Illustration:
ill. 0.5
Date:
1968
Genre:
poster, propaganda poster
Material:
scan, paper, colour; original source: collage of three propaganda posters, paper, colour
Source:
Cushing & Tompkins 2007: Cushing, Lincoln, and Ann Tompkins, Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007:101.
Courtesy:
Lincoln Cushing / Docs Populi
Inscription:
沿着毛主席的革命文艺路线胜利前进
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, red sun, yangbanxi, model works, Little Red Book, Yang Zirong, workers, soldiers, peasants, cultural production, Mao's revolutionary line, model music, model opera, model heroes, The White-haired Girl, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy
March to victory with Chairman Mao's line one revolutionary culture (Yanzhe Mao Zhuxi de geming wenyi luxian shengli qianjin 沿着毛主席的革命文艺路线胜利前进)
The materials I have chosen to discuss here and in the book that this database accompanies are each of them important signposts in the making of Cultural Revolution propaganda. This 1968 poster entitled 沿着毛主席的革命文艺路线胜利前进 Moving forward, following the Victory of Chairman Mao’s Revolutionary Line in Art and Literature shows a huge parade of happy people, holding up the most important cultural products epitomizing “Mao’s Revolutionary Line.”
Each one of these is central to my discussion of cultural production under Mao: model music (featuring, on the poster, performers from ballets like the White-haired Girl on the right, from operas like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy in the middle and from instrumental musics like The Red Lantern with piano accompaniment on the left of the poster), model works (the poster includes participants holding up the Works of Mao Zedong and the Little Red Book), and model images, foremost among them, the portrait entitled Mao goes to Anyuan, a huge sample of which is carried by some participants on the right in the procession depicted in the poster.
Accordingly, the book that this database accompanies studies, analyzes, reads and questions the reception of some of the most visible official propaganda art from the Cultural Revolution, tracing its origins and its afterlives. In probing views from oral history, it also deals with the many unofficial cultural experiences that characterized the Cultural Revolution.