Images of the Modern Chinese   by Chang Tsong-zung

Biographical information about artists whose names are underlined can be found on their respective pages.   More than any other art form, the modern woodblock print offers us portraits of the representaive "modern Chinese." The characteristics of these portraits are not static over time, however. Constantly changing, they reflect not only the social and political turbulence of the times, but also changing concepts of the role of the Chinese people in their engagement with their society. To investigate the metamorphosis of the human image in the woodblock is, therefore, an interesting way to follow China's search for modernity. The human image is portrayed, variously, as the symbolic bearer of the nation's burdens; as the "new" dignified human being; as a "reformed"-and therefore totally anonymous being, -during the years of Mao tumultuous Cultural Revolution; and in the contemporary world, in a variety of ways. The woodblock artists who began the modern Creative Print Movement in the early 1930s did not pay much attention to the traditional woodblock, even though their mentor Lu Xun was both a scholar and an avid collector of traditional materials. Like intellectuals working in other fields of art and literature, woodblock artists used contemporary foreign works as models; Russian and German examples, collected by Lu Xun and exhibited by him in the 1930s, were especially influential on the movement's founders. The early woodblock artists, however, did not favour contemporary European formalist avant-garde styles that had by then found their way into China. Lu Xun thought that formalism was "not liberation, but distingration." From the beginning, he urged the printmakers to portray social realities and thought the purpose of printmaking should be to influence a large public. The Creative Woodblock (also called the Modern Woodblock or New Woodblock) was to be devoted to bringing about political and social awareness. In his Foreword to Contemporary Woodblocks (1932), Lu wrote: "The function of woodblock is, by nature, social education. By using its characteristic contrasts of black and white, it can express powerful emotions. Its rich techniques can express the diverse aspects of society and life." It is important to point out, however, that the Creative Woodblock was by no means the only representative of mass produced European-style art that was on the Chinese scene between 1920 and 1949. In the 1930s, very interesting experiments in art intended for mass distribution already had appeared in Shanghai, especially in magazine illustrations and calender paintings (that is, illustrated calenders). The magazine Comics (first published in 1933), for example, published works made by experimental techniques, such as collage, and included avant-garde styles, such as surrealism, in which hallucinatory and alienated psychological states were portrayed. Some of this art was intended as political and social criticism but, in general, the experimental avant-garde was discredited by both the Right and the Left as being petit-bourgeois and irrelevant to social problems facing the nation. The earliest prints for this exhibition were selected, therefore, from among those artists who had a more immediate lineage with the Left, and whose work had a bearing on art after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. It should also be noted that the new National Art Academy at Hangzhou, that had opened in 1928, had introduced techniques of French academic realism, but this new woodblock art was not particularly concerned with depicting the configuration of the body with such realism. The intellectual avant-garde that had brought about the New Culture Movement in art and literature in the 1920s was principally a political avantgarde rather than an artistic avant-garde; its prime concern was to change the social and political realities of China through the application of cultural tools. This was particularly true of woodblock artists, who were attracted to the medium's ability to reproduce an image and thus disseminate it to a mass public. Because their purpose was social activism, the human body that these artists chose to depict was one made for action and, in some ways, echoed the propaganda art of Germany and Soviet Russia. And yet, in comparison with contemporary mass art in these two Western countries, it is clear from the awkward depiction of body structures in Chinese woodblock prints that the concept of the human body was different from either Soviet or Fascist art. Soviet art, after 1934, depicted "new, model" representatives of the proletariat. In German Fascist art, the ideal human body portayed-the Aryan model-was a conscious interpretation of the perfect Greek athletic body, and elaborate philosophical rationalisation lay behind its conception. The focus on the body of Chinese print artists in the 1950s, reflects the same sense of social purposefulness, however, as that in Soviet and Fascist art. The articulation of emotion, whether anger, happiness or despair, is meant to reflect wider national concerns and is not an exploration of psychological states. (Elsewhere in Europe, their counterparts were exploring the complexity of the human psyche and the body's relationship to the industrial world.) Chinese artists emphasised the "awakening" of the body