"That Julia Andrews has reached sources that are so sensitive and difficult with such success is remarkable. The book is unquestionably a brilliant job, well-written, understandable, and of enormous scholarly value."--Joan Lebold Cohen, author of The New Chinese Painting

Drawing from Life explores revolutionary drawing and sketching in the early People’s Republic of China (1949–1965) in order to discover how artists created a national form of socialist realism. Tracing the development of seminal works by the major painters Xu Beihong, Wang Shikuo, Li Keran, Li Xiongcai, Dong Xiwen, and Fu Baoshi, author Christine I. Ho reconstructs how artists grappled with the representational politics of a nascent socialist art. The divergent approaches, styles, and genres presented in this study reveal an art world that is both heterogeneous and cosmopolitan. Through a history of artistic practices in pursuit of Maoist cultural ambitions—to forge new registers of experience, new structures of feeling, and new aesthetic communities—this original book argues that socialist Chinese art presents a critical, alternative vision for global modernism.

The relationship between politics and art in any society should not be seen simply as one of cause and effect. Political and artistic issues are linked to one another through a complex network of interactions and associations. In the People's Republic of China, where all aspects of society are directly related to politics, and where the creation of art is in itself considered a political act, this relationship is more clearly defined than elsewhere, though no less complicated. In China, the government plays a direct and active role in overseeing the nation's artistic production, and in determining the criteria for critical judgment. This study is divided into three sections. Chapter 1 outlines the major statements of artistic policy and the theoretical structure upon which the. policies are based. Chapter 2 deals with the effect of the artistic policies upon artists, and the reactions of painters to the political demands placed upon them. The third chapter will focus on the experiences of three such artists, Kuan Shan-yueh, Li K'o-jan and Ch'ien Sung-yen. All three specialize in landscape, a genre that has been especially problematic, and all three incorporate both Western techniques and traditional Chinese methods of drawing.

The relationship between politics and art in any society should not be seen simply as one of cause and effect. Political and artistic issues are linked to one another through a complex network of interactions and associations. In the People's Republic of China, where all aspects of society are directly related to politics, and where the creation of art is in itself considered a political act, this relationship is more clearly defined than elsewhere, though no less complicated. In China, the government plays a direct and active role in overseeing the nation's artistic production, and in determining the criteria for critical judgment. This study is divided into three sections. Chapter 1 outlines the major statements of artistic policy and the theoretical structure upon which the. policies are based. Chapter 2 deals with the effect of the artistic policies upon artists, and the reactions of painters to the political demands placed upon them. The third chapter will focus on the experiences of three such artists, Kuan Shan-yueh, Li K'o-jan and Ch'ien Sung-yen. All three specialize in landscape, a genre that has been especially problematic, and all three incorporate both Western techniques and traditional Chinese methods of drawing.

Takes an in-depth look at the period between the 1950s and 1970s, focusing on the formation of a new visual culture and how it was given priority over artistic traditions such as ink painting. This was part of a broader national program to modernize China, and it had a great impact on artists and their work.

"How did modern Chinese painters see landscape? Did they depict nature in the same way as premodern Chinese painters? What does the artistic perception of modern Chinese painters reveal about the relationship between artists and the nation-state? Could an understanding of modern Chinese landscape painting tell us something previously unknown about art, political change, and the epistemological and sensory regime of twentieth-century China? Yi Gu tackles these questions by focusing on the rise of open-air painting in modern China. Chinese artists almost never painted outdoors until the late 1910s, when the New Culture Movement prompted them to embrace direct observation, linear perspective, and a conception of vision based on Cartesian optics. The new landscape practice brought with it unprecedented emphasis on perception and redefined artistic expertise. Central to the pursuit of open-air painting from the late 1910s right through to the early 1960s was a reinvigorated and ever-growing urgency to see suitably as a Chinese and to see the Chinese homeland correctly. Examining this long-overlooked ocular turn, Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of visual modernity there."

Provides an innovative reinterpretation of the cultural revolution through the medium of the poster -- a major component of popular print culture in China.