Rethinking Cultural Revolution
Culture
Exhibition
Picturing Power: Art and Propaganda in the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
A Multi-Media Exhibition Held at Universitätsmuseum
Heidelberg, 31.1.-28.2.2001
Overview of the Exhibit
One of Chairman Maos favourite words was
contradiction, so it is fitting that the
cultural products of one of the most famous (and
infamous) events associated with his name, The Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), can be
understood as a study in contradictions. This is how
the art of the time is presented at the
Universitätsmuseum Heidelberg.
This exhibit uses sounds, objects, film footage and
above all posters to evoke a time marked by extreme
tensions, between old and new, the joyous and the
violent, hope and despair. It presents a time of
contradictions, when great leaders but also the most
ordinary of people were exalted, when the Chinese
Communist Party turned inward and yet was influenced
by and sought to influence revolutionary struggles
in other parts of the world. It also shows how,
despite efforts by some to construct a monolithic
culture and despite the reduplication through many
media of certain key symbols and gestures and icons,
artists working individually and as part of
collective units continued to exercise considerable
creativity within the limits imposed.
Both the repetitive and the varied nature of the
cultural products of the period are suggested
here. This is done via displays of objects in glass
cases; a soundtrack of sounds associated with the
Cultural Revolution, though not necessarily produced
then; a video made up of a selection of documentary
and theatrical film footage; and most of all the
posters themselves.
The exhibit and the explanatory materials that
accompany it are intended to provide visitors with a
deeper understanding of the Cultural Revolution era
as a multifaceted period in Chinese history and of
the Cultural Revolution as a hyper-multi-media
event.
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