1. Some Western historians, such as Maurice Meisner, use the term "Cultural Revolution" to refer to the period between 1966 and 1969 only; see Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic (New York: Free Press, 1977), pp. 311-339. We follow the convention used by historians in China, as exemplified by Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi, Wenhua dageming shinianshi (A history of the decade of the Cultural Revolution) (Tianjin: Tianjin People's Press, 1986), that it refers to the last ten years of Mao Zedong's life. An English version of Gao and Yan's book, Yen Chia-chi and Kao Kao, The Ten-Year History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , was published in Taiwan in 1988 by the Institute of Current China Studies and is cited in some of the references to follow.

2. Interview with I, who reports having helped his teacher destroy the paintings. The washboard method of destroying paintings was used by other terrified artists who feared that burning them would attract attention. See Guan Liang huiyi lu (Guan Liang's reminiscences), ed. Lu Guanfa (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 1984), pp. 116-117.

3. Zhang Shaoxia and Li Xiaoshan, Zhongguo xiandai huihuashi , p. 287.

4. Land reform teams used techniques such as hanging landladies by their thumbs and summary executions of landlords as part of their "thought reform." Interviews with H and WW.

5. An outline history of this period appears in Meisner, Mao's China , pp. 360-383.

6. Laing, Winking Owl , pp. 58-61, summarizes doctrinal questions we will not discuss here.

7. Hong Yung Lee has argued that the Cultural Revolution can "be best described as Mao's attempt to resolve the basic contradictions between the egalitarian view of Marxism and the elitist tendencies of Leninist organizational principles"; see The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Case Study (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), p. 3.

8. Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 28-29. It is rumored that this very thorough chronology was compiled by professional art historians from CAFA. Some analysts, including Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi, date the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to an attack published by Yao Wenyuan on November 10, 1965, against the play The Dismissal of Hai Rui . This event was reportedly masterminded by Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao against proponents of mild liberalization. See Yen and Kao, Ten-Year History , pp. 2-11.

9. For reproductions of this work see Laing, Winking Owl , fig. 60.

10. For discussion of the two conflicting documents see Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , pp. 198-202.

11. Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 29; Yen and Kao, Ten-Year History , p. 17.

12. Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , pp. 210-211, 313-316.

13. Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 29.

14. Ibid.

15. Yen and Kao, Ten-Year History , p. 20.

16. Meisbu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 29.

17. Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , p. 215; Meisner, Mao's China , p. 312.

18. Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , p. 219.

19. Ibid., pp. 219-220.

20. Meisner, Mao's China , p. 313.

21. Ibid., p. 314. This event was commemorated by many Red Guard paintings. One such anonymous guohua , executed in a style derived from that of Jiang Zhaohe or Li Qi (see figs. 50 and 66), was probably painted by an art student at CAFA or one of the major art academies. See China Reconstructs , 1968, no. 2, front cover.

22. Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , p. 207.

23. RMRB , Sept. 12, 1966 as summarized in CNRP , no. 139, p. 2.

24. Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 27.

25. Interview with the artist, Beijing, 1990.

26.Laing, Winking Owl , pp. 63-64, cites attacks on Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, Jiang Feng, Shao Yu, Wo Zha, Huang Miaozi, Ye Qianyu, Zhang Ding, Hu Kao, Zhang Guangyu, Zhang Zhengyu, Yu Feng, Ding Cong, Wu Zuoren, Guo Weiqu, Pan Tianshou, and Chen Banding.

27. RMRB , Jan. 11, 1967, as summarized in CNRP , no. 154, pp. 4-5. For further discussion of the charges against Huang, Cai, and Hua, see Laing, Winking Owl , pp. 63-64.

28. Other key images of the movement were model operas, developed under Jiang Qing's supervision, and propaganda photographs. See Jiang Qing's own photographs, published under her pseudonym, Jun Ling, in China Pictorial , 1971, nos. 7-8, pp. 3, 22-23, 41.

29. Interview with a member of the East Is Red painting team (XX). A color photograph of Jinggang Mountain Red Guard making a room-size poster appears in China Pictorial , 1967, no. 11, p. 16. Groups bearing this name were found at other institutions, including Qinghua University, Beijing Normal University, and the Beijing Conservatory of Music; see Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , pp. 210-212, 215-217.

30. At least three of the students who participated have become successful painters in China and abroad; interview with LL.

31. Interview with QQ.

32. An excellent discussion of the debate, with emphasis on the pro-bloodlines faction, may be found in Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi, Wenhua dageming shinianshi , pp. 101-106. Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , pp. 68-84, analyzes the complex political undercurrents to the debate on class origin.

