This is a brilliant, thorough study of art created during the disastrous decade in China's modern history. The recent flood of publications on China's contemporary art scene make this book on the immediately preceding period necessary reading because of the polar opposite forces that brought the two periods into play.... Essential.
* CHOICE *This volume compellingly illustrates that the artistic products of the CR period were anything but artless, sterile, without depth, without truth, and without reality (189). Moreover, present-day artistic producers and their works, as well as society at large, continue to be influenced by them.
-- Stefan R. Landsberger, University of Amsterdam * The China Beat *The level of scholarship throughout is high, with extensive reading in Chinese-language primary and secondary sources combined with personal experience. It is recommended reading for all students of contemporary Chinese culture and society.
-- Bonnie S. McDougall, University of Sydney, Australia * Pacific Affairs, Vol 84, No 3 *Introduction: Vibrant Images of a Turbulent Decade / Richard King and Jan Walls
Part 1: Artists and the State
1 The Art of the Cultural Revolution / Julia F. Andrews
2 Summoning Confucius: Inside Shi Lu's Imagination / Shelley Drake Hawks
Part 2: Artists Remember: Two Memoirs
3 Brushes Are Weapons: An Art School and Its Artists / Shengtian Zheng
4 When We Were Young: Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages / Gu Xiong
Part 3: Meanings Then and Now
5 The Rent Collection Courtyard, Past and Present / Britta Erickson
6 Hu Xian Peasant Painting: From Revolutionary Icon to Market Commodity / Ralph Croizier
Part 4: Beyond the Visual Arts
7 Model Theatrical Works and the Remodelling of the Cultural Revolution / Paul Clark
8 Feminism in the Revolutionary Model Ballets The White-Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women / Bai Di
9 Fantasies of Battle: Making the Militant Hero Prominent / Richard King
Notes
Bibliography
Index