Through art, people can expose their ideas, their opposition to the government rules and regulations in a quiet way. The artists try to expose their revolutionary ideas and motivate the people to fight against the cruel actions of the government. The concept of Chinese government about art is that it must always serve the people and the government is always ready to promote art by giving systematic education about the new art. They always give preferences to the revolutionary art and the nonrevolutionary arts were banned at that time. There are different levels of artistic concepts in China which include the modern art, religious art, commercial art etc. Feudalism and landlordism come under the religious art and the concept of religious arts is mainly superstitious. In the revolutionary period of China, government was successful to create art gallery in western part of Beijing’s Forbidden City. During 1960s China suffered political and economic crisis. During that period the Chinese government forced the artistic people to do something for overcoming the crisis by developing new painting concepts. During that period new iconographic types like ‘Sun Zixi, In Front of Tiananmen’ appeared in socialists Realists art. Sun Zixi, In Front of Tiananmen, 1964, China is a canvas painting, which played a powerful role to create an impact on the Chinese art history. It is the pictorial representation of the photograph that several Chinese people paused to take a photograph of them in front of Chairman Mao’s portrait in Tiananmen Square, which is main political hub. This painting consists of the three groups of people like soldiers, workers and the other people. The painting symbolizes the victory of the socialist realism during the Maoist p... ... middle of paper ... ...yzing this picture one can clearly understand the situation of that port. One of the differences of this image from the picture of ‘Sun Zixi, In Front of Tiananmen’ is that in the picture ‘harbour scene’ all the people are unhappy while in the other image all the people are happy. And the other distinction is that the image Harbour scene (from Kwangju uprising) looks as if it is drawn, but the image ‘In Front of Tiananmen’ looks like a photograph. In the picture ‘In Front of Tiananmen’ the background scène and people’s image look very realistic and the picture is sketched in the way the people are posing to the camera. The image ‘harbour scene’ shows the cruelty of the government towards the public and the horrible condition of the people in the harbour while the image ‘In Front of Tiananmen’ shows the unity of every civilians regardless of rich and poor people.
Discovered in 1974 a group of farmers digging wells near Xi'an, China stumbled upon the tomb of Qin Shi Huang which is located 22 miles east of Xian Shi Huangdi. (259 BC - 210 BC), the first emperor of China, inherited the throne at the age of 13, when construction of his tomb began. He was responsible for several immense construction projects built by his people, including the Great Wall of China. The laborers came from three groups of people, craftsmen, prisoners and people who were repaying a debt. Sima Qian, a great historian who wrote in early Han dynasty, offered archeologists great insight on the mausoleum's construction. We learned from him that the tomb is huge. Moreover, booby traps with automatic-shooting arrows and crossbow booby traps were
After Mao Zedong’s death and the collapse of the Cultural Revolution Weiwei enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy. Film did not hold him long and in 1978 Weiwei became a founding member of an avant-garde group of artist called ‘the stars’, and an obsession with democracy and a deep critique of the Chinese government began to manifest. In 1981 Weiwei moved to the United States to practice and study art. One of Weiwei’s most iconic early pieces, Dropping Han Dynasty Urn (1995) depicts Weiwei holding, dropping, and the subsequent smashing of a Han Dynasty Urn. The performative gesture of this work is entrenched in Weiwei’s personal history, the significance of smashing a valued Chinese artefact symbolises the ‘desecration of cultural heritage (Delaney, 2016 p.30)’ that occurred during the Cultural Revolution and Weiwei’s
Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.
Secondly, Emperor Huizong was a patron of arts and in his painting academy he highlighted 3 aspects of painting: realism, systematic study, and poetic idea. (source dri buku yg foto di library) These 3 aspects were clearly shown in Cranes above Kaifeng: Auspicious Cranes which indicates the amount of control Emperor Huizong had on the visualization of auspicious events.
