Most Famous Propaganda Art Work From China example essay topic

On October 1st 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party of China, declared the fall of Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary government, and announced the creation of the new People's Republic of China. However, the good chairman did not achieve this victory by military might alone; through the utilization of propagandistic artwork the communist party was able to win the support of the ailing masses. By examining the propaganda pieces used from the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War, through the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and into modern times; along with analyzing the politics and events of the various time periods associated with their corresponding works of art; this paper will prove that communist propaganda has been, and is now, the disseminating force of national cultural identity in China. First of all, it is important to clarify the meaning of the word propaganda in Chinese society. In the west, the idea of propaganda is almost always synonymous with a prevarication or falsehood; yet in China, the word propaganda literally means to broadcast or inform.

(Evans, 64) Because of this difference in definition, westerners often mistake the Chinese use of the term propaganda as a self-admission of deception or otherwise oblique portrayal of content. For example, while the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China may sound like an insidious organization to most of the west; it is in actuality an establishment whose purpose is not only to educate the citizens of China about the news and history of the state, but to propagate vital knowledge such as how to handle livestock correctly to avoid contracting bird flu or SARS. (Hunter, p. 94) The use of propaganda by the Chinese proletarian class pre-dates the revolution and civil war. Production of simple political propaganda leaflets began as early as 1910 calling for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. (Bartlett) (fig 1) In figure one we see a group of nationalist and communist soldiers criticizing General Yuan Shika i, a top ranking official of the Qing military. After the overthrow of the last emperor, and the toppling of the Qing Empire as a whole, communist and nationalist forces were joined in a loose confederation to defeat the last warlords who were still loyal to imperial power.

This period of time saw very little production of propagandist art. 1927 saw the split of the communist and nationalist alliance with the assent of Chiang Kai-shek to power. Under the pretext of an alleged kidnapping attempt, Chiang purged all all communists and suspected communists from the Kuomintang alliance; this incident was known as the April purge. (web) With the breaking of the alliance, the communists forces found themselves to be at a disadvantage logistically; there was no way for them to win in a traditional war with the Kuomintang as they were hopelessly outnumbered. With this in mind, the communist leadership turned to propaganda to facilitate their war of ideology; if was impossible to win a war with bullets, they figured they could win a war of ideology, by appealing to the masses logos and pathos. (Evans, 90) Unfortunately, many of the artists who created propaganda works for the communist party during this time are unknown today, because of the tumultuous conditions they were created in. Figure 2 is a recreation of a classic propaganda poster of the civil war era.

The poster reads ^aEURoeproletarian of the world must be united. ^aEUR (fig. 2) These kinds of images evoked a sense of camaraderie in the peasantry and industrial working class; they were meant to remind them of the poverty they were in and who put them there. Artwork such as this, along with local comintern style street-corner preaching, mobilized the proletarian classes, to the point where the communist had a strong foothold, and an established alternative government in much of southeastern China. (web) The growing communist power was, at first, largely ignored by the Kuomintang, because of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However with the communist's Peoples Liberation Army's (PLA) ranks swelling by the day, it became a threat Chiang could no longer ignore. Nationalist forces encircled the communist stronghold of Jiangxi in an attempt at starving out the communists. What happened next is possibly the most glorified and recreated moment in Chinese propaganda artwork. The PLA figured it was in their best interest to retreat and reorganize their forces; they managed to break through the Kuomintang lines and embark on a 6,000 mile retreat, that would take over a year, to reach northwest China, this event is known as the long march.

The long march has been used to inspire every generation since the founding of the People's Republic. Figure 3 shows a woodblock print of Chairman Mao riding a horse in the long march made during the cultural revolution. The text says ^aEURoeRed Army did not fear the difficulties of Long March in 1935. ^aEUR This propaganda piece serves several functions and has several important ideas conveyed through it. First, these wood block prints used with red ink on paper were often posted in public places, such as walls bordering busy streets. They were considered a cheep and efficient way of reminding the populous of the long struggle towards a proletarian utopian society.

