Chinese Art and Chinese Government: Acceptance, Propaganda, and Rejection across the Twentieth Century - Essay Example

Prof’s Chinese Art and Chinese Government: Acceptance, Propaganda and Rejection across the Twentieth Century China has one of the longest histories of statehood of any country in the world. Its recorded history of a strong, central state dates more than a thousand years before the Common Era (Richard 27), and as such it has always been one of the most prominent forces on the art produced in the country – from monumental and court art to simply influencing the art of the common people. China also has a long history of notoriously strong governments. Beijing was long known as the “forbidden city” and access to it was restricted solely to those in direct service to the emperor, who was revered as a semi-divine being with a mandate from heaven to guide the Chinese people throughout history (Richard 18). The relatively strength of the imperial system declined somewhat in the early twentieth century when the Republic of China overtook the Emperors as leaders of the Chinese government – possibly one of the periods of the weakest leadership (in terms of strength and prominence, rather than leadership ability), before relatively quickly being supplanted by Mao Zedong and a rigid, strong and incredibly controlling communist government, which still exists to this day, though in a radically different form. This strong leadership has always influenced Chinese art a great deal – art was always seen through the mirror of whomever was in power at the time, and art in China has usually had some form of extremely strong relationship with the government at the time. This relationship took on a broad array of shapes and forms, from simply mirroring some of the ideas of the ruling government, through being highly controlled and propagandized, and finally to outwardly rejecting the power and control of the government over its subjects and artists amongst them. In the Republican Era of Chinese history, which immediately preceded the Chinese civil war and the assent of the communist party, there were two major strands of artistic production. In the first, the goals of the government and artists in the country were largely the same – to modernize without completely losing Chinese identity and the power of China’s long history (Burke 33). Here the complex relationships between government, society and art were largely sweeping in the same direction, but the government tried no more than any government would to coerce or control the artistic production during the era. This art was probably best exemplified by artists such as Ong Schan Tchow, who was educated both in China as and in the West (in France specifically) as a young man (Singapore National Archive), and was able to subtly combine elements of Western art, especially realism and perspective, with more traditional aspects of Chinese art, such as the coordination of calligraphy with the element of work, and muted colour tones with minimal contrast. There was, however, a larger group of artists who went in a different direction during this time, attempting to reject many aspects of older Chinese culture and create a culture that emulated the west. This movement, called, appropriately, the New Culture Movement, was a broad and widely spread movement in society, and touched not just visual arts but also literature and systems of government (Lo, 83). This movement was, in many ways, also tied up with the goals of the government especially in its support of a democratic ideal, and tacitly encouraged the government that based itself on Western ideas of democracy. On the other hand, this movement attempted to drastically differentiate itself from older art through an outright rejection of traditional Chinese culture and a self-conscious copying of many aspects and ideas from Western art, such as the introduction of a variety of “low” art forms like comics posters and cartoons (Lo, 23). In 1949, the Chinese civil war erupted and put an abrupt end to the Republican Era of Chinese history, and ushered in a new age where the government would play an even greater role in shaping China’s artistic production than it did in the history preceding it. Suddenly all aspects of life were strictly under government control, and art was no exception. Like the New Culture movement of the previous decades, early communist leadership sought to distance itself in significant degrees to the history that preceded it, and encourage entirely new forms of art, while significantly clamping down on many traditional practices in all aspects of Chinese life, including art (Richard, 183). This was perhaps best exemplified by the Cultural Revolution and destruction of the “Four Olds” – an attempt at a clean break from the past. Art in this era often had significant propaganda value, and artists had to be very careful about what they produced in order to not be branded as counter-revolutionary. The Chinese government encouraged the use of Socialist Realism, and art form that had developed within the Soviet Union in previous decades (Richard 192), and in many cases iconography was imported en mass from the Soviet Union (Richard 193). Art in this era was seen largely as a tool, expected to be mass