Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution: (Rethinking Art's Histories)

This is the first book to explore the global influence of Maoism on modern and contemporary art. Featuring eighteen original essays written by established and emerging scholars from around the world, and illustrated with fascinating images not widely known in the west, the volume demonstrates the significance of visuality in understanding the protean nature of this powerful worldwide revolutionary movement. Contributions address regions as diverse as Singapore, Madrid, Lima and Maputo, moving beyond stereotypes and misconceptions of Mao Zedong Thought's influence on art to deliver a survey of the social and political contexts of this international phenomenon. At the same time, the book attends to the the similarities and differences between each case study. It demonstrates that the chameleonic appearances of global Maoism deserve a more prominent place in the art history of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. -- .

Table of Contents:
Introduction: the art of contradiction – Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro García and Victoria H. F. Scott 1 Realising the Chinese Dream: three visions of Making China great again – Stefan R. Landsberger 2 Realism, socialist realism and China’s avant-garde: a historical perspective – Yan Geng 3 Engineering the human soul in 1950s Indonesia and Singapore – Simon Soon 4 Framing margins: Mao and visuality in twentieth-century India – Sanjukta Sunderason 5 The Black Panther newspaper and revolutionary aesthetics – Colette Gaiter 6 The Red Flag: the art and politics of West German Maoism – Lauren Graber and Daniel Spaulding 7 A secondary contradiction: feminist aesthetics and 'The Red Room for Vietnam' – Elodie Antoine 8 Materialist translations of Maoism in the work of Supports/Surfaces – Allison Myers 9 Mao, militancy and media: Daniel Dezeuze and China from scroll to (TV) screen – Sarah Wilson 10 La Familia Lavapiés: Maoism, art and dissidence in Spain – Noemi de Haro García 11 Maoism, Dadaism and Mao-Dadaism in 1960s and 1970s Italy – Jacopo Galimberti 12 Another red in the Portuguese diaspora: Lourdes Castro and Manuel Zimbro’s Un autre livre rouge – Ana Bigotte Vieira and André Silveira 13 Avenida Mao Tse Tung (or how artists navigated the Mozambican Revolution) – Polly Savage 14 Maoist imaginaries in Latin American art – Ana Longoni 15 Iconography of a prison massacre: drawings by Peruvian Shining Path war survivors – Anouk Guiné 16 Mao in a gondola: Chinese representation at the Venice Biennale (1993–2003) – Estelle Bories 17 Reproducibility, propaganda and the Chinese origins of neoliberal aesthetics – Victoria H. F. Scott Index

About the Author :
Jacopo Galimberti is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester Noemi de Haro Garca is Lecturer at the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid Victoria H. F. Scott is an independent scholar

Review :
‘Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a global, and not just a Chinese phenomenon. Red Guards’ grass-roots activism not only captivated young leftists all over the world, it also inspired a generation of artists—and this is what the book sets out to study, dealing with global Maoisms and their repercussions in the artistic scenes: how did different Maoist artistic groups (inter)act within different local and transcultural contexts? This book shows convincingly how, in different places around the world, from Africa, to India, to Latin America, Europe and, China, too, Maoism became and still remains a catalyst in transforming cultural movements, even cultural revolutions.’ Barbara Mittler, Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University