On The History Of The Cultural Revolution Fine Arts

The Cultural Revolution is a special period in the history of contemporary Chinese fine Art and there are many controversies on the artistic phenomena in this period. Recently, the Fine Arts circle has began to pay attention on this period and made some achievements, such as The History of Paintings in New China, from 1966 to 1976 by Wang mingxian and Yan Shanchun. Most of them, however, focus their work only on the study of the Fine Art history at that time, and do not notice the logical relation in its formation from a historical view. Based on the fundamental viewpoint of Cultural Revolution Fine Arts, the thesis takes a brief review on the artistic trends of though in the period of Cultural Revolution and studies the historical logic in the formation of Cultural Revolution Fine Arts. Therefore, the first topic is to study from a macro perspective view the forming process of the Cultural Revolution Fine Arts; the second one is to analyze the developing features of the oil paintings and the traditional Chinese paintings in the time of Cultural Revolution. In the analysis, the author firstly makes the case studies to explore their different features in form, and also pays attention to other non-major artistic trends at the same period.The Cultural Revolution Fine Arts developed along with many political movements and formed its special style. As a political tool, it is guided by the creation idea that betrays seriously the artistic law. Jiang Qing and her fellows concocted for artistic creation such ideas as "fundamentaltask, three stresses principle and the superior of theme" . Under her ideological autocracy, the artistic creation in Cultural Revolution is different from those in other periods. The warmly welcomed "double hundreds policy" from the middle of 50s to the early 60s disappeared in Cultural Revolution. The oil paintings then contain the heroic color of idealism in their content and the style of the Spring Festival picture in their form. The traditional Chinese painting in Cultural Revolution abandon the fine essentials of Chinese traditional both in their form and content and borrow the realistic painting techniques to express the "revolutionists lives" . Hence, the traditional Chinese paintings in the Cultural Revolution appear with the western form while the oil paintings holds the characteristic of the political propaganda paintings.Based on the history of the contemporary fine arts, the thesis uses the structure theory to discuss the logic connection of many objects through the description of phenomena. The thesis takes a multi-vision study on the artistic phenomena in Cultural Revolution mainly from the view of artistic sociology because the Cultural Revolution Fine Arts is a special form of culture in a special historic surroundings and is closely related with the political and social trends at that time.