33. Laozi yingxiong zi haohan; laozi fandong zi hundan ; translation modified from Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , p. 72.

34. Gao and Yan, Wenhua dageming shinianshi , p. 103.

35. Interview with HH. Both CAFA and the Central Academy of Music are located in central Beijing, not far from Tiananmen Square, and make convenient staging areas for mass mobilizations.

36. Interview with HH.

37. Sing Tao Daily , Nov. 16, 1966, as summarized in CNRP , no. 147, pp. 6-7.

38. Meisner, Mao's China , p. 316; Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution , p. 228.

39. Laing, Winking Owl , p. 65, lists several 1967 exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, including "Long Live the Victory of Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Line," "The January Revolution," "Long Live Mao Zedong's Thought," "The Red Sun,'' and a Red Guard exhibition at People's Art Press.

40. Information supplied by H.

41. Interview with AA.

42. Interviews with HH, AA, and OO. Drawing the nude human figure, another important part of the curriculum, had already been banned as part of the Socialist Education Movement of 1965. The records on this are somewhat confused. Strong efforts to ban the practice were made in July 1965, on the grounds that it isolated students from the workers, peasants, and soldiers. The Meishu fenglei account (no. 3 [1967]: 28) states that the controversy was presented to Mao, who deemed the practice acceptable in spite of its drawbacks. Wang, Wang, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 104, report that it was banned in 1965. The question became moot once the schools were closed.

43. Those who did not join the movement, referred to as the xiaoyaopai (carefree faction), passed their days idly with their hobbies, in specialized self-study, or engaged in other private amusements after their schools closed. Many children were left unsupervised after their parents were taken away.

44. For photographs of some such groups, see China Reconstructs , 1967, no. 2, p. 7.

45. Interview with KK.

46. Interview with WX.

47. Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , p. 165.

48. Although they undoubtedly survive in private hands, Red Guard periodicals from other Beijing arts groups have not yet come to light. The two competing factions at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts are reported to have each published its own newspaper.

49. See chapter 2, note 32, for the source of this name.

50. Meishu fenglei , no. 1 (1967): 1.

51. Ibid., p. 3.

52. Ibid., p. 5.

53. Ibid., pp. 18-19. The painting is reproduced in MS 1965, no. 2.

54. Meishu fenglei , no. 1 (1967): 12-13.

55. Ibid., p. 20. I have not seen Meishu zhanbao , if copies survive.

56. Ibid., pp. 20-21.

57. The group was referred to as Erliutang; ibid., p. 21. See also Laing, Winking Owl , p. 63.

58. The Wenshiguan system protected old scholars of exceptional talent. For discussion of artists who worked in the Wenshiguan, see Silbergeld, Contradictions , pp. 59-63; and Sullivan, Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century (forthcoming rev. ed.).

59. Meishu fenglei , no. 2 (1967): 5-8.

60. Ibid.,p. 24.

61. Ibid., p. 24.

62. For the formation of the new art group, see ibid., outside pages; for Zhou Yang, see no. 3, p. 33.

63. Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 33.

64. Interview with KK.

65. RMRB , Mar. 3, 5, 1967, reported that ten thousand Red Guard representatives assembled in the Great Hall of the People on February 22 to form a Peking University and College Red Guard Congress; summarized in CNRP . Zhou Enlai attended the event, which reportedly united three groups of revolutionary Red Guard; see "Congress of Red Guards Formed in Peking," South China Morning Post , Mar. 3, 1967, as reproduced in CNRP .

66. See Hong Yung Lee's excellent discussion of these battles, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , pp. 204-222.

67. Interview with KK.

68. Wang, Wang, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 103.

69. Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , pp. 222-229.

70. The most gruesome example combines the political with the personal. According to a classmate, one CAFA graduate who worked at the National History Museum and his wife, a musician, joined different political factions. When the graduate became involved with another woman, his wife threatened to report his personal and political activities. He responded by murdering her and their baby and was subsequently executed himself.

71. South China Morning Post , May 16, 1967, as reported in CNRP , no. 170; Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution , p. 217.

72. Interviews with HH and QQ.

73. Interview with AA.

74. CNRP , no. 160, p. 5.

75. South China Morning Post , Feb. 24, 1967, as reproduced in CNRP , no. 159. The report is attributed to the Peking correspondent of the Sankei Shinbun .

76. The attribution to Weng Rulan was made by former colleagues and classmates and has been verified by the artist. It has been widely reproduced in the West. See Chi Hsin, Teng Hsiao-ping—a Political Biography (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books, 1978); Rius and Friends, Mao for Beginners (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980); and the front cover to China Spring , no. 21 (Mar. 1985).

