Label Text:
Xu Wenhua is a noted artist and designer of political posters in China. After graduating from the Shanghai Academy of Drama in 1979, he worked as an instructor at the Shanghai Light Industrial Design Institute until 1985. He moved to New York in 1986, but continued to create graphic works for posters in his native country as well as for other illustrative uses in the U.S. and abroad.
The People's Benefit is More Important than Anything Else displays hallmarks of Chinese propaganda as set forth by Chairman Mao, particularly in the use of recognizable "models:" historical or mythic figures that stand for ideal codes of behavior. Mao believed that constant exposure to such models would cause the Chinese people to adapt internally to higher levels of proper behavior. Looming behind the generic figure of a saluting boy wearing the Communist "red tie" are the faces of four well-known models: Liu Hulan (upper left), a martyred peasant activist executed after a clash with Nationalist troops in 1947; Zhou Enlai (upper right), beloved Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1949 to 1976; Lei Fang (behind the boy's left ear), a possibly mythic figure of the ideal soldier, who was said to have been an orphan raised by the Party, and is a symbol of self-sacrifice; and Zhang Haidi (with glasses on the lower right) a paraplegic who became a successful writer, translator, public speaker, and role model for people with disabilities and Chinese youth in general in the 1980s.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2004.40.4 |
