Artistic Practice during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): Actors, Media, Institutions

“文化大革命艺术”一词主要用来指代红卫兵运动(1966-1968)期间产生的视觉材料和20世纪70年代官方批准的艺术。这一项目的目的是通过考虑现在被赶下台的前著名艺术家和在国家控制体系框架外工作的年轻艺术家的作品，绘制一幅更具差异性的1966年至1976年十年间创作的艺术图景，因为这些作品同样是那个时期特定政治条件的产物。1966年文化大革命的爆发，导致了20世纪50年代建立的社会主义者中国的学术和艺术机构的解散：暂停教学，解散协会，停止出版，直到70年代初才部分恢复。作为受害者的老牌艺术家、叛逆的学生以及接受业余艺术家培训的工人和农民必须接受这种不断变化的情况，他们必须相应地调整自己的艺术实践。该项目将探索不同的演员如何对文化大革命时期的结构条件做出反应，以及这些条件如何塑造他们的艺术实践。虽然政治指令和审查制度形成了一个紧密而高度统一的艺术创作矩阵，但艺术家们制定的审美标准要么与政治指令相匹配，要么与政治指令背道而驰。我将描述他们是如何开辟艺术创作空间的；不同的艺术界如何在指导关系、共同项目、制度联系和政治冲突中相互联系；以及艺术实践是如何在学校、展览和出版物中组织、引导和分发的。该项目的最终目标是撰写一部多层次、方法丰富的文化大革命艺术史，追溯这十年前后艺术生产和组织的连续性和破坏性，包括激进分子、官员和被压迫者参与相同的社会和政治环境。

The designation “art of the Cultural Revolution” is mostly used to denominate the visual material produced during the Red Guard movement (1966–1968) and the officially sanctioned art of the 1970s. This project aims at drawing a more differentiated picture of art produced in the decade between 1966 and 1976 by taking into account the works made by formerly renowned artists now evicted from their positions and by young artists working outside the framework of state-controlled system, since these are likewise products of the specific political conditions of the period. The onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 brought about the dissolution of the academic and artistic institutions of socialist China established in the 1950s: Teaching was suspended, associations disbanded, and publications discontinued, and would be only partly resumed in the early 1970s. Established artists who were victimized, rebellious students, as well as workers and peasants who received training as amateur artists had to come to terms with this constantly evolving situation, and they had to adapt their artistic practices accordingly. The project will explore how different actors responded to the structural conditions of the Cultural Revolution period and how these conditions shaped their artistic practices. While political directives and censorship formed a tight and highly uniform matrix for art production, artists developed aesthetic criteria that matched the political directives or ran counter to them. I will describe how they carved out spaces for artistic creation; how different artistic circles interconnected in mentoring relations, common projects, institutional connections, and political conflict; and how artistic practice was organized, channelled and distributed in schools, exhibitions, and publications. The ultimate aim of the project is to write a multi-layered and methodologically rich history of the arts of the Cultural Revolution that trace continuities and disruptions with artistic production and organisation in the years before and after those ten years and that encompasses the radical, the official, and the suppressed as partaking in the same social and political circumstances.