Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979 (review)

REVIEWS Julia F. Andrews. Painters and Politics in the People's Republic ofChina, 1949-1979. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. xv, 568 pp. Hardcover $55.00. Julia Andrews' chronological survey ofthe practice ofpainting and closely related arts in Maoist China joins a body ofrecent work—books, articles, and catalogs— on twentieth-century Chinese art that is much richer than it was when she began her research. Happily, her work is praiseworthy not only because it is pioneering but also because it is clearly organized, convincing in its selection ofkey events and works, and painstakingly researched. As well as making excellent use ofwritten materials, Andrews was able to conduct interviews with an impressive number of artists. Her timely collecting offirsthand accounts of artistic life in the early decades of the People's Republic of China is a contribution in itself. The only disappointment here is that interviewees are identified by alphabetic code, rather than name, but given the political and personal sensitivities involved, this is understandable . Andrews introduces her project with the statement that after 1949, art in the People's Republic of China developed in ways that made it different in style and subject matter from the art both ofthe West and of other Chinese societies, so that by 1979, when China again became accessible to the outside world, art celebrated within China was judged to be either bad or incomprehensible by outsiders . For those who would like a fuller evocation ofthis particular moment, "The Ten Frustrations, or, Waving and Smiling across the Great Cultural Abyss," an account of a visit to China in early 1980 by the perceptive but frankly confused American art critic Lucy Lippard, comes to mind.1 Fifteen years later, the sense of shock and dismay has faded, but Andrews is right in reminding her readers ofthe distinctiveness of the cultural order she will examine. In order to clarify the critical standards and artistic goals ofMaoist China, Andrews chooses to focus on how governmental arts policies and bureaucratic structures—the art academy system , the Chinese Artists Association, and the art publishing system—shaped artists ' careers and guided the production ofparticular works. This approach is both© 1995 by University obvious and welcome, and it allows her to craft an account ofart in the Mao ofHawai'i Pressyears that will be accessible and useful to readers from a range ofbackgrounds and disciplines. 388 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 The first chapter gives a brief account of the Chinese art world in the 1930s and '40s, singling out "revolutionaries" and "academics" as the forces most influential after 1949. Jiang Feng (1910-1982), a left-wing woodcut artist who became a prominent arts administrator, is the paradigmatic revolutionary. Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) and Xu Beihong (1895-1953) represent the academics. Xu was vehemently antimodernist and wanted Chinese art education to follow the European academic realist tradition. His brand of realism was appreciated by the communists , and Xu was invited to stay on as head of the National Beiping Arts College after 1949. Lin, who supported both Modernism and traditional Chinese painting during his time as director ofthe National Hangzhou Art Academy, was marginalized. The second chapter covers the reform of the art world by the new government from 1949 to 1953. Jiang Feng was a central figure, serving as spokesman of Party policy and spearheading the reorganization ofthe art academy system. The Beiping Arts College welcomed the new regime and became the Central Academy of Fine Arts, flagship ofthe new art system. But the "reform" ofthe Hangzhou Arts Academy was less smooth. In all the academies, popularization was the main task. That is, staff and students were directed to create new art that would appeal to the masses by taking extant popular forms as their models. Andrews makes clear that even committed advocates ofpopularization did not see much intrinsic aesthetic value in these forms. Rather, Dong Xiwen's oil painting Founding ofthe Nation represented the high-status image of the early 1950s. Traditional Chinese painting , or guohua, neither "popular" nor "realistic," was believed to have little future. In the period 1953-1957, discussed in chapter 3, Andrews identifies three main trends: first...