A01=Richard Curt Kraus
art exhibitions
art of calligraphy
asian studies
Author_Richard Curt Kraus
Category=WFU
china
chinese calligraphy
chinese history
chinese revolution
class differences
communism
critical history
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mao zedong
mass media
memoirs
modern china
modern history
modern politics
modernity
modernization
nonfiction
performance
personal interviews
political art
political documents
power relationships
propaganda
revolutionary calligraphy
ruling class
tradition
traditional art
writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780520072855
- Weight: 454g
- Publication Date: 24 Jul 1991
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Chinese calligraphy has traditionally been an emblem of the ruling class and its authority. After a century of mass revolution, what is the fate of this elite art? Richard Kraus explores the relationship beween politics and the art of writing in China today to explicate the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Chinese culture. His study draws upon a wide range of sources, from political documents, memoirs, and interviews with Chinese intellectuals to art exhibitions and television melodramas. Mao Zedong and other Communist leaders gave calligraphy a revolutionary role, believing that their beloved art reflected the luster of authoritative words and deeds. Calligraphy was joined with new propagandistic mass media to become less a private art and more a public performance. It provided politically engaged citizens with subtle cues to changing power relationships in the People's Republic. Claiming neither that the Communists obliterated traditional culture nor that revolution failed to relieve the burden of China's past, this study subtly examines the changing uses of tradition in a modernizing society.
Richard Curt Kraus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism (Columbia 1981) and Pianos and Politics in China (Oxford 1989).
