Contextualizing Chinese propaganda posters

Ephemera and ArchivesRice University Chao Center for Asian

Studies, Houston2-4 December 2011

What are posters?

• Xuanchuan hua (propaganda images)• Nianhua (New Year’s prints)• Huapian (“posters”)

Yan’an, 1942

everything must change

Mao’s observations:

“Literature and art [must] become a component part of the whole revolutionary machinery, so they can act as a powerful weapon in uniting and educating the people ...”

“What we demand is a unity of politics and art, a unity of content and form, a unity of revolutionary political content and the most perfect artistic form possible.”

(Mao Zedong, Yan’an, 1942)

• Nianhua (New Year’s prints)• Youhua (oil painting)• Shuifenhua (water colors)• Mubanhua (blockprints)• Zhongguo hua (“Chinese” painting)• Diaoke, suzao (carvings, statues)• Xuanchuan hua (propaganda images)

Ha Qiongwen

Numbers

Consumption

Jin Hun 金婚

Wang Gui and Anna 王贵与安娜

286 pages with 250 color illustrations978-3-7913-4389-1

€ 19,95, US$ 24.95, £ 14.99Prestel Verlag, Munich, 2009

http://chineseposters.net