Seeing Red: The Cultural Revolution and Contradictions Among the People
A
Commune Holiday
H:
15” W: 12.5”
1972, Chinese-style
painting
By Lin Fengsu
|
The Cultural
Revolution is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. Many leaders of
today’s mainland government and their families faced persecution back then, and
today, Maoist slogans illustrate how far today’s PRC has departed from its
ideological roots. To many Chinese expatriates, the Cultural Revolution represents
the sort of populist fervor that drove them from their ancestral homes and
tormented those who were left behind. And lovers of Chinese culture justifiably decry the revolution's destruction of ancient artifacts in the name of modernization. The images bring back complex emotions
and painful memories, feelings too complicated to justify the wholesale
condemnation of a decade’s worth of artistic production and far too meaningful
to ignore. A general lack of familiarity with this period in general and its
artwork in particular — even among those well versed in Chinese culture — only
contributes to oversimplification of history and acrimony within the
transnational Chinese community, which is why exhibitions such as this one are
a necessary first step in achieving a more objective understanding of this era
and learning from its excesses.
A year or two
ago, I led a group of high school students from Taiwan on a museum tour. The temporary exhibit on display at the time consisted of fine pottery from five different
dynasties, spanning some two thousand years (Impressive for San Diegans, but
less so for those who have access to the fabulous treasures in Taiwan’s Palace
Museum). They listened politely to my spiel, but they had seemed more
interested in exhibits about Chinese Americans in our permanent collection
until something in the library caught their eye. The students congregated around a
book in the library, reading quotations, laughing, and passing it around… What
could possibly provoke such interest among these sophisticated young students? Quotations from Mao Zedong 毛主席語錄.
Big
Display Battlefield
H:
15” W: 12.5”
Woodblock
print
By Li Ronglong, Ji Qinghe, and Lou Chunting
|
When I asked
them why they found the book so interesting, they simply answered, “We don’t
have this in Taiwan.” Indeed, the Seeing Red exhibit consists entirely of
things they generally don’t have in Taiwan and many things one can no longer
see on the mainland. Of course these youngsters were far from budding communists,
they merely were interested in something they’d never seen before. And so even
when these images bring back bad memories or uncomfortable associations, it is
important to help young people understand this strange and traumatic era in
history.
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