By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
What this article is about
'Chairman Mao en route to Anyuan' was painted in oils on canvas by Liu Chunhua (his name is also seen as Liu Chenghua and in other spellings), a young member of the radical Red Guards. It looks back 45 years, to 1922, when Mao Zedong (also written Mao Tse-tung), one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, went to support a peaceful strike by miners and railway workers at Anyuan, in Jiangxi province in south-east China. Many of those workers later joined his Red Army, which in 1949 set up the state we know.
The painting is a fanciful but iconic composition showing Mao at almost 30, in a traditional long gown. Even so, it was rather revolutionary for its time. It is classed as 'socialist realism'.
By 1967 Mao was 73, and the convention was to show him in a 'Zhongshan suit', the buttoned tunic suit with a turned-down collar and four pockets. It was the norm to flood the picture with red. And it was the norm to surround him with purposeful workers, clearly on a mission, with him as their inspiration.
In keeping with the tight control China has long kept over the media, this was no random daubing. It was made for a purpose and, once approved by the Party, it is said to have been reproduced some 900 million times.
This article looks at the painting and the artist, the subject, the event and the movement, and the purpose for which it was made.
The subject: Chairman Mao
Mao remains a controversial figure because, whatever good he did, he was a ruthless dictator. He can be credited as a military strategist, poet and visionary who unified China and ended decades of divisive civil war. He was a vivid writer too. His 'Little Red Book' says: 'Revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It can't be done elegantly and gently'.
It wasn't. Estimates of the number killed during the 'Cultural Revolution' run from hundreds of thousands to two million. Much of the violence was carried out by Red Guards, who beat, tormented and killed people on the flimsiest of grounds, such as being thought 'bourgeois' or too educated. The atrocities were at their height in 1966 and 1967, when the painting was made.
Left: the artist Liu Chunhua. Centre: the artist (with glasses) in 1968. Right: Mao in 1967, when the painting was commissioned.
Where Mao's revolution sits in history
It helps to see where Mao's revolution falls in the wider story of communism.
- 1760 to 1840. The Industrial Revolution. Whatever its benefits, many saw it as exploiting working people, and that sowed the seeds of both socialism and communism.
- 1848. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published 'The Communist Manifesto'.
- 1917. Lenin led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Stalin followed him, and it became bloodier still.
- 1921. A communist party was formed in China.
- 1945 onwards. As the Second World War ended, the Soviet Union brought much of eastern Europe under communist rule and the Cold War began. Wars followed in Korea (1950 to 1953) and Vietnam.
- 1949. China became communist.
- Around 1960. China and the Soviet Union fell out and went their separate ways.
- 1976. Chairman Mao died.
Today the surviving communist states are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.
Why this painting was different
The painting belongs to a genre, so it isn't unique, but the genre really did break with convention. Chinese painting had long been dominated by ink and wash on paper scrolls. A typical example is Li Keran's 'Ten Thousand Crimson Hills' of 1963. Oil on canvas was an approach adopted from the Russians, who had obviously influenced China.
What's going on in this work?
The propaganda authorities would normally dictate how Chairman Mao was to be shown. Here Liu Chunhua was given some licence to break with custom. He went to Anyuan and interviewed some of the 13,000 workers who had struck in 1922, who were still alive and remembered Mao coming to support them.
Then he portrayed the leader alone, perhaps because in a sense he still was. Mao had helped found the Chinese Communist Party only the year before, and China's blue touchpaper burned rather more slowly than Russia's had.
Five years later, in 1927, this prosperous peasant's son, who had once worked in a university library, led the Autumn Harvest Uprising against the ruling party of the day and the landlords. It was quickly suppressed. But Mao learned from it that he needed an army, and he had already forged friendships in Anyuan that would help provide one: the Red Army. That is why Anyuan mattered so much.
Why paint a retrospective 45 years on?
Under Mao, pretty well everything was done for a reason, though some of the reasons were ludicrous. In 1958 people across China were set to killing sparrows, which Mao said were eating the crops, only to find that without the birds the insects ate the crops instead. It ranks among the great man-made environmental disasters.
From 1966 to 1976 China went through what we call the 'Cultural Revolution', in full the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution'. It was a violent purge that Mao intended to sweep away any remnant of capitalism or the old order. It also rewrote history and distracted the population, on two counts:
- The 'Great Leap Forward', launched in 1958 to modernise China, had been a great leap backwards. It caused a famine in which tens of millions died.
- The embarrassment of that led to criticism of Mao even inside the Party. His response was to encourage a personality cult, and to remove his rivals.
So Liu Chunhua painted Mao almost as a superhero: on a mountain top, young and purposeful. The picture also gave Mao the credit for the Anyuan strike, which had until then been associated with Liu Shaoqi, a rival who was being purged. The work was a commission for an exhibition, and one is tempted to say it exemplified 'blue skies thinking' before the term existed.
This kind of glossing over of a regime's failings was mocked in Western literature, notably in George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' (1945) and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1949).
The artist
The artist was born in 1944 in Tailai, in Heilongjiang province. In 1959 he went to a secondary school attached to the Lu Xun Art Academy in Shenyang, and from 1963 he studied applied arts at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. 'Chairman Mao en route to Anyuan' is his most important work. It was championed by Mao's fourth wife, Jiang Qing, who at the time essentially dictated what went on in the arts, what was acceptable and what imagery was shown to the outside world. She was later tried and jailed as one of the 'Gang of Four'.
What the artist said about his commission
A clearly loyal Liu Chunhua is credited with saying (in translation) that 'Chairman Mao received the Red Guards on many occasions during this great and unprecedented proletarian cultural revolution. Each time I saw Chairman Mao's stalwart figure and kindly face, waving his hand to us, my heart was thrilled and excited. I shouted at the top of my voice, "Long live Chairman Mao! Long, long life to Chairman Mao!" In these moments I longed to use my paints and brush to portray our great leader, the red sun in our hearts, for the masses of revolutionary people!'
Conclusion
Whether one likes communism or not, here is a historic document that captured an imagined moment on Mao's road to power. A century later the state he built is one of the most powerful on earth, and for that reason alone it is worth understanding something of its history.
For more on the painter's thoughts see Painting Pictures of Chairman Mao is our greatest happiness and Chineseposters.net.
With some 900 million copies of 'Chairman Mao en route to Anyuan' printed, you should be able to find one pretty cheaply.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framers will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang. You can contact EasyFrame on 01234 856 501 or at sales@EasyFrame.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!