77. The version reproduced here was given to Weng Rulan by Nathan Sivin, who received it free with a book purchase.

78. Interview with the artist, Philadelphia, 1987.

79. Her painting, Goodbye, Uncle Peasant , is reproduced in Zhong-Su shaonian ertong tuhua xuanji (Selected Chinese and Soviet youth and children's paintings) (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1956), p. 4.

80. Some students seem to have been admitted irregularly, because the former director, Ding Jingwen, reports that the standard curriculum for the Soviet program was seven years and for the Chinese version four years; interview, 1990. The two artists we mention here attended for six and five years, respectively.

81. It is possible that the curriculum changed between the two artists' tenures at CAFA, but its general outlines seem to have remained constant.

82. Interview with LL.

83. Stanley Karnow, Mao and China: Inside China's Cultural Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 242; Union Research Institute, CCP Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966-1967 (Hong Kong: Union Press, n.d.), pp. 31-32.

84. Karnow, Mao and China , pp. 326-331, describes a Red Guard inquisition on April 10, 1966, at which she was forced to wear the infamous garments.

85. See Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi's discussion of the origins and demise of the United Action Committee (Liandong), Wenhua dageming shinianshi , pp. 101-119.

86. Karnow, Mao and China , pp. 257-258.

87. Gao Gao and Yan Jiaqi, Wenhua dageming shinianshi , p. 119.

88. "Art that Serves Proletarian Politics," China Reconstructs , Feb. 1968, p. 25.

89. Ibid., pp. 18-20, 25. Also see Laing, Winking Owl , p. 65.

91. Interviews with CL and LL. Ellen Laing's version, based on published sources, generally agrees with eyewitness accounts; see Winking Owl , pp. 67-70.

92. Interviews with CL and BK. At least two English-language versions of an article by Liu Chunhua appeared in the fall of 1968: "Singing the Praises of Our Great Leader Is Our Greatest Happiness," Chinese Literature , 1968, no. 9, pp. 32-40; and "Painting Pictures of Chairman Mao Is Our Greatest Happiness," China Reconstructs 17, no. 10 (Oct. 1968): 2-6. In the former (p. 32), he lauds the painting of portraits: ''What workers, peasants, and soldiers and young Red Guards in their hundreds of millions keenly want is that brushes and paint should be used to delineate the noble image of our great leader Chairman Mao." He further makes an explicit comparison (p. 39) between Jiang Qing's model ballets and his oil painting, since both use a foreign art form to serve China.

93. A photograph of this peculiar spectacle, which took place at the Peking Foreign Languages Printing Press, was reproduced on the back cover of China Reconstructs 17, no. 10 (Oct. 1968). Liu's painting is reproduced on the front cover of the same issue.

94. Actually, its widespread reproduction on objects for daily life, such as mirror backs, and on billboards made it familiar to people with no interest in art.

95. A number of different reproductions of the painting have been mentioned to me in interviews, but I have not had access to most of them.

96. Long March has been destroyed, but it is reproduced in Jin Shangyi youhua xuan .

97. Interview with ND. Reproduced in China Pictorial , July 1967, front cover.

98. The clouds and mist in the background of the painting were a source of conflict among the exhibition organizers, some of whom felt that bright sunlight was more appropriate to the image of Mao Zedong. The highlit face and fist eventually sufficed. Interview with CM.

99. Zhang Shaoxia and Li Xiaoshan, Zhongguo xiandai huihuashi , p. 294.

100. Interviews with X and WW.

101. Interview with SS and X. One anecdote is alleged to have been overheard at a public telephone station but sounds suspiciously like a joke. A local functionary was instructed to take down the portrait of Chairman Mao. He reported to his superior in some agitation that the "portrait of Chairman Mao was invited but won't come down [ qing bu xialai ]"—that is, it was too firmly attached to be removed without damage. Zhang Shaoxia and Li Xiaoshan, Zhongguo xiandai huihuashi , p. 294, use the same terminology, however.

102. Interview with NE.

103. Meisner, Mao's China , p. 335.

104. My information about this show is sketchy. According to Shanghai artists, an exhibition of the same title was held in Shanghai. Although Ellen Laing, Winking Owl , pp. 64-65, has outlined some of the major exhibitions of the period, the limited documentation on this activity makes it difficult at present to understand fully its dynamics. Participants in important exhibitions who are willing to discuss them are often unable to recall when they occurred. Moreover, the factionalism of the period led to increasingly splintered activity. For example, most artists with personal knowledge of the Anyuan exhibition were associated with the Sky faction and are unfamiliar with many activities of the Earth faction. Surprisingly, former Red Guard artists often have no knowledge of exhibitions prominently published in English-language propaganda publications.

105. Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 103; "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianshi," p. 28.

106. Interviews with KK and RR.

107. Interview with LL. For this artist, the forbidden style was pointillism.

108. According to the artist in a 1990 interview, he later gave the set of twelve paintings to a friend. Ten leaves ended up for sale in a bookstore, where the album was purchased by an American scholar who informed us that he obtained the album in Hangzhou. The collector later consigned it to an auction at Sotheby's, where it was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. See Sotheby Parke Bernet, "Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Paintings" (sale catalogue), New York, March 12, 13, 1981, lot no. 328, for a reproduction of the whole.

109. "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan jianshi," p. 28; Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 103; interview with OO; and information from H. In a paper entitled "Painting by Candlelight During the Cultural Revolution: An Examination of Cheng Shifa's Album Series at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,'' delivered at Cornell University on April 3, 1993, Shelley Drake Hawks argues persuasively that this and similar works contained hidden expressions of defiance and protest.

110. A key site was Mao's birthplace at Shaoshan, which was written up in China Reconstructs I7, no. 8 (Aug. 1968). A large oil painting is visible in a photograph of the exhibition hall.

111. Photographs and paintings of Bethune are reproduced in China Pictorial , 1967, no. 6, pp. 4-5, among other places.

112. The revolutionary heroes genre of literature was not a creation of the Cultural Revolution, but its artistic manifestation flowered during the mid-1960s. See Robert Rinden and Roxanne Witke's study of the Hongqi piaopiao collection, which was published between 1957 and 1961, in The Red Flag Waves: A Guide to the Hung-ch'i p'iao-p'iao Collection , China Research Monographs, no. 3 (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, Aug. 1968).

113. Yishu yaolan , p. 36.

114. Interviews with AL, X, and NF.

115. Interview with AL.

116. Interview with AL.

117. These labor camps were set up in response to Mao Zedong's instructions issued on May 7, 1966. See Jack Chen, Inside the Cultural Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1975). According to K.S. Karol, the first announcement of this institution appeared in the People's Daily on October 5, 1968, and immediately led to an exodus of cadres to the countryside; see The Second Chinese Revolution , trans. Mervyn Jones (New York: Hill &: Wang, 1974), pp. 338-339.

118. Interviews with X.

119. Liu Borong's gouache painting was entitled The Eleven Young Heroes of Huang Shah . He was asked to convert it into a large oil painting in 1972 for the national exhibition. A graduate of the Shanghai Art College, Xia Baoyuan, was enlisted to help. They painted two versions, one for Beijing and one for Shanghai. Interview with FF.

120. Interview with AL.

121. The three Shanghai graduates were Wei Jingshan, Shao Longhai, and Qiu Ruimin; the young professors were Quan Shanshi, Cheng Shouyi, Wu Guoting, and Lü Hongren.

122. Interviews with X, FF, and HZ.

123. This information comes from an official who served as her subordinate. She is more commonly believed to be a niece of Mao Zedong, as reported in Laing, Winking Owl , p. 73.

124. Interviews with AB and AC.

125. See above, p. 345. Participants in a meeting Zhang organized on May 19, 1968, with Jiang Qing and Yao Wenyuan criticized Pan Tianshou and the previous ZAFA administration. Current publications refer to a Gang of Four in the art world consisting of Wang Mantian, Zhang Yongsheng, Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan. See Yishu yaolan , p. 36; and Laing, Winking Owl , p. 64n.38. Zhang was imprisoned after Jiang Qing's demise.

126. Interview with AI.

127. Liu was criticized by Jiang Qing; see Meishu fenglei , no. 3 (1967): 26.

128. Interview with AG.

129. Published in English as The New Generation, China Pictorial , 1972, no. 7, p. 35.

130. This "scientific" manner was emulated by artists in the late seventies who depicted the Four Modernizations.

131. Qin is the traditional name for Shaanxi, wen stands for wenhuaju (Cultural Bureau), and mei stands for meishu chuangzuozu (Art Creation Group). Laing, Winking Owl , p. 171, lists Qin Wenmei as an individual artist. Qin Wenmei, according to participants, did not have a large permanent staff of artists, but organized local talent as necessary for specific projects. Among the most notable participants were Zhan Beixin, a 1953 CAFA graduate trained by Maksimov, and Liu Wenxi, a guohua painter who had studied with Fang Zengxian in Hangzhou.