produced, and expected to repeat the goals of and prop up the communist government. Despite all of this, there were periods during this era of relatively lax control by the government, and some truly original and beautiful painting emerged, but usually only in forms that did not directly challenge or even subtly subvert government control: things like nature scenes, still lives and so on. Beginning in the 1980s, a new kind of Chinese art, and a new kind of Chinese artist developed. China was growing increasingly restless, and the government was less and less able to take control of the population. This came to a peak, perhaps, in 1989 when government forces massacred a group of citizens protesting in Tiananmen Square: after this, the government largely lost its taste for violent and intimate control of Chinese life, and Chinese artists who implicitly or explicitly fought against the government began emerging. There are many examples of such art; the most famous is possibly Ai WeiWei, who, amongst other things, created a self-portrait whose Chinese title is almost homonymous with the line “fuck your mother, the communist party central committee” and engaged in a great deal of political activism that related to his art to varying degrees (Smith). More explicit art has also begun to emerge, and gain intense popularity on the internet. One of the greatest examples of these is Liu Bulin, who carefully paints himself to appear to blend almost completely in to the background he stands in front of – backgrounds like industrial scenery, a Chinese police officer, or Mao’s mausoleum, all in order to protest the way the Chinese government renders the average Chinese citizen invisible (Smith). The Chinese government shapes this new breed of artist as well, not through pushing them or forcing them to produce art of a certain kind, but by creating policies that invite protest, and, for the time being at least, being relatively lenient about allowing those protests to occur. Ai Weiwei was arrested for his art, but a mere twenty years ago, he may have disappeared because of it. China’s government has a long history of intense interactions with the production of its art. This comes in many forms; sometimes, for instance the artists and the government are merely naturally on the same path because of social development. Sometimes the government actively sponsors art in order to aggrandize itself and assert its control over the Chinese people, and sometimes the government actively represses art that disagrees with it. Sometimes the Chinese government’s policies invite such strong responses from the artistic community that they shape a new form of protest art. But throughout time, Chinese government and Chinese art have been inexorably linked. Works Cited Burke, Christina Sarah Wei-Szu. Chen Chengbo (1895-1947): A Taiwanese Painter at the Crossroads of Modernity. 2005. Print. This work gives a detailed description of a Taiwanese artist named Chen Chengbo, and his relationship to the development of art throughout his lifetime. This source is appropriate because during the era of Chengbo’s life, Taiwan was not politically divided from the mainland, so he was, to some extent a Chinese artist. In has excellent pictures of his work and a good description of the way he navigated mixing different artistic styles. Lo, Henrietta Wai-hing. The New Culture Movement: Chinese Intellectuals' Response to Western Culture. Chico, CA, 1974. Print. This is an excellent book that describes the New Culture Movement in the terms of a collision between Eastern and Western Cultures, under which many Chinese people wanted to adopt Western styles and modes of thinking, and attempted to completely reject many aspects of traditional Chinese, and especially Imperial Chinese culture. This work does an excellent job at demonstrating, however, that no matter how much these artists might have explicitly rejected traditional culture, it was still an influence on their art. "Newspapers - ARTIST'S SHOW FOR CHINA RELIEF FUND." Newspapers. Singapore National Archive. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. .\ This is a simple news clipping from the first half of the twentieth century describing Tchow’s work at combining Western and Eastern styles. While at first glance it may appear to be somewhat biased, being from the Singapore National Archive, it is a photocopy of the actual article and thus has great value as a primary source. Richard, Barnhardt, and Yang Xin. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. Print. This book provides an excellent overview of Chinese painting across the entire course of recorded history. This means, however, that it is obviously somewhat broad, and cannot give intricate details about every artistic form and influence that had an impact on the development of art in each era. Furthermore, its focus on painting is somewhat restrictive, especially once it moves in to the modern era, where many other art forms such as performance and installation art gained more prominence. Smith, Alex. "Global Art Summit." The New York Times. The New York Times. Web. 27 Mar. 2012. . This is a newspaper article that describes a global art summit that occurred in 2008, and comment specifically on Ai WeiWei and “the invisible man” Read More