Illustration:
ill. 1.3 a (set: 1.3)
Date:
1966-1976
Genre:
article of daily use, commodity, plate
Material:
scan, paper, colour; original source: porcelain, ceramics, colour, 28 cm
Source:
Wenge yiwu 2000:Wenge yiwu shoucang yu jiage 文革遗物收藏与价格 (An archive and price list of relics from the Cultural Revolution), edited by Tie Yuan 铁源. Beijing: Hualing, 2000:134., Heidelberg catalogue entry
Inscription:
古为今用洋为中用
Keywords:
The Red Lantern, article of daily use, mass culture, Cultural Revolution, cultural production, propaganda art, musical instrument, piano, gesture, Mao's words, Mao quotation, heroine, model hero, model works, omipresence, everyday life

Plate with depiction from The Red Lantern (Hongdengji de tuxiang de zhuangshi panzi 红灯记的图形的装修盘子)

Pretty much all throughout the period now habitually described as the “Cultural Revolution,” the model works were everywhere, and it was not long before they had proliferated into every possible form, too: one could buy them on cheap LPs, and as comic books; one could see their heroes on posters, post-cards, and stamps, as well as on cushions, plates, teapots, cups, and candy wrappers, as cut-out and ceramic figures and plaques; on washing basins, handbags, cigarette packs, on vases, and calendars, in short, on almost all the paraphernalia of daily (if perhaps predominantly urban) use. The plate shown here carries a scene from the model work The Red Lantern 红灯记 Hongdengji with piano ccompaniment, including Mao’s 1964 phrase “To wield through the old to create the new and through the foreign, to create a Chinese national art“ 古为今用洋为中用. (See also DACHS Continuous Revolution).