The Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, initiated by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in an attempt to reduce the influence of China’s intellectual elite on the country’s institutions, has had lasting repercussions on Chinese art. It intensified the absolutist mind-set of Maoist Revolutionary Realism, which had dictated the content and style reality artists could portray was one that had been thoroughly colored and distorted by political ideology.
Ironically, the same set of requirements that constricted artistic expression during the Cultural Revolution has had the opposite effect since; many artistic movements have flourished in reaction to the monotony of Revolutionary Realism. One of these, the Scar Art movement of the 1980s, was spearheaded by a group of intellectual painters who as outstanding or perfect, the Scar artists chose instead to portray the bleak realities of modernization.
As the 1980s progressed, the Scar artists’ radical approach to realism became increasingly co-opted for political purposes, and as this political cast became stronger and more obvious, many artists abandoned the movement. Yet a preoccupation with rural life persisted, giving rise to a related development known as the Native Soil movement, which romanticize certain qualities of rural Chinese society in order to appeal to Western galleries and collectors.
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