1 Final Paper: Art Museums in Maoist China In the first half of the twentieth century, China was ravaged by wars and rarely had a stable or powerful central government. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong took power and quickly consolidated its rule over China. The CCP sought to radically transform almost all aspects of life and art and art museums were no exception. The CCP sought to reshape art and art museums according to their revolutionary political ideas. According to these principles, museums such as the Museum of the Chinese Revolution were effectively overseen by the CCP’s propaganda department and there was little room for independent art. The Cultural Revolution furthered these trends when many priceless artifacts were destroyed by paramilitary Red Guards who associated the artifacts with traditional Confucian ways of thinking. The Cultural Revolution also inflicted incredible suffering on many individuals and families who were often groundlessly fingered as being counterrevolutionary. However, somewhat surprisingly institutions such as the Shanghai Museum cooperated with Red Guards to enrich their collections. The CCP also extensively utilized art-historical expertise during this time to export art for foreign exchange. This paper will begin with a historical overview of the period as the political context had an important effects on Chinese art during this period. We will then discuss 2 the Museum of the Chinese Revolution and its founding in 1960 as one of the major case studies in this paper. The Shanghai Museum which opened in 1952 is the other major case study. These cases illustrate that while politics generally dominated art during this period of Chinese history; art and art museums managed to avoid complete domination and in some respects art-historical expertise became more important. This complexity problematizes the conventional narrative that Maoist China and particularly the Cultural Revolution were a terrible time for art which while accurate in many respects does not fully capture the subtleties of the period. These subtleties would become very important later on in the case of the Shanghai Museum where the curatorial expertise gained during this period placed a crucial role in the museum after 1976. The CCP was founded in 1921 and in its early years allied with the Nationalists in fighting warlords. Yet in 1927 Chiang Kai-shek turned on the CCP which was driven out of the coastal urban centers where its support had originated. By the mid-1930s the Communists were on the run and the Nationalists had consolidated power. The Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937 at which point the CCP and Nationalists nominally formed an alliance against the Japanese. In reality, the Communists began to take territory from the Nationalists government which was forced to move its capital inland to Chongqing as Japan conquered the coastal cities. After Japan’s defeat in 1945 the Chinese Civil War resumed in full force. In 1949, the Nationalists were forced to retreat to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China was founded. The early 1950s were a time of dramatic social change in China with land reform and Communist control transforming the economy. The economy grew at a relatively 3 rapid pace which led Mao to order the Great Leap Forward in 1958. The Great Leap Forward turned out to be an unmitigated disaster with tens of millions starving between 1958 and 1961. Relations with the Soviet Union also worsened during this period. After the failed experiment of the Great Leap Forward life normalized somewhat in the mid-1960s until the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. The Cultural Revolution attempted to eradicate traditional influences on society which led to harassment of former land owners and destruction of many traditional artifacts. After Mao’s death in 1976 the CCP became more moderate under Deng Xiaoping and independent art developed to a much greater extent. The CCP was from its early years very aware of the importance of using culture to initially spread its popularity and later when it took power in 1949 it used similar methods to legitimize its rule. The Party even began to think about building a museum devoted to artifacts and art during its difficult years in the early 1930s when Nationalist forces had chased it out of the major cities where it had originated (The Red Line 915). Although such plans did not materialize for decades due to the turbulent political environment and continuous armed conflict it is representative of the Party’s approach to power. For example when the CCP took Beijing in 1949 it began collecting items for what would eventually become the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, which would not actually open for more than a decade. The first item for the museum was the scaffolds used to execute Li Dazhao, one of the co-founders of the CCP. The CCP also developed a type of oil painting which they called, ““revolutionary history painting” to recount and glorify the history of the party (Oil Paintings and 4 Politics 785). The use of oil paintings as a political tool is particularly interesting as oil paintings could have been considered a sign of individual expression influenced by the bourgeois West instead of a proper proletarian art form. Yet the CCP relied on this paintings extensively to present their preferred historical narrative to the Chinese population. Art was a particularly important medium of communication during this early years of the PRC as most of the population was rural illiterate farmers. The oil paintings were also influenced by Soviet Socialist Realism as there was widespread cultural exchange between the PRC and the Soviet Union in the 1950s. The addition of art to the Museum of the Chinese Revolution had its roots in these exchanges. Wang Yeqiu visited the Soviet Union in 1950 and was so impressed by the Soviet National Museum of the Revolution that he proposed adding oil paintings to the Museum of the Chinese Revolution (Oil Paintings and Politics 786). The next year his proposal was accepted and plans were made to commission historical oil paintings for the museum. Although many museums commission artwork for exhibits this case was unusual in how strictly the Party proscribed the historical topics to be painted. Influenced by similar Soviet museums the organization of the museum was to follow the then orthodox view of Party history laid out in Hu Qiaomu’s Thirty years of the Chinese Communist Party, which was based on Mao’s 1940 essay, “New Democracy” (Oil Paintings and Politics 791). Some technically skilled and politically loyal painters were assigned to make paintings for the museum a task which they eagerly applied themselves due to a mixture of belief in the communist cause, desire for national recognition, and financial support. 5 Although there was general consensus in the Party over its history; the role of Mao in the Part proved a much more challenging topic. While the Museum of the Chinese Revolution was originally planned to open in October 1949 as part of celebrations for the PRC’s 10th anniversary its opening was delayed for two years because of this dispute. The disagreement centered on whether Mao was a singular figure in the Party history or whether he was one of several important early Party leaders. Eventually the Museum opened with something closer to the latter view although Mao was still portrayed as the most important figure. Although the dispute over Mao’s centrality was particularly divisive it was far from the only politically motivated dispute during the founding of the Museum of the Chinese Revolution. Many artists struggled with the difficult task of having their works “reflect the revolutionary movement of workers, peasants, and soldiers and their revolutionary wars [against imperialism and capitalism], and portray the determination and integrity of revolutionary heroes” which was the official standard for artworks in the museums (Oil Paintings and Politics 801). Many works of art produced for the museum were rejected on these grounds although we do not have statistics on the exact number because museum archives are closed to the public. Several paintings portraying Communist martyrs were rejected for being too gloomy. Nor did political interference in art end when the artworks were completed. For example, Dong Xiwen’s 1953 oil painting The Founding Ceremony of the Nation features Mao Zedong addressing hundreds of thousands in Tiananmen Square gloriously announcing the formation of the People’s Republic. Although contrary to history, in the 6 painting Mao stands along with a group of senior Communist leaders watching close by. As the painting was initially politically popular and regarded as one of China’s best oil paintings over 500,000 reproductions were made within three months (Oil Paintings and Politics 783). Yet during the continuously shifting political tides of Maoist China several of the senior party leaders in the painting were purged and Dong was ordered to remove them from the painting. Although Dong died in 1973 other painters restored the images of the purged leaders in 1979. These examples illustrate the centrality of politics to art and art museums during this period. Although technical excellence was not completely ignored it was certainly devalued compared to political correctness. As such while the Museum of the Chinese Revolution was officially under the Ministry of Culture the CCP’s Propaganda Department played an even more important role (The Red Line 923). Yet there was still limited room for artistic innovation during this period. The CCP was keen to see the development of a new Chinese form of painting and as long as the paintings were sufficiently politically correct and met certain basic artistic tenets the artists had reasonable freedom.