as a socio-politically engaged subject. The awareness of the human body as a bearer of physical and emotional burdens that emerges in Chinese woodblock prints from the 1920s and 1930s had not been seen in the medium before this time. Altogether, such emphasis was completely new to the Chinese art vocabulary. In China, the intellectual premises of reform-minded woodblock artists were loose interpretations of European rationalist Enlightenment. Artists adopted these concepts in reaction to China's problems and intended them to be in opposition to the "backwardness" of traditional Chinese culture. Chinese intellectuals, however, were still coping with the implications of European philosophy, and the awkward body seen in woodblock prints reflects the general intellectual fumbling to create an integrated modern world view. Interestingly, "bourgeois" calender paintings in the 1930s had already settled into a comfortable use of realist techniques to bring China's long tradition of beautiful female figures up to date. In these early prints, the novelty for the artists in depicting the body as a vehicle for expression is apparent in the awkwardness of the figures-the images lack skill.   Yet works like Hu Yichuan's To the Front!, 1932 (fig.1) and Li Hua's Roar, China!, 1935 (fig .2), are poignant in their emotional directness. Sharp contrasts of black and white are used to emphasize conflict, and body movements are portrayed as purposeful and/or expressive of intense emotions. The influence of German expressionism is obvious. The Chinese artists developed quickly and, by 1940, woodblock had become more mature and a major medium of national art. By this time, over one-hundred-forty periodicals had published woodblocks, and the exhibition "Ten Years of Woodblocks," held in October 1940, exhibited over six hundred prints. Woodblock artists now bore an added burden, however; they were war propagandists as well as promoters of "modern" Chinese culture. The full-scale Japanese invasion of China, in 1937, had brought the country into war, adding greater political chaos to the partisan power struggle between the Nationalist government and Communist Party already harassing the nation. In their review of the 1940 exhibition, Li Hua, Huang Xingbo and others write: "Our political mission is to be anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist; naturally we should sharpen our blades, and be anti-Japanese and anti-traitor as well." Such a mission further excluded experimental avant-garde art, and woodblock art remained dominated by figurative narrative and developed further in the direction of realism. Examples of works from the early 1940s show greater mastery of techniques to depict the human form. Artists were also more skillful in showing the body integrated with the background, thereby suggesting its relationship with the material environment.   Drink, 1940 by Li Qun (fig. 3), for example, celebrates the strength and dignity of a laborer after physical work; the rocky hills of the setting hint at his power. The Able Bodied Come Forward to Help, 1939, (fig. 4) by Wu Zha depicts farmers in the same manner-they are as solid and firmly grounded as the land on which they stand. In Wu's print the substantial qualities of the human body are asserted through engagement with its surroundings. After 1942, a more distinctly "Chinese" look starts to appear in Chinese woodblock prints in Yan'an. Lu Xun had suggested, as early as the 1930s, that artists investigate China's own traditional materials as a source for creating woodblock art with a modern identity. Together with the scholar Zheng Zhenduo, he had commissioned the printing of several traditional woodblock collections including, in 1933, the Anthology of Beijing Decorated Letter Paper. This type of art, however, was intended for, and appreciated by, the privileged literati class. Only after Mao Zedong's new cultural policy directives were announced in Yan'an, in 1942, was there a decisive turn to folk art forms. (See the summary of the Yan'an Talks in the essay, "Themes, Styles and the Historical Background.") In Yan'an, artists adopted folk art styles, including folk prints and window paper cuts, because their political mandate was to reach out to the masses, and this was the style loved by the peasants. Such folk art portrayed the body with drastically different techniques from those recently introduced from the West. Figures in these traditional formats were created principally by line with little indication of volume-through-shading as in Western art. Chinese peasants, moreover, disliked "modern" figures modelled by chiaroscuro, because they found the use of shadows inauspicious; a shadowed face was considered a "ghostly" apparition and called by the peasants a "ying-yang face." To readapt the westernised body form to more closely approximate its treatment in folk art, shading was removed and the body flattened; some modelling outlines were retained, however, and figures bore a closer and more realistic resemblance to stocky peasants than they had in the stylised images of pure folk art. The loss of diversity that resulted from avoiding shadow on figures and flattening them was offset in the new woodblock by a greater variety of facial expressions. Figures in folk art tended to be rigid archetypes, often posed and theatrical. Artists also created new body