Political Norms And Image Disseminations

In Chinese modern art history, woodcut of the liberated areas is the art form that has theclosest connection with revolutionary political propagandas, and is also an importantpropaganda approach that helped the Communists to win the Sino-Japanese War and to obtainthe national power. This works have become “art weapons” and propaganda tools, endowedwith fairly strong propaganda functions. Especially after Yan’an Rectification Movement andwidely published “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” by Mao Zedong, bothpropaganda themes and strategy, and imagery expression and story narrative, had alldemonstrated complete characteristics of propaganda tools for an authoritarian political period,with propaganda features serving realpolitik, thus eventually became the typical “paradigm”for the emerging proletarian national art, and the origin of New China’s art.This dissertation studies on woodcut of the liberated areas within a historical scope,focusing on its cultural-political origins, with historical analysis on traditional Chinesewoodcut and traditional social culture, and reflections on the evolution of modern Chinesedemocratic politics. The woodcut of the liberated areas has been demonstrated as a newemerging proletarian art, with a formal appearances as a “Realist” narrative objectives ofreflecting the real struggles; In essence, however, it was still bonded by Chinese traditionalpolitical thoughts, resulting in a lack of modernity. The author uses the woodcut of theliberated areas during the Sino-Japanese War as specimens, applying historical studies anddocuments analysis, with theoretical research advancement achieved in political studies,propaganda studies, and sociology, to demonstrate the functional evolution and development procedure of political propaganda of it, and the intrinsic connections of the Communist’spropaganda ideas and Chinese traditional political cultural concepts of the process.This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part, Chinese traditional woodcut andemerging woodcut, provides a broad historical background. It discusses the cultural andhistorical background of the forming of woodcut of the liberated areas as an emergingproletarian emerging art, regarding the Chinese traditional woodcut, merging woodcut, andGerman Expressionist woodcut. It also touches on issues about power and ethic cultivation,technological reproduction and image dissemination, spread of emerging and Westernwoodcut, etc.The second part provides the main argumentative core of the dissertation, regardingcultural and historical background of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region and its intrinsicconnections and potential influence on woodcut of the liberated areas. It argues about therelation between art creation and political propaganda, thoughts on art of Zhang Wentian andits impacts on early woodcut of the liberated areas, the educational guideline of Luxun ArtSchool which started from a formal and professional request and turned toward educationalstructure for political propaganda. The Communist Party’s art guidelines as guiding principles,functioned through art practices, realized in integration with and serving for the workers,farmers, and soldiers, and producing woodcut works that is “delighted received” by thegeneral populace. The politically themed “popularization” and “nationalization”, has multipleimpacts on issues related to woodcut of the liberated areas, and the political identity of theartists dictates the political identity of woodcut of the liberated areas as well. They must obeythe Communist Party’s rules, serving and implementing Communist Party’s policies, as aresult from “soul cleansing” of Yan’an Rectification Movement, and implementation of theessence of Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, and remodeling of intellectual’smind. Therefore, woodcut of the liberated areas as a political propaganda tools, its teaching,creating, and disseminating activities, are all pragmatist and utilitarian art activities.For the studies on woodcut of the liberated areas with political propaganda as art objectives, the author hopes to provide an alternative scope and thinking realm for its study, inorder to fill the gap of previous researches done by domestic and foreign colleagues.