Illustration:
ill. 2.10
Date:
1967
Genre:
comic, comic strip
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white; original source: print on paper, black-and-white
Source:
Blackening the Sun, 1967 (千钧棒漫话 Qianjunbang manhua, edited by Shoudu geming zaofanpai, reprinted in V. Wagner 1995: Wagner, Vivian. “Lieder der Roten Garden.” M.A. Thesis, University of Munich, 1995:136.
Inscription:
这个太阳太亮了！ 塗黑他。。。 呀!。。。
Keywords:
Cultural Revolution, sun, comic, sunrays, Mao Zedong, iconography, parody, artist, criticism

Blackening the Sun (Tu hei taiyang 塗黑太阳)

During the Cultural Revolution, innumerable artists were punished for not painting the sun bright enough. A comic strip from 1967 shows the potentially disastrous results of attempting to “cloud over” the sun. A painter with a bucket of black paint in his hands decides that the sun he has just painted is a bit too glaring. But what happens when he attempts to darken it with black paint, is that the whole bucket of paint empties itself over him and he himself ends up blackened.