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Exhibition
Picturing Power:
Art and Propaganda in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
31.1.-28.2.2001 Universitätsmuseum Heidelberg
Untitled (Cartoon of the Gang of Four)
Unknow artist
c. 1976, unknown place
A handpainted poster illustrates popular
participation in the campaign against the Gang
of Four. Here, depicted mockingly as a film
crew, the Gang of Four launches missiles bearing
the slogans Usurp the Party and
Seize Power. The image of the
filmmaker may connote alliance with the corrupt,
bourgeois West and symbolize the self-centered
interests of the Gang of Four. Individual
handpainted posters like this one were common
during the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, a
homemade big-character poster hung up at Beijing
University was discovered by Mao and broadcast
to the nation. Some scholars take that incident
to mark the beginning of the mass movement of
the Cultural Revolution.
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