language that began to approximate real gestures, although they still retained much of their original "staged" effects. Long Live The Peoples' Republic of China, 1950 is an example of the Yan'an style. The use of folk techniques also affected the tone of the new works, making them more positive and cheerful than works from the l930s and early 1940s. The traditional purpose of folk prints was essentially celebratory, even when the prints functioned as bearers of moral messages. Such characteristics suited the agenda of Communist cultural policy perfectly and were therefore widely encouraged. Other new, and different, developments in figural depiction were taking place during the same period in urban centers outside of the Communist-controlled areas. Caricature, used by artists of both the Left and Right, was prolific in newspaper illustrations and comics. Caricature exaggerates selected characteristics and, in effect, reduces the complexity of personality to a few features. It is a particularly effective means of satire. Zhang Yangxi's Shoeshine Boy, 1945 (cat. 52), for example, exaggerates the smugness of the mother while she holds her son in a rather undignified pose, making her self-importance appear ridiculous. In Li Hua's Tide of Fury: Resisting the Grain Draft, 1947 (cat. 26, b), an emotionally more intense work, the contorted face of the government agent depicts evil and evokes disgust. German expressionism from the 1930s is the obvious stylistic predecessor for prints such as these, but it is interesting to consider this evolution of the Chinese figure image in relation to traditional woodblock illustration. Scenes from Peking opera were favorite themes of nianhua (New Year's prints) and provided another kind of precedent for caricature. The adventures of characters in an opera's story were well-known to the audience. In particular, each character's moral nature in Peking opera is made unambiguous by his facial makeup: the "ridiculous" usually has a white patch on his nose; the "righteous," a black face; and the face of the "bad" character is painted white with irregular, sinister patterns; body gestures support the initial identification achieved with make-up. These conventions of the stage were replicated in prints in what is, essentially, a form of caricature. (See for example the depiction of the treacherous minister Sima Yi from a Shandong Province workshop, (fig. 5) But, although modern caricature and the opera (and opera print) both deal with character types, there is an imporant difference between them: the former depicts particular aspects of human nature while the latter defines the moral position into which a character's actions have brought him. In the world of the opera there is no absolute evil-a "bad" character becomes such by virtue of his deeds. (In operas, certain characters can change from unpainted faces to "white" faces as they fall into evil during the course of the drama.) Evil is circumscribed by action in a particular context. On the other hand, "evil" in modern caricature is objectified and made an incarnate reality. The more realistic presentation of the body in the modern woodblock, with the illusion of reality enhanced by indicating volume and density, was used to create a concrete personification of moral values. Furthermore, if evil has a real, concrete face, the implication is that it can be confronted and thereby eliminated from the human condition. Certainly China's social reformers believed that changing the structure of society could remove the root of evil. If we investigate other arts of the time, literature and film for example, it is obvious that a new perception of human nature was taking shape in China under the influence of Western culture. The expressive intensity of much contemporary Chinese art indicates that some artists were discovering that psychological states-the inner world of the mind-have a separate "reality" that can claim precedence over the exterior reality perceived by others. (Lu Xun's tales The Biography of Ah Q and Diary of a Madman and director Fei Mu's films depict human nature this way.) Zhang Wang's early print Alternative Paths, 1933 (fig. 6) gives the dark power of hopelessness a concrete embodiment. Huang Xingbo's After Selling Blood, 1948 (fig. 7) conveys the hallucinatory way that the individual mind can transform its awareness of the world. Zhao Yannian's Rice Riot, 1947 (cat. 60) creates an image whose powerful compositional elements seem to embody the phenomena of mass hysteria. The psyche, conceived as an entity that possesses autonomous power and that even has a dark authority, was a novel idea in China. Because the history of China's modern woodblock print before the founding of the People's Republic, in 1949, may be read as a history of the development of pictorial interpretation of misery-China's misery-it may also be studied as a history of the progressive acceptance of certain psychological "truths" not previously explored in Chinese culture. After the unification of mainland China in 1949, these new ideas about human nature were sorted out-accepted or rejected-according to the political culture of the times. Critical social observations and representations of misery were eliminated, and only affirmative glorification of the masses was permitted in art. The aspect of China's Creative Print Movement that had sought