Dimensions
205 x 266 x 15mm
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China produced thousands of powerful social and political posters to exhort the Chinese people in the sweeping transformation of Chinese society. Chinese Posters collects more than 150 of most the striking posters, complemented by an insightful and thoroughly researched text on their social and artistic context, and a personal account of living in Beijing during the Revolution.
From 1966 to 1976, there was a countrywide mass campaign to reform Chinese society and the Communist Party, directed by Mao Zedong, that resulted in mass social upheaval. Those who were not considered to be following the right socialist path were called out as class traitors, some sent to reieducation labour camps. Everything and everyone was meant to serve the greater effort of the socialist revolution, including these posters, one of the few art forms sanctioned by the party. The posters are uniformly utopian, bright, and graphically powerful, portraying the ideal society that they were at least ostensibly trying to achieve.
Our book presents a short primer on the GPCR and context on the production, social circumstance, graphics, and design influence of the posters; an essay by coauthor Ann Tompkins about living in China in the midst of the Revolution; and chapters on subject/themes of the posters themselves, along with a bibliography and index of posters by title.
