Description
Book SynopsisForty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet. Probing deeply, it examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age. Chapters by scholars of Chinese history and art and by artists whose careers were shaped by the Cultural Revolution offer new insights into works that have transcended their times.
Trade ReviewIn this national convulsion the arts played a strikingly large role, a process described with great care in
Art in Turmoil. -- Robert Fulford * “A new level of art criticism,” National Post, June 15, 2010 *
This is a brilliant, thorough study of art created during the disastrous decade in China’s modern history. The recent flood of publications on China’s contemporary art scene make this book on the immediately preceding period necessary reading because of the polar opposite forces that brought the two periods into play.… Essential.
* CHOICE *
This volume compellingly illustrates that the artistic products of the CR period were anything but “artless, sterile, without depth, without truth, and without reality” (189). Moreover, present-day artistic producers and their works, as well as society at large, continue to be influenced by them.
-- Stefan R. Landsberger, University of Amsterdam * The China Beat *
The level of scholarship throughout is high, with extensive reading in Chinese-language primary and secondary sources combined with personal experience. It is recommended reading for all students of contemporary Chinese culture and society.
-- Bonnie S. McDougall, University of Sydney, Australia * Pacific Affairs, Vol 84, No 3 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Vibrant Images of a Turbulent Decade / Richard King and Jan Walls
Part 1: Artists and the State
1 The Art of the Cultural Revolution / Julia F. Andrews
2 Summoning Confucius: Inside Shi Lu’s Imagination / Shelley Drake Hawks
Part 2: Artists Remember: Two Memoirs
3 Brushes Are Weapons: An Art School and Its Artists / Shengtian Zheng
4 When We Were Young: Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages / Gu Xiong
Part 3: Meanings Then and Now
5 The Rent Collection Courtyard, Past and Present / Britta Erickson
6 Hu Xian Peasant Painting: From Revolutionary Icon to Market Commodity / Ralph Croizier
Part 4: Beyond the Visual Arts
7 Model Theatrical Works and the Remodelling of the Cultural Revolution / Paul Clark
8 Feminism in the Revolutionary Model Ballets The White-Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women / Bai Di
9 Fantasies of Battle: Making the Militant Hero Prominent / Richard King
Notes
Bibliography
Index
