Recoding Capital: Socialist Realism and Maoist Images (1949-1976) by Young Ji Victoria Lee Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Stanley Abe, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Kristine Stiles, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Gennifer Weisenfeld Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2014 i v ABSTRACT Recoding Capital: Socialist Realism and Maoist Images (1949-1976) by Young Ji Victoria Lee Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Stanley Abe, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Kristine Stiles, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Fredric Jameson ___________________________ Gennifer Weisenfeld An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2014 Copyright by Young Ji Victoria Lee 2014 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the visual production of capital in socialist realist images during the Maoist era (1949-1976). By deconstructing the pseudo-opposition between capitalism and socialism, my research demonstrates that, although the country was subject to the unchallenged rules of capital and its accumulation in both domestic and international spheres, Maoist visual culture was intended to veil China’s state capitalism and construct its socialist persona. This historical analysis illustrates the ways in which the Maoist regime recoded and resolved the versatile contradictions of capital in an imaginary socialist utopia. Under these conditions, a wide spectrum of Maoist images played a key role in shaping the public perception of socialism as a reality in everyday lives. Here the aesthetic protocols of socialist realism functioned to create for the imagined socialist world a new currency that converted economic values, which followed the universal laws of capital, into the fetish of socialism. Such a collective “cognitive mapping” in Fredric Jameson’s words – which situated people in the non- capitalist, socialist world and inserted them into the flow of socialist time – rendered imperceptible a mutated capitalism on the terrain of the People’s Republic of China under Mao. This research aims to build a conversation between the real, material space subordinated to the laws of capital and the visual production of imaginary capital in the landscapes of socialist realism, for the purpose of mapping out how uneven iv geographical development contributed to activating, dispersing, and intensifying the global movement of Soviet and Chinese capital in the cultural form of socialist realism. This study also illustrates how, via the image-making process, socialist realist and Maoist images influenced by Mao’s romantic vision of the countryside were meant to neutralize this uneven development in China and mask its on-going internal colonialism. Through this analysis, I argue that, in the interesting juncture where art for art’s sake and art for politics intersected, Maoist visual culture ended up reproducing the hegemony of capital as a means of creating national wealth. v CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iv CONTENTS .................................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... xv INTRODUCTION: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics ................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE .......................................................................................................................... 55 In the Beginning: The Origin of Socialist Realism ....................................................... 55 Uneven Development and Socialist Realism ................................................................. 71 Politics of Time .................................................................................................................... 81 Soviet Capitals and Oil Painting ...................................................................................... 84 Elder Brother (lao dage) and Narrative of Socialism .................................................... 99 Maoist Myth and Paradox of National Allegory ......................................................... 111 Mao’s Third World and Sino-Centrism ........................................................................ 113 Black Africa and the Invisible Enemy ........................................................................... 119 Chinese Capital and Africa .............................................................................................. 129 CHAPTER TWO ....................................................................................................................... 138 The Spatial Production of Socialism ............................................................................. 138 The Surreality of Reality .................................................................................................. 144 A De-Capitalist Utopia ..................................................................................................... 147 Untouchable Beauty of Nature ....................................................................................... 157 vi Little Men and Commodification of Labor Power ...................................................... 160 Production of Nature and Infrastructure ...................................................................... 167 Illusion of Self-Reliance and Dazhai Spatiality .......................................................... 171 Revolutionizing Economy in the Countryside ............................................................ 181 Labor and Terrace-Builders ............................................................................................. 185 Representing Labor in a Socialist Utopia ..................................................................... 194 Moralizing Labor: Model Workers ................................................................................ 200 Tractors, the Socialist Machinery ................................................................................... 203 Music, Dance, Labor and Ethnic Beauties .................................................................... 211 CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................... 219 Typicality and the Fantasy of Socialism ....................................................................... 219 Debate on the Typical ....................................................................................................... 220 Individuality and Typicality ........................................................................................... 239 The Typical and Virtual Classes ..................................................................................... 243 History and Class Struggle .............................................................................................. 247 War and Universality ........................................................................................................ 258 Ideology of Development and Economic Topology ................................................... 268 The Typical and Memory Politics .................................................................................. 272 The Typical in the Image of Tibet .................................................................................. 279 The Typical and Beyond .................................................................................................. 299 The Persisting Ego of Professional Artists and Their Self-Portraits ....................... 300 EPILOGUE: Afterthought ....................................................................................................... 322 vii Identity and Difference .................................................................................................... 323 Dialogue between Adam Smith and Karl Marx .......................................................... 327 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................. 335 BIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................. 355 FIGURES..................................................................................................................................... 356 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: the Soviet Union is Our Example, poster, 1953, Collection of Stefan R. Landsberger. .............................................................................................................................. 356 Figure 2: The Soviet Union’s Today is Our Tomorrow, poster, 1956, Collection of Stefan R. Landsberger.