The meaning of this work is not too difficult to decipher; notice the size of Mao and his companion compared to the rest of the troops on the right. Also, Mao and his comrade are printed using a bold black ink, while the others are printed in red as are the landscape and text. This was meant not only to inspire the people, but to remind them who was to lead them into this new glorious society as well. The next major development in propagandistic art was in a period of time called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was a reorganization of the economy from Soviet style co-operative based production centers, to a more idealized ^aEURoepeople's commune^aEUR facilities. (library of congress online archives) Under this system, for the first time genuine Marxist ideals were being carried out; private property was done away with as were wages. The idea of the Great Leap Forward goes as such; that if the populous were to be organized into large agriculture and industrial manufacturing centers, people's communes, in the model of Marxist theory, the Chinese economy would skyrocket past that of the Soviet Union and the capitalist societies.

The propaganda of the time was meant to stimulate the workers into a revolutionary fervor to meet the quotas of the government. The art itself, now having an actual government body funding it, had become much more sophisticated and symbolic since the days of the civil war. Figure 4 is a work by Zhang Ruti, a propaganda artist at the time employed by the People's Fine Arts Publishing House. Unlike works from the previous era, this work had a much deeper meaning to it. The symbols on the sails say, ^aEURoegreater, faster, better, cheaper^aEUR, which was what this experimental system was expected to be in contrast to capital based systems. (Landsberger, p. 69) The dragon represents the commune, while the people on board are being carried over the waves into prosperity, unlike the figures in the bottom right hand corner which are drowning with broken canoes scattered about; which represent the Taiwanese trying to stay afloat on broken American capitalism.

(Landsberger, p. 70-71) These propaganda campaigns seemed to be working. Because the artwork conveyed the message of the government, time and time again the people would be enthusiastically willing to do whatever their leaders would tell them. (Hunter, 122) The failure of the Great Leap Forward, was not due to the people. The leadership placed a great interest on the production of steel within the communes. The people were ordered to set up furnaces to melt scrap metal into iron, everything from pots and pans to doorknobs were used to meet the government quotas. (Hunter, 124) However the metal made from these turned out to be such a low quality that it was practically useless.

Figure 5 shows workers happily extracting metal from these makeshift furnaces. Perhaps the most famous propaganda art work from China comes out of the period called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, more commonly known simply as the cultural revolution. In short, the cultural revolution was a calling by chairman Mao on the youth of China to overthrow the current government, and remake it in the true image of Maoist Communism; and in the process destroy all remnants of the old world to bring about the complete dominance of socialism in the daily life. Figure 6 comes from the early days of the cultural revolution, when the destruction of the old world was seen as the first priority. The text in this poster reads ^aEURoeWe " ll destroy old world and build anew. ^aEUR (Library of Congress online archive) Unlike the Great Leap Forward, there is little symbolism in the artwork; it simply shows a member of the red guard, the youth brigade who were to carry out Mao's wishes, smashing a crucifix, a statue of the Buddha, several classic Chinese texts, probably authored by Confucius, and American music records. The most well known artwork that came out of the cultural revolution is the portrayal of Mao as ^aEURoethe never setting sun. ^aEUR Figures 7 and 8 exemplify the portrayal of Mao as a sort of demigod.

These propaganda pieces were inspired by the release of the popular book, The Selected Works of Chairman Mao, better known to the west as, the little red book. (Matsurama, 35) The Chinese media hailed the book as the greatest work ever written, and to say anything less was considered counterrevolutionary. Regardless of the perceived negative impact on China, these propaganda pieces along with the publication of the collective works of Chairman Mao, inspired the youth of the country to rise up and try to change it for the better. The era immediately following the cultural revolution saw an increase in artistic expression. Figure 9 shows the fall of Nanjing; a traditional communist theme, re-created in the western styles of impressionism and realism.

Although this work is done in a very traditional communist style, it would have been considered reactionary just seven years earlier. (Matsurama, 57) Contemporary Chinese artists have been influenced by the old propaganda style as well; figure 10 for example is a work by Wang Guangxi, in which he takes old propaganda imagery, and puts it in a contemporary setting. In this particular work he contrasts the old party loyalty of the worker with corporate logos, thus commenting on corporate and capitalistic loyalty the people of urban China have now. (Smith, 29-30) To summarize; through the implementation of propaganda, the communist government of China, from the early days of revolution, to the modern day reforms, has managed to inspire and mobilize the largest ethnic group of people on the planet.

While this could be perceived in different ways, the fact remains the same that art through propaganda has proven itself to be the largest and most important cultural identifier in the People's Republic of China.