Image Politics

In the1960s, the society and politics of our country are at an " abnormal status ", so the art works, as the explicit expression of ideologies, has been deeply influenced by those political movements too. The image world of this period, consists not only the "Red Ocean" and "Fairytales of Yesterday" as most art history researchers pictured for us, but also an often neglected part of the narrative story—the image of " Big Criticism ", which has a great deal of number and various contents, to express the theme of " Politicize " via " industrial" authoring. By sorting out the Liu Shaoqi images showed in the art works from1961to1969, and the "Big Criticism" images in the mass press after the Cultural Revolution began, this article aims to look into the relationships of the occurrence, propagation, and ideologies of the art language of the masses in the special period of time from a brand new perspective, under the dual structures of both art history and intellectual history.Based on the summarization of the current research status, this article analyzed the process of the political character been " established " and then been " stroke down " from1961to the beginning of Cultural Revolution, by elaborating the description of " An Yuan Labor Movement " in the mainstream of art discourses, starting from the second chapter. The original image of Liu Shaoqi as the National Chairman has been overturned, his historical merits and achievements obliterated, and in the mean time, the image of Mao Zedong has been infinitely overstated, which became the most important image symbol of Cultural Revolution, and the selection of image by means of political propaganda became the compass of art works. The following chapters stressed to describe the process of how the image of Liu Shaoqi was " interpreted " and " tortured " anew at the beginning of Cultural Revolution (1966-1969):the occurrence and propagation of Liu Shaoqi’s image as " The First of Disgraceful" in mass comics is a start, reaching its peak of picturing him as " Khrushchev in China "," Black hand reaching for literary and art circles " and " Drowning dog " in mass newspapers. In the end, discuss the narrative pattern of the comic strips during this period in mass newspapers:Class Struggle is the key,and then carry out " Re-Interpretation " based on reality. In this particular time of history, the image shows a particular " Appreciation of Ugliness " under the control of ideologies, which becomes a certain graphic symbol of certain implication and sign. Out of all the extraordinary, there was seldom any " Critics " voiced in this mass production of art works. The art workers were blinded by the crazy political campaign, which lead to a result of an unprecedented "Popularization" of art language. In the history of art, the style and meaning of art works were always changing along with the evolution of history. The violent change of China’s art style back in the60s’of last century has made a very firm ground that image itself was not independent from society but strangle closely to it, of which tendency looks surprisingly obvious during times of society transformations.