|
|
Exhibition
Picturing Power:
Art and Propaganda in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
31.1.-28.2.2001 Universitätsmuseum Heidelberg
Chairman Hua Leads Us in Drawing a New Map
Hua Zhuxi shuailing women hui xin tu
Jiang Xianhui
1978, Shanghai
Workers and peasants in the countryside
gather around Chairman Hua, briefly Mao’s
successor. In the background the slogans
“The Foolish Old Man Moved the
Mountain” and “Transform China”
allude to the folk tale of the old man who
stubbornly refused to be deterred even by a
mountain in his way. This tale was used by Mao
and the Party to exhort people to make greater
efforts even when a task seemed impossible.
Posters of Hua portray him in the same light as
Mao, adopting the same poses and receiving the
same adulation, but the results ring hollow. He
was generally perceived as an apparatchik with
no vision of his own and people were cynical
about hero-worship after the frenzy of the
Cultural Revolution. In February 1978, he
outlined a highly ambitious ten year plan (soon
downscaled) based on the “four
modernizations” of industry, agriculture,
the military, and science and technology as the
key to rapid economic growth.
|
|
