A painting in the style of the Cultural Revolution has recently appeared on the Chinese internet, featuring a “chronicle of party building work” in Shanghai’s Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone. Some Chinese netizens criticized that this fraudulent style of painting would scare foreign companies, while others questioned “whose life is this painting trying to revolutionize”.
Hong Kong Ming Pao reported that the painting, entitled “Branch built upstairs – a documentary of the party building work in Shanghai Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone”, was described as “reflecting the style of the new era” and has recently been widely circulated on social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. It has been widely circulated and become one of the hot topics.
In the painting, although the characters are wearing typical office workers’ suits and suits, and the window is also a view of Shanghai’s skyscrapers and Huangpu River, not only do they all have CCP emblems pinned on their chests, but there are also CCP flags inside the house, and even the tablecloths are bright red, and the women in the painting are also painted with red cuffs.
According to the report, the author of the oil painting, Li Qian, was born in 1964 in Shandong Province, graduated from the oil painting department of the Shandong Art Institute in 1988, and is now an associate professor in the stage art department of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. As for the oil painting, it was exhibited at the 12th “National Excellent Art Works Exhibition of China Art Festival” held in May 2019.
According to the introduction of the work, the oil painting depicts a chronicle of the life of a Communist Party group meeting, mainly for young people, reflecting the work of grassroots Communist Party building and the “democratic life meeting” of a financial branch in Lujiazui, Pudong, portraying “the image of a confident and optimistic young female branch secretary “.
Li Xiangyang, director of the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, once commented on this painting, saying, “The work has well reflected the times and the place, highlighting the core strength of our Party in the construction of the motherland”.
However, in the eyes of many Chinese people, especially those who had experienced the Cultural Revolution, the painting was generally evaluated as “a familiar aura coming out of the face”. It was jokingly described as a symbol of “an exuberant, vigorous, revolutionary, struggling, and class-oriented literary and artistic line of the new era that is coming to us.
In an article written by Chinese media personality Su Qing via WeChat, he analyzed the painting as having many visual similarities to the poster for the 1972 red movie “Harbour”, most notably the large area and high saturation of solid color contrast. This technique was widely used in propaganda posters before China’s reform and opening up, reaching hundreds of millions of people.
Chinese netizens generally rated the painting as a “throwback to the Cultural Revolution”. Some netizens said, “Is it the return of the red, revolutionary and passionate years?”; others said, “This fraudulent style of painting has scared foreign companies. to revolutionize anyone’s life”?
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