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 Iris Wachs admitted that when she first saw ``Mao Zedong’s Thought is Our Lifeblood,’’ a Chinese woodblock print from the late 1960s by Fu Lin, she didn’t like it.
Fu, Wachs knew, was an accomplished and technically gifted artist, but, due to ideological demands made by the Communist party, was forced to take on a simpler, amateurish graphic style used in this print.
``It stood for everything I disliked about Chinese art of that period,’’ she said.
But the more Wachs, a curatorial advisor to Nahari Museum of Far Eastern Art and Museum of Art Ein Harod in Israel, looked at it, the more she began to appreciate the strength of the graphic image, and realized how historically and artistically important the print was because ``it perfectly captured the moment.’’
This give-and-take between aesthetics and politics makes ``Half a Century of Chinese Woodblock Prints: From the Communist Revolution to the Open-Door Policy and Beyond, 1945-1998’’ such a beautiful and fascinating exhibition. Up at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Kwachon, south of Seoul, through May 5, a total of 101 woodblock prints were selected by Wachs and Chang Tsong Zung, an art critic and curatorial director of Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong. Put together, the prints become a political and artistic narrative, providing an insight into the dramatic twists and turns that occurred within China in the last 58 years.
Starting from the 1930s, with the introduction of a European expressionist style by Lu Xun, the exhibition correlates to the rise and development of Communism and its artistic expressions. Lu, a writer, theorist and revolutionary who is considered the founder of the Creative Print movement, encouraged younger printmakers to use strong black and white contrasts, which, according to Wachs, also has a correlation in traditional book illustrations, and dramatic poses to shock the public into thinking about the struggles of the working class.
The Communist Party also used existing popular woodprint forms, transforming their symbolic language to reaffirm their political values. New Year’s Pictures, so called because they were usually put up during New Year’s celebration and remained up until the following year, were brightly colored illustrations of gods and auspicious objects that would protect one’s home. The Communist Party transformed these mass-produced prints to depict laborers and other heroes of the party, as well as carry ideological slogans.
Throughout the 20th century, Chinese woodblock prints repeatedly went through sudden and thorough changes in style, reflecting the swift currents of politics. In 1942, at a famous conference in the Communist Party’s former capital, Yan’an, it was decreed that art must be kept simple and completely serve the political message, leaving no room for interpretation. Later, in the early ’50s, more complex figurative techniques and composition came to be used with the influence of Soviet Socialist Realism. A renewed interest in nationalism in the late ’50s, paralleling China’s development of a political policy separate from the Soviet Union, resulted in artists being allowed to use more-traditional means of expressions again, albeit with different content.
The collectivization of farms in 1958, known as the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution in 1966, led by Chairman Mao, brought new developments in popular styles, with academic and artistic experimentations becoming branded as ``intellectual endeavors,’’ and with amateur artists, such as peasants and workers, being extolled as the ideal.
This continuous balancing act between artistic styles and political demands brought about moments of synthesis and creativity that is sometimes quite amazing. According to Chang, it’s a synthesis that resulted in ``more than just different artistic styles, but also a new way of looking at human nature, a new way of approaching visual culture’’ for the Chinese people.
By Joon Soh
Staff Reporter
National Museum of contemporary Art, Korea:
www.moca.go.kr
The Korea Times:
www.koreatimes.co.kr
Exhibition in Singapore:
www.paragonbook.com |
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