The Ashmolean Museum's "Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s" Exhibit

Mount Qixia (1961), Zhang Xinyu

September in the North (1963), Chao Mei

The Return of the Graduate (1977), Liu Xiu

Demurely situated in a warmly lit room of the Ashmolean Museum, the exhibit “Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s” is a testament to how propaganda art captures the eye at first glance, and then unsettles the mind for long after. Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s reclaimed the traditional ink landscapes of its earlier Qing predecessors to reflect and celebrate the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). While the exhibit reflects the Soviet art influence of the 1950s—socialist realism—in its heroic figure compositions, the nuances among the pieces express a movement of artistic rebellion.

The Ashmolean also directs the visitors’ attention from the human to the landscape through a juxtaposition of pieces, such as “The Return of the Graduate” and the more scenic “Mount Qixia.” In “The Return of the Graduate,” the female subject’s sentimentality is the focus of the piece. The exhibit later focuses on the landscape as the primary subject of the paintings, eventually eliminating the human as subject in pieces like Chao Mei’s “September in the North.” In the scenic “Mount Qixia” painting, the human is subsuming the scenery, a landscape of red forest without human subjects. The overwhelming presence of red leads the viewer to wonder whether the red forest’s foliage is composed of crowds of humans gathered to worship Mao.

Spatially, the Ashmolean creates tension by placing traditional works of Chinese ink landscapes on the opposite wall. By spatially contrasting two interpretations of landscape, the exhibit chronicles its historical role as muse and manipulation.

While the exhibit itself navigates through movements within subjects, the nuances within the propaganda art are not artistically transgressive. Expressed through the communal art style and subject matter, individual authorship was discouraged and the art of this period was a collaborative enterprise. The very nature of art lies in the expression of the individual through aesthetic means. Therefore, these expressive limitations inevitably manifest a tension from what is said and what desires to be said. Ultimately, this tension is the underlining soul of the art in China in the 1960s and 1970s and this Ashmolean exhibit.