2/23/2015. I just spent an entire afternoon in a dark basement in Shanghai. It was amazing. A collector named Mr. Yang has filled three rooms with hundreds of posters (1913 – 1997) to create the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Centre. Because poster art from the cultural revolution was mostly destroyed, this basement is basically a museum, as much of a Shanghai treasure as the Bund or Nanjing Road.
Pop quiz
Q: Guess who made most of the communist propaganda posters of the 50s and 60s?
A: The very same artists who made the 1930s Shanghai calendar girls, those art deco babes.
For the 20 years before Maoism, the sultry Parisian look helped sell everything from toothpaste to cigarettes. These commercial artists were the established ones, and the Party commissioned them.
Here are some examples of “Shanghai Lady Posters”:
Soap ad
I have no idea what this one is selling. Sheet music?
Here's the calendar girl aesthetic in an early propaganda piece called Barren Mountains Become Orchards.
"I just love working the land! But it means I finally must cover my nipples."
Between 1913 and 1949, poster art is mostly commercial but in the 50s it starts to promote local pride, like this one:
“Shanghai Is A City With No Night” (the real title)
I asked Mr. Yang if the artists felt like they were selling out. Weren’t they scorned by other artists?” His response: “No and no. To the artist, it was just another client. And anyway, the government was the only employer in town. If you wanted to eat, you were happy to take the job. Starvation means that individuals very quickly lose their identity.”
“U.S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger” (real title)
In the early 1960s, with the Great Leap Forward campaign, more political movements, and mavericks punished for any “rightist” sentiment, poster art goes full on propaganda. Americans and British are depicted as fearful and envious as the Chinese outperform them.
Here, the sails say “Greater, Faster, Better, Cheaper”
and here's a detail from the bottom right corner
By the time the cultural revolution broke out in the summer of 1966, here's the typical poster:
“U.S. Imperialism is the Common Enemy of the World People”
During the Cultural Revolution, performance art was rarely allowed. One exception: a 1971 ballet designed by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing.
The main dance from “The Red Detachment of Women.” Check it out on YouTube. They performed it for Nixon when he went in '72.
And Mr. Yang has quite the sense of humor. In the final room, he has arranged hundreds of rubber Mao Heads to bid you farewell.
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