in the People's Republic , pp. 57-63. Josef Hejzlar's brief account in Chinese Watercolors (London: Octopus Books, 1978), pp. 58-60, is useful as well. A number of Li's paintings from the late 1940s and early 1950s are reproduced in Lubor Hájek, Adolph Hoffmeister, and Eva Rychterová, Contemporary Chinese Painting , trans. Jean Layton (London: Spring Books, 1961), pp. 130-153. A number of books have been published since the artist's death, for example Li Keran shuhua quanji, shanshui juan (Complete collection of painting and calligraphy by Li Keran, landscape volume) (Tianjin: Tianjin People's Art Press, 1991).

183. One, a male figure study, has a faintly cubist flavor. The other, Expulsion from Eden , depicts a female nude with rather tubular legs and a snake, against a simplified landscape background. Reproduced in Yiba yishe jinian ji , pp. 94, 96.

184. I know of no color reproductions of this early work, which makes evaluating its relationship to contemporary European painting difficult.

185. Interview with E.

186. Reproduced in Shehui zhuyi guojia zaoxing yishu zhanlanhui , no. 223.

187. Yah Han, "Yi Taihangshan," pp. 308-314.

188. Ibid., pp. 309-310.

189. Interviews with XZ.

190. For Gu Yuan's contributions to this new style see Shirley Sun, Modern Chinese Woodcuts (San Francisco: Chinese Culture Foundation, 1979); Laing, Winking Owl , p. 15.

191. Two of these unsigned prints, in the collection of Colgate University, were exhibited in a 1979 Chinese Culture Foundation exhibition as anonymous. See Shirley Sun, Modern Chinese Woodcuts , no. 40. They have been widely reproduced in China as Yan Han's work. See Meishu congkan , no. 6 (Feb. 1979): 98. Yan has confirmed the attribution.

192. Interview with E.

193. Biographical materials from Shi Lu huihua shufa (Shi Lu painting and calligraphy), ed. Ping Ye (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1986), pp. iii-iv; Zhongguo yishujia cidian 3:460; Yang Mingsheng (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai huajia zhuan, xia , pp. 707-715; and Shi Lu huiguzhan (Shi Lu: retrospective) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute for Promotion of Chinese Culture/Chinese Artists Association, 1987), n.p.

194. Wang Zhaowen, "Zaizai tansuo" (Yet again, explore), in Shi Lu huihua shufa (Selected works of Shi Lu), ed. Ping Ye (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1983), n.p.

195. Shi Lu, "Nianhua chuangzuo jiantao—Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu wenxie meishu gongzuo weiyuanhui yijiuwuling nian xinnianhua gongzuo zongjie zhi yi" (Investigation of Nianhua—a summary of 1950 modern new year's picture work at the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Literary and Art Association's Art Work Committee), RMMS , vol. 1, no. 2 (Apr. 1, 1950): 30-31.

196. The other, Zhao Wangyun, will be discussed in chapter 5.

197. My view is based on the catalogue, which was carefully edited to reflect the goals of the art bureaucracy. An eyewitness account, which describes seventeen good-sized rooms filled with art, is considerably more favorable. See Derk Bodde, Peking Diary, 1948-1949: A Year of Revolution (New York: Fawcett, 1967), pp. 232-233. The exhibition was held at the Beiping National Arts College.