Illustration:
ill. 5.18 (set: 5.17)
Author:
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851)
Date:
1803
Genre:
landscape painting
Material:
scan, paper, grayscale; original source: oil on canvas, colour, 237.5 x 146 cm
Source:
Kindler 1979: Kindlers Malerei Lexikon. Cologne: Lingen Verlag, 1979.10:3894., Heidelberg catalogue entry
Keywords:
European landscape painting, clouds, sky, European Romanticism, European painting tradition

Joseph Turner: The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage, Macon

Structurally, Liu's and Jin's works are very similar in design: they both present Mao as an overpowering figure on top of a mountain with clouds and mountain peaks in the background echoing Mao’s movements. Yet, in the case of Jin, who depicts the older Mao in a Mao suit, the European model is much more obvious, his mountains are much less rugged, cone-shaped and sharp, they are much more flat, rolling and smooth and thus far less akin to the Chinese tradition of painting mountain ranges (ill. 5.16 b).

By adding iconographic elements from Chinese landscape painting into an oil composition in the style of Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism, Liu, on the other hand, had created a perfect piece of national flavour, combining the best of European art (no matter from what period, any European art would be considered “contemporary” or “modern” in China, see Mittler 1997) with the best of China’s traditions—just as Mao had demanded in his Yan’an Talks. (See also DACHS Continuous Revolution).