to provoke the populace into personal soulsearching with images of a cruel social order was declared unsuitable. The original purpose of the Creative Print Movement-mass education-was, however, retained. The cultural authorities decided that the best style of art to carry the new messages urging national cohesion and political development was the style that had been developed in Yan'an during the l940s (the Yan'an style), and that had adopted the characteristics of one of the most popular of all traditional art forms, that of the nianhua (New Year print). During the lunar New Year period, families all across the country replaced pictures pasted up at home the previous year. To transform this art was to transform the traditional pictorial culture that had informed the Chinese people for centuries. From 1950 until 1953. the new nianhua print style dominated art. State sponsored artists of all disciplines were recruited to create new. mass-produced prints based on the old formats and that retained traditional ways of figure portrayal and pictorial structure. In works from the early 1950s, such as the Suzhou print Hero in a Battle (cat. 13), and the pair of door-gods from Hebei Province Resist America, Support Korea and Protect the Country and Home (cat. 9, A and B), only their contemporary costumes differentiate the stiff impassive figures from their forebearers in traditional folk art. The human figure depicted in nianhua prints in the early 1950s, in general, was an anonymous countryman participating in communal activity. He did not strike an aggressive "heroic" pose, as did his later incarnations during the Great Leap Forward (that began in 1958), and certainly did not have the degree of theatrical exaggeration that characterized figurative art during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). By 1953 a degree of political stability had been reached, and the art authorities decided that the near-absolute dominance of the nianhua style could be relaxed and other art styles permitted. From then until the early 1960s some woodblock artists created a new image of the Chinese that is statuesque, well-proportioned and possesses dignified seriousness. Inspired by both traditional Chinese book illustration (with an art vocabulary more sophisticated than that of folk art) and European art, figures in the new style have classic qualities. In Zhang Yangxi's Bringing Lunch to the Fields, 1955 (cat. 56); the peasants walk in stately procession much like those found in Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) relief carvings; Zhao Zongzao's figures in Giving Milk in the Field, 1959 (cat. 71), have the formal demeanor of figures in traditional woodblock book illustration as well as those of traditional painting. Both prints are confident works. Yan Han's Long Live Harmony and Peace, 1952 (cat' 36) and Huang Xinbo's Keep Standing Up, 1961 (cat. 115) more influenced by European/Soviet monumental art present idealised images of the modern Chinese, who are shown statuesque, resilient and confident, but without exaggerated glamour (soon to be imposed by ideology). By the late 1950s, the development of a more natural and realistic style of figure portrayal in fine art was also influencing figure depiction in popular New Year's prints. A comparison of works from the early l950s, such as The Children Are Playing, 1950 (cat.2), and Hero in a Battle , undated but from the early l950s (cat.13), with the pair of prints Chinese Sons and Daughters Have High Aspirations and They'd Rather Wear Weapons Than Pretty Clothes, 1964 (cat. 16, A and B), reveals how much more naturalistic the figures are in the later works, although they retain the outline drawing and flat colors of the traditional style, and there is no chiaroscuro on face or body. The l950s were important years of cultural consolidation in China. The cultural climate of the time was infused with the national determination to construct a Chinese Marxist society. Traditional arts were encouraged only as long as they towed the line on ideology. The new model image of the Chinese in Yan Han's and Zhang Yangxi's prints, discussed above, are representative of the new realism, restructured in China with indigenous material and evolved to fit the national purpose. This new image-based on both Chinese antecedents and nineteenth century European realism (the latter considered Western and scientific) had qualities consistent with the vision developed by Marxism. The "new image of the Chinese" that emerged was self-assured, hopeful and commited to national purpose. It had aesthetic validity as well as that conferred by intellectual authority derived from nineteenth century European scientific positivism. From the late l950s, the Party's political agenda again intruded more and more into art, and the image described above was replaced, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, with a totally different type of figure depiction. In this latest development, human images are fashioned according to the ideology of the time into uniform "mass" creatures-synthetic, homogenous and indistinguishable one from the other. As the Cultural Revolution continued, principles for the visual language of art during this period were laid down by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife. She had overseen the creation of a series of eight "model performance