“I don’t want to be part of this kind of denying reality. We live in this time. We have to speak out” (Klayman). Ai Weiwei is an internationally known Chinese artist as well as activist, and his motivation and determination can be summed up by this quote. In all of his pieces, Weiwei critically examines the social and administrative issues facing China today. Many of his works exhibit multiple themes that can be interpreted in various different ways. This lends itself to the universal appeal of his art and makes it a more effective medium of conveying his messages to viewers. Ai Weiwei’s activist artwork—and activist artwork in general—is important to society because it effectively forces the viewer to engage in a self-reflective process that makes the viewer critically examine his or her own beliefs and world. Nevertheless, censorship greatly hinders the dissemination of the critical and thought provoking messages of Ai Weiwei’s art and makes his artwork less effective. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship of Ai Weiwei’s activist art and the Communist Party’s subsequent censorship, I will examine Ai Weiwei’s influential childhood, his specific brand of activist artwork, the censorship of the Chinese government and the effects of censorship on the effectiveness of Ai Weiwei’s art.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
Hung Liu is successful in creating a juxtaposing image that tells a story about the many aspects of her Chinese origins. According to the painting, not all life in China is surrounded by beauty and elegance, like many believe it to be based on the traditional historical customs. Liu makes her point using a brilliant yet subtle progression, moving from the ideal to reality. Making use of the various principles and elements of art in her work creates a careful visual composition that benefit and support the painting’s achievements as a whole. This oil painting, being approximately 13 years old now, will hold a special place in Chinese history for the rest of its existence. The ideas Hung Liu portrays in Interregnum may help reform a social movement in the country by making her viewers socially aware of the cruel conditions the Chinese are facing under Communist rule, and this is all made possible through the assimilation of the principles and
Once in ancient China when you could walk up stairs to visit the gods, a baby, Shen Yun, was born. She was perfect, some would say in every way, glossy black hair, big round eyes, tender and gentle, and as smooth as silk. She wore a purple kimono adorned with stars and galaxies. Everyone loved her for her innocence and beauty, but she was most known for her kindness. She grew to be a kind and helpful little girl. She was unique in a way that she could control the growth of the earth and can move the stars. Since she was so special her parents wanted to keep her safe, so they told her “You cannot go down to the mortal world.” they said, “but mommy, daddy, I want to help the mortals,” Shen Yun complained. Her parents thought and thought and decided she can
It is art fulfilling its role in society. It is art that brings the moral issues. It is art that makes us human.
It can also be argued that the political activities of Chairman Mao’s Communist China were more of a continuation of traditional Imperial China, based heavily in Confucian values, than a new type of Marxist-Leninist China, based on the Soviet Union as an archetype. While it is unquestionable that a Marxist-Leninist political structure was present in China during this time, Confucian values remained to be reinforced through rituals and were a fundamental part of the Chinese Communist ...
In his poem, “Notes from the City of the Sun”, Bei Dao utilizes obscure imagery consistent with the Misty Poets and veiled political references to illustrate the struggles in Chinese society during the Cultural Revolution. The poem is sectioned into fourteen short stanzas containing imagery that are symbolic of the cultural hegemony in China under the rule of Mao Zedong. Bei Dao, born Zhao Zhen-kai, is an anti-revolutionary poet and one of the founders of a group known as the Misty Poets. The Misty Poets wrote poems that protested the Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong. Therefore, a lot of Bei Dao’s poems speak out against the Cultural Revolution and the restrictions that it placed on any form of art. Bei Dao’s poetry is categorized as “misty” because of the ambiguity in its references to Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. An obscure imagery that occurs twice in “Notes” is the sun imagery. Another imagery that depicts the injustice of the Cultural Revolution is the description of freedom as scraps of paper. In the poem, Bei Dao also equates faith to sheep falling into a ditch; this is a depiction blind faith during the Cultural Revolution. The purpose of this essay is to analyze how Bei Dao’s use of the Misty Poet’s ambiguous imagery and implicit political context in the poem “Notes from the City of the Sun” to illustrate the cultural hegemony in China under Mao.
The Great Wall of China has been called a wonder by many who have seen it. It brings pride to the Chinese nation, and is known for being the only man made structure visible from space. The magnitude of The Great Wall is an architectural achievement as well as an example of the will power of man. Many find it hard to believe that such an amazing sight could have a history so filled with death, slavery and sadness as The Great Wall does. The Great Wall of China is one of the world's most famous architectural triumphs and has helped China throughout its history, even though its creation is marked by tragedy.
Chinese art went through many different stages starting from the year 1842. But the massacre of Tiananmen Square in the year 1989 was a turning point in the political life of China and in the country's art. Until the year 1992 art in China was underground, but it kept expanding. As a result of that, some Chinese artists started to do art works that rebel against their government and express their feelings towards China. One of these artists is the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who expressed in each piece of art he did, his feelings that China should let its people break away from the rotten traditional, in order to express their thoughts freely.
..., he acknowledges and reinterprets traditional Chinese art in his works. This is his mode of expression via shanshui tradition, and his ways of thinking, viewing and perceiving are infiltrated by the literati ethos. He works in the computer with his countless digital photographs, he creates virtual city landscape, combining the countless small format snapshots in a way that imitate the characteristic structure and composition of the classical shanshui. In his works, we can see that it always visualizes how China is developing and illustrates the consequences of modernization, globalization and the destruction of China’s ecological equilibrium caused by the speedy growth of its megacities over the past few decades. Yang said, “ The media… is not important, no matter what method you use to create, to maintain the creative spirit of the ancients is the most import.”1
In summary, in the process of modernization of the countries that have emerged with its own characteristics related to social development with its own cultural connotation of "modern art" in the content reflects the social modernization in the art form reflects the modern spirit. The contemporary art was continuing to show its value and letting more people and society to recognized the importance of it exited.