132. MS 1976, no. 1, pp. 24-25.

133. Interviews with EA and AQ.

134. Works from this exhibition are widely reproduced. Selections appear in Zhongguo huaxuan: yijiu qisan nian quanguo lianhuanhua zhongguohua zhanlan zuopin (Selected Chinese paintings: works from the 1973 National Serial Picture and Chinese Painting Exhibition) (Beijing: People's Art Press, 1974). For the works mentioned, see nos. 46, 44, and 42.

135. Interview, Xi'an, 1990.

136. This account is based on recollections of an official who organized the exhibition.

137. Interviews with X, AG, and AF.

138. The artist is Wang Lan, Shen's wife, subsequently a member of the printmaking faculty at the Lu Xun Academy of Art in Shenyang.

139. Liu Chunhua fared better. At the time of this writing, he is director of the Beijing Chinese Painting Institute, and now paints in the traditional media.

140. Shen Jiawei, "Suzao fanxiu qianshao de yingxiong xingxiang—youhua 'Wei women weida zuguo zhangang' chuangzuo guocheng" (Modeling the heroic image of the antirevisionist advance guard—the process of creating the oil painting Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland), Meishu ziliao , no. 9 (July 1975): 32-36. The editors of this magazine, published by Shanghai People's Art Press, were anonymous, but Shanghai artists believe that they were associated with the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou.

141. Ibid., p. 34.

142. "Xuexi 'santuchu' chuangzuo yuanze—buduan tigao chuangzuo zhiliang" (Study the creative principle 'the three prominences'—ceaselessly raise creative standards), Meishu ziliao , no. 3 (Oct. 1973): 34-35. According to Laing, who first discussed in English the three prominences as applied to painting, the earliest articulation of the theory appeared in 1968; see Winking Owl , p. 72.

143. Wang, Zhao, and Zhao, "Zhongyang meishu xueyuan lishi, fulu," p. 103.

144. Ibid., p. 104.

145. Ellen Laing was the first English-language writer to discuss the Hotel School and Black Painting exhibitions, respectively; see Winking Owl , pp. 85-87. The Jiang Qing-Zhou Enlai conflict that Laing describes dominated Chinese literature on the subject as early as 1977. The term "Hotel School," however, seems to have been coined by Hong Kong or foreign writers.

146. "Pi heihua shi jia, cuan dang qie guo shi zhen" (To criticize black painting is false, to usurp the party and nation is true), by the Art Research Center of the Literary and Arts Research Institute, MS 1977, no. 2, p. 7.

147. Shen Roujian, "Zhou zongli yongyuanhuo zai yiwan renmin xinzhong" (Premier Zhou lives forever in the hearts of a billion people), MS 1977, no. 2, p. 16.

148. Ye Jian, "Yongxin xian'e de yichang naoju" (An intentionally evil drama), reprinted from Shaanxi ribao , June 10, 1978, in MS 1978, no. 5 p. 15.

149. Ibid., pp. 14-16, 35-36.

150. Interview with AH.

151. The movement against Zhou Enlai and his opening to the West also incorporated attacks on Western "bourgeois classical music," especially that of Beethoven and Schubert; see Spence, Search for Modern China , pp. 636-637. See also Richard C. Kraus, "Arts Policies of the Cultural Revolution: The Rise and Fall of Culture Minister Yu Huiyong,'' in William A. Joseph, Christine P. W. Wong, and David Zweig, New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 2 30-232 .

152. "Pi heihua shi jia," p. 7. Speculation on the authorship is based upon the article's by-line, Art Research Institute, where one of Gao's most active assistants worked.

153. Interview with AI.

154. The catalogue entitled Zhongguohua that I have seen was acquired by Han Xin during the black painting exhibition and was actually published by the China National Light Industrial Products Import and Export Corporation, Shanghai Arts and Crafts Branch, n.d.

155. Reproduced in Laing, Winking Owl , fig. 98, and discussed p. 85.

156. Shen Roujian, "Zhou zongli yongyuanhuo zai yiwan renmin xinzhong," p. 16.

157. Interview with AJ.

158. See Laing, Winking Owl , p. 86, for an excellent discussion of the painting's possible meaning.

159. Interview with AL.

160. "Pi heihua shi jia," p. 8.

161. Interview with AK.

162. See, for example, Shen Roujian, "Zhou zongli yongyuanhuo zai yiwan renmin xinzhong"; and Ye Jian, "Yongxin xian'e de yichang naoju."

163. "Pi heihua shi jia," p. 8.

164. Shen Roujian, "Zhou zongli yongyuanhuo zai yiwan renmin xinzhong," p. 16.

165. Ye Jian, "Yongxin xian'e de yichang naoju," p. 35.

166. See Laing, Winking Owl , pp. 85-87.

167. Spence, Search for Modern China , p. 643.