pieces," in which all the characters on the stage had to be presented according to certain principles that she had developed and deemed politically correct. The principles were transposed into pictures, which now took on theatrical characteristics. Body language became dramatic, "good" characters glow as if spotlighted, and "bad" characters are shadowed as if in darkness. Body movements are assertive and limbs are often extended, as if the characters were dancing in a ballet. Body language of Cultural Revolution figures is almost a caricature of Russian ballet stances. A comparison of Cultural Revolution art with the wealth of story illustrations and opera scenes found in traditional woodblock illustration helps to highlight the new departures. The concept of the picture frame as a stage is obvious in both traditional popular opera prints and traditional book illustrations. As in real operas, scenes often have a bare minimum of props, and even when a fuller background is depicted, it is edited to focus the narrative. Figures may be "offside" rather than center stage and are embedded in dramatic action, integrated and blended with the background to become part of the setting. It is as though the dramatic situation takes possession of the actors, who are participants within a context broader than the individual. Furthermore, the body language in book illustration is usually restrained. From among 224 illustrations in a 1616 edition of Illustrated Anthology of Yuan Dynasty Operas, only several have figures with animated body gestures: the illustration of an abandoned woman for Rain at Xiao Xiang (fig. 8) is the most outwardly emotional of these. Figures usually are presented, however, with restrained gestures-even the faces generally remain impassive. While prints from both the Cultural Revolution and the anthology discussed above (the latter is quite representative of the type) are inspired by opera tales, and both show the human figure engaged in dramatic situations, the former depicts the body only playing a role in public, while the latter typically presents the human figure in its private, personal space. In Cultural Revolution prints the body is shown assertive, both in body language and in the area of the picture it occupies; in traditional book illustration, the human figure occupies a less prominent location and relatively less of the total area of the picture-it is also self-contained, the body, swathed in clothing, hints subtly at the character's emotional state but does not dramatize it. In traditional illustration, the reader's imagination plays an active role in apprehending the narration, filling in what is not written or portrayed; clarity of meaning is a criterion of propaganda art, however, and prints of the Cultural Revoution leave little open to interpretation. The radical differences between these two approaches is apparent when we compare the depiction of the nonchalance of the unrepentant playboy being chastised in the illustration for The Embroidered Quilt (fig. 9); and the joy of a woman reading a loveletter, portrayed in the illustration of The Story of the West Chamber (fig.10)-both seventeenth century prints-with prints from the Cultural Revolution, such as Xu Kuang's Don't Let the Serf System Be Restored, 1974 (cat. 94) and Cai Dian's The Revolutionary Generation Is Like a Swelling Tide, undated, but early 1970s (cat. 110). In prints such as these, Western modes of realistic representation of the human body were co-opted during the Cultural Revolution to the traditional Chinese function of portraying good and evil personified, as if they were characters in an opera. Just as in traditional Peking opera the moral characteristics of the individuals portrayed are already known to the viewing public so, in Cultural Revolution art, the public knows that People's Liberation Army soldiers are "good," as are members of the masses with the correct political orientation; landlords, of course, are "evil." The techniques of realism were used to give "objective reality" to an extreme view of human nature in which class origins were claimed to determine an individual's moral stature. After the Cultural Revolution ended, it was several years before artists could break free from the principles that controlled art during the decade, and the human form could be used to convey shades of sentiment with no positive political relevance. In the new cultural environment, figures could now express personal joy as well as loss and anxiety. Yan Han's Spring Rain, 1984 (cat.40), shows the human form moving through space in a delightful style reminiscent of cubism. Ma Desheng's Sea, 1980 (cat. 42), also an experiment in form, represents the human being as an inert mass upon a mound. In the 1980s there was an extensive revival and development of the woodblock's potential for landscape art and a corresponding diminishing of interest in the human body as the central subject of prints. Chen Haiyan, for instance, incorporates images from dreams into her prints, as in Dream (1986.5.3): People Are Sleeping, 1987 (cat. 87), and Dream (1986.5.28): A, 1987 (cat. 75), but still retains the human form as a component of the design, though it is one element among many. The human image disappears altogether from Xu Bing's woodblock-printed Tianshu-Xi shi jian (A book from heaven-or a mirror for analyzing the world), 