THE POSTERS OF MAO ERA: A PERSPECTIVE OF ART AND SOCIETY

In 1942, Mao Zedong delivered a speech on the famous literature and Art Forum of Yan-an,the place located in the northwest of China, was an anti-Japanese warbase led by Communist Party. Later Mao's speech was issued as the guide text of the Party's policy on literature and art. The main idea of the speech is that art and literature are tools of arty's enterprise, serve the people, especially the workers, peasants and soldiers. Mao's speech continued to be effective since 1949 when the People 's Republic of China was established. Because most of the people were at a very low level of education, many of them even could not read, the visual art was very useful for propagating the Party's ideologies and politics. In this condition, posters came to the front. In New China, the art system changed. The art market was declining, most artists were arranged to take a position in a certain unit, such as college, institute, museum, or publishing house, so they earned their living not by selling their works but by their wages. The only exception is that the artists could earn extra money by publishing their works, especially the works for poster, or for comic-strip, and also earn their names by the wide spread of their works through a great amount of copy. In the art history of China, Mao era is a typical period of duplicating and printing, so copying is the main method to spread the artist's work. By the operation mechanism, economically, impression of a work should be large and the price low, so partly the impression decided the author's fate. Although the art of Mao era is a kind of political popular art, entangled with politics, there is still something of it deserved to be mentioned.