• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.6
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• pp.27-50
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• 2008

This thesis examines contemporary Chinese painting after the Cultural Revolution(1966~76), focusing upon so-called "Chinese Pop art", which I termed as "Socialist Pop art". I considered the art of this period within the broader context of social changes especially after the Tienanmen incident of 1989. After the Cultural Revolution during which idolization of Chairman Mao was at its peak, one of the major changes in communist China was that an anti-Mao wave was generated in almost every social class. For example, novels that revealed the hardships during the Cultural Revolution were published. Posters that openly criticized the Maoism were also produced and displayed on the walls, and demand for democracy spurred widespread activist movements among young generations. These broad social changes were also reflected in art. A variety of art movements were introduced from the West to China, and after a period of experimentation with the new imported styles, artists began to apply the new artistic idiom to their works in order to visualize their own social and political realities they lived in. It was a shift from earlier Socialist Realism to a new expression either directly or indirectly, "Socialist Pop", an amalgam of Socialist Realism and Pop art tradition. After the 1989 crackdown of Tienanmen Square protest, when communist government quelled with brutal measures the students, workers, and ordinary people who rose for democracy, greater urge to protest the Deng Xiaoping regime emerged. This time coincided with the gradual emergence of art using Pop art vocabulary to satirize the social reality, the Socialist Pop art, along with many other art forms all with avant-garde spirit. One of the most frequent subjects of Chinese Pop art was visual images of Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, and new China that was saturated with capitalism, which tainted the Chinese way of life with a Western way of consumerism and commercialism. The reason for the popularity of Mao's image was spurred by the "Mao Craze" in the early 1990's. People suddenly began to fall in a kind of nostalgia for the past, and once again, Mao Zedong was idolized as an entity who can heal the problems of modern China who had been marching towards their ultimate destination, the economic development. But this time Chairman Mao was no more an idol but just a popular, commercial product. He is no more an object of worship of almost religious nature but he has become an iconography symbolizing the complex nature of present Chinese society. During this process of depicting the social reality, Chinese artists are making the authority and sanctity of Maoism ineffective. Dealing with this new trend of contemporary Chinese art in view of "Socialist Pop art" two manners of re-creating Pop art can be illustrated: one that incorporates the propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution; the other borrows from Chinese traditional popular imagery or mass media, such as photos taken during Mao era. What is worth mentioning is that these posters and photos of the Cultural Revolution can be identified as 'popular' media, as they were directed to educate the popular mass, thus combination of this ingenuous pop media with Western Pop art can be fully justified as a genre unique to China. Through this genre, we can discover a new chapter of the Chinese contemporary painting and its society, as their Pop art can be considered as self-portraits true to their present appearances.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.7
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• pp.125-163
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• 2009

The artworks of Socialist Realism of the former Soviet Union, with the beginning of the 21st century, are gaining a new attention from art collectors. One reason for this might consist in the fact that relevant art pieces exemplify the ways in which they visualize ideas on the basis of their high-profile art tradition and also in which they integrate their utopian ideals with mysticism. These aspects of the Soviet art goes far beyond the wide-spread assumption that their art, as a means of propaganda, principally represents a political allegiance to the system. With Stalin coming into power in the 1930s, the artistic trend of Socialist Realism obtained a nationwide sympathy and support from people, giving birth to a new art which essentially corresponded to the demands of the political power. An official art current of the USSR over the period from the 1930s to 1950s, Socialist Realism was in tandem with the Communist commitment to the party and popularity, symbolizing a loyalty to the cause. It was thus characterized by plainness and lucidity so that ordinary people could gain easy access to art. Its salient feature, over an entire range of art, was an optimistic pursuit of a utopian dream. Therefore, it tallied with the popular sentiment for a Communist paradise, giving form to their beliefs in human agency working at the materialist world and also to such abstract concepts as force, fitness, and beauty by adding even mythical ideals. Its main subject matter includes harvest feasts of collective farms, imaginary socialist cities, grand marches of heroic laborers and in this way it served as a propaganda for a sacred utopia of socialist totalitarianism. On the other end of the spectrum, however, rose the second camp of art, which put an emphasis on bona-fide artistic activities of plastic art and on an artist's personal expression and freedom, as opposed to the surface optimism of Socialist Realism. Central to the Russian Avant Garde art, which prized the above-mentioned values, were Malevich's Geometric Abstraction and A. Rodchenko's Constructivism. Furthermore, in the transitional era of the late 20th century and the 21st century it was recognized that film art or electronic media art, rather than traditional genre of paintings, would function as a more efficient way of propaganda. These new genres were made possible by ridiculing the stereotypes of the Russian lifestyle and also by ignoring ethical or professional dimensions of artworks. That is, they reinvented themselves into a sort of field art, seemingly degrading the quality of artworks and transforming them into artifacts or simulacres in the very sense of post-modernism. The advent of the new era brought about the formation and occupation of pop culture of the younger generations, calling into question the idea of art as the class-determined. It also increased the attention to field art, which extensively found way to modern art centers, galleries, and exhibition projects. It can be stated that this was a natural outcome of human nature.