If you ever visit the National
Museum of China (and you absolutely must because it is fabulous), it’s worth looking
at the permanent exhibition in Central Hall 1 entitled Masterpieces of
Chinese Modern Fine Art. What this actually offers is a series of paintings depicting (mostly) events relating to the revolution. The style and subject matter
are not everyone’s cup of tea but there’s no denying the power behind some of
these works.
One eye-catching example is Lin
Gang’s Joining of the Forces at Jinggang
Mountain (above), said to depict a key moment in the revolutionary struggle
when Mao’s forces made contact with those of a fellow commander. Everything is
bright and breezy. The old lady on
the left hobbles forward with a basket of supplies to support the cause. In the
lower right background, a soldier brandishes his rifle and shouts the good news
to comrades down the line. Mao is taller than everyone else and quite improbably handsome. Even the horse (on the
right) gazes at him with misty eyes.
I was surprised to learn that this
work was not created in the heat of revolutionary fervour but in the late
1970s, in the early days of the post-Mao era. Were such images still de rigueur then? Perhaps with the
scandals of the Gang of Four trials, it was important to remind the public of
the original aims of the revolution.
The most famous
work on display in Central Hall 1 is Dong Xiwen’s The Founding of the Nation (below), depicting the moment when Mao
announced the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. This is in the
approved style with references to classical Chinese motifs, such as the
clouds which are supposed to resemble the auspicious lingzhi fungus (don’t ask). And you can’t miss those gigantic red
lanterns!
This piece has a particularly
curious history. Since its unveiling in 1953, it has gone through multiple
“updates” to insert or remove figures in the group on the left. According to
historian Chang-Tai Hung*, the following changes were made:
- In 1954, the figure of Gao Gang, a
senior party leader, was painted out after he was accused of plotting to seize
power.
- In 1967, the figure of Liu Shaoqi,
ex-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, was deleted after he was condemned
as a bourgeois reactionary.
- In 1972, the figure of Lin Boqu, a
senior Politburo member, was deleted, ostensibly for opposing the marriage of
Mao and his powerful wife Jiang Qing. As they had been married for 24 years by
then, one suspects there were other reasons for Lin’s disappearance.
- And then in 1979, after the fall
of Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four, all the above three figures were reinstated in
the painting. One assumes that this is the final-final version, as everyone in
it has been dead for some time.
Something else that’s interesting
about this exhibition is the dominance of oil painting. Chinese artists in the
18th and 19th centuries tended to view oils as a strange
foreign medium, inferior to the subtlety of ink brush painting. But this
attitude changed in the 20th century under the influence of European-trained
artists like Xu Beihong and because of China’s developing alliance with
the Soviet Union. Russian artist Konstantin Maksimov, who taught at the Chinese
Academy of Fine Art in the mid-1950s, is often cited as a major influence. He
was a proponent of Social Realism in art, and his painting Sashka the
Tractor Driver in Virgin Lands (below) certainly has something in common
with the works in Central Hall 1.
Even if this sort of thing doesn’t
appeal, I urge you to visit the National Museum if you can. If you’re pressed
for time, focus on the lower ground floor collection which is misleadingly
entitled “Ancient China”: this actually contains a vast treasure trove of objects from the
Neolithic to the Qing period. And there’s a very good museum shop.
*Comparative Studies in Society
and History, Vol 49, No 4, Oct 2007, p.783