1988-1991 (cat. 43). Towards the latter part of the decade, a number of innovative contemporary artists working in various media actually recevied their formal training in the print departments of various academies of fine arts; because of its historical link with social activism, printmaking has status equal to painting and sculpture in Chinese art academies. Woodblock artists, well aware of this background, have the confidence to compete for leadership of experimental art. A few woodblock artists have continued to make people the central subject of their art and to use the woodblock medium to create works in the new spirit of the time. Huang Huaxiang, for example, portrays people with an irreverent and cheeky air; the title of Natural Position, 1991 (cat. 48), signals the artist's intention to delineate an unheroic image. Fang Lijun's large bald-headed youth in 96 - 16, 1996 (cat. 47), is also emblematic of the period. These works provide a fresh, critical perspective on society using the human figure as a term of reference. Uneasy with social norms, distrustful of intellectual idealism, these artists have tried to locate themselves vis-a-vis society by adopting an ironic, disrespectful attitude; awkward body language is cultivated as artistic vocabulary. Their strong awareness of self is expressed through ambiguous yet assertively questioning images of the body. Their "self" is conceived as both disenfranchised and indulgent-many of their works describe physical pleasures. They are children of the new age of the market economy, and their perspective is shared by young artists in other media, such as film and literature. But woodblock art itself has lost much of its eminence in the Chinese art world of the l990s, and many print department graduates try their hands at other media. Some, such as Fang Lijun, have made their reputation with oil painting and installation art, although they still return to woodblock, from time to time (See catalogue 47, discussed above). Some Chinese artists, nevertheless, still explore the woodblock medium and continue to devise new techniques for making it a tool of expression with contemporary relevance. The outstanding veteran woodblock artist Zhao Yannian (born 1924) has developed methods of carving and printing ink on paper that achieve nuances commensurate with the rich psychology of his "portraits." Indeed, to review Zhao's career is to recapitulate the development of the modern Creative Print. The angry righteousness, psychological intensity and painful imagery in works such as Rioting for Rice, 1947 (cat. 60) and Discarded Baby, 1948 (cat. 61), created between 1945 and 1949, represent perfectly the themes and styles of their times. They are as poignant today as when they were created. After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, most other artists created the cheerful, optimistic works sought by the art authorities, but Zhao worked continuously to find ways of expressing his sense of outrage at injustice and human exploitation. Although we may find the emotion in his famous Rise Up! Slaves Suffering Hunger and Cold, 1954 (cat. 62) too direct and lacking nuance, it is, nevertheless, a brilliantly arresting image that realizes the propaganda objective for which it was made. In Protest, 1956 (cat. 63) the artist has delineated Lu Xun and Song Qingling (wife of Sun Yat-sen, father of the modern Republic) as archetypes of righteous nationalists and, although the figures are stiff and lack the subtelty of those created by Zhao in the 1940s, they are easily understood and the story intelligible and poignant. During the politically treacherous days of the Cultural Revolution, Zhao started work on his masterpiece, a set of sixty woodblocks illustrating Lu Xun's famous Biography of Ah Q (cat. 66). The series was conceived in 1972 and carved between 1978 and 1980, when Zhao was at the height of his technical powers. Every stroke of the knife was precise and, together with the artist's mastery of innovative printing, achieved effects that are like wet and dry strokes of a painter's brush. Zhao used all his skills to capture the psychological complexity of a character whom Lu Xun created to represent the archetypal Chinese of traditional society. Lowly but proud, boastful but ignorant, plagued by his sense of inferiority yet unkind to those weaker than himself, Ah Q is pathetic. During the days of the Cultural Revolution, Ah Q was finally brought to life and made flesh by Zhao, who felt that events in that tumultuous decade had given him understanding of the complexities of Ah Q's character. Zhao has created an indelible image of the darkness of the soul, and his interpretation still brings shivers to the viewer today: his Ah Q is not just an outcast-a fictional character-but a fully realized person, deserving pity. Perhaps there is a shade of him in every modern Chinese. In the late 1980s, Zhao began a series of haunting portraits set in the Cultural Revolution period, among which is a self-portrait with a penal plaque hung around his neck, Nightmare: Number One, 1989 (cat. 68). Dark, despairing, in agony, the figure is nevertheless defiant, recalling Zhao's prints from the 1940s: after a life in woodblock art, Zhao, is still defiant in spite of his years, and still a great creative force, keeping alive the critical spirit of the Creative Print Movement.