Propaganda: Mao’s Selfie, AP Art History, Lakeview Fort-Oglethorpe HS, Fort Oglethorpe, GA

Wendy Morgan, BS Art Ed: K-12, MA & Ed.S Instructional Leadership

Standards

VAHSVACU.1 Articulates ideas and universal themes from diverse cultures of the past and present.

a. Identifies how the issues of time, place, and culture are reflected in selected art works.

b. Discusses how understanding the original context of an artwork affects a viewer’s connection with and interpretation of the artwork.

g. Discusses the role of art in at least two cultures; compares and contrasts to art today

Timeframe

Two, 90-minute class periods

45 min of history instruction and 30 min of formal direction for production on sequential days with the remaining time for review, quiz and poster completion

Objectives

The students will create a landscape-based collage using them or another historical figure as the dominant subject with exaggerated proportions combined with subordinate imagery representing the accomplishments of the dominant figure. They will demonstrate knowledge of Chairman Mao’s characteristics as a leader of China during its Industrialization phase or Great Leap Forward with consequences and outcomes.

Procedures Narrative

When the students arrive, a slide show looping three of my own travel photos will be on the screen. Without commenting on them, I’ll start the lesson by asking about their favorite place. After a few minutes class conversation, I’ll tell them where each of my photos is taken. Using the hook of travel as one of my own personal accomplishments, I’ll show the image of Chairman Mao en Route toAnyuanby Liu Chunhua from 1967 and ask them what they think he was doing. Once the conversation wans, I’ll ask them to make a short list of what objects are in the composition for active looking. While they are working on this list, I’ll hand out the guided notes worksheet. After we review their lists and all the objects in the background are accounted for, I’ll give the historical account of Chairman Mao and his propaganda techniques with this painting and others before it.

Once the background explanation is finished and the students are seeing the Liu Chunhua piece with fresh eyes, I’ll ask them to think of American propaganda pieces. If they don’t know the Uncle Sam icon, I’ll show those and discuss its propagandistic purpose in American history.

The last step is to get them to reappropriate the concept. Using their own life goals, they will develop their own public image in the form of a collage. This image plan should include only the most positive accomplishments or goals they hold for themselves. The rubric for components used in building the scene will help them to stay focused on a few meaningful goals and not fill it with popular junk which could be a desire with our own popular culture propaganda of consumerism. Feel free to explore the strength of internalization of this marketing norm.

Lecture Notes:

Who was Mao Zedong? A Chinese communist revolutionary, a founding father of the People’s Republic of China, popular with the people, a leader from 1949-1976, from 1958-1963 formed the Great Leap Forward, a wildly ambitious effort to jump start agricultural and industrial production accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign. Mao also used a propaganda campaign to promote the 1966-1976 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution designed to punish and re-educate so-called reactionaries who opposed communism. Mao used the socialist realism technique to portray clear, intelligible subjects with emotionally moving themes involving peasants, soldiers and workers on canvas using oil paint instead of the traditional hanging silk scroll with imagery in ink which had been the elevated tradition in pictographic representation. They felt this representation would garner increased international recognition.

The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization movement intended to bring China to a production level higher than England in 15 years or less. The plan was to last 5 years converting China from an agrarian society to an industrialized nation. What happened was catastrophe in three years with 30 million people dying from the drastic and unproven methods of change. This was the largest manmade genocide by famine in global human history. It started very optimistic with a plentiful harvest in 1957 due to successful collectivization. In 1958 the People’s Communes were created which deleted the private ownership of property and tools in favor of a collective. 12 families were merged to make a work team and 12 work teams made up a brigade where 700 million people joined 26, 578 communes across China. Unrealistic production goals were set for each brigade causing many to develop round-the-clock schedules where individual teams would be working sick or exhausted without enough food to support their health. (Cushing, 2003)

In 1958, the initial results were increased production in steel, coal, chemicals, timber, cement, grain and cotton, but due to unrealistic goals things began literally falling apart in 1959. Poor construction of tools and machinery paired with injuries, illness and flooding caused starvation to increase. With worse weather in 1960, nine million people starved. In the latter part of 1960, private ownership of land was beginning to be restored and communes were made smaller with the allowance for the selling of spare food by peasants started to squelch the leap. It has been estimated that between30 million people died under Chairman Mao’s leadership in the Great LeapForward while China minimized the catastrophe with an estimation of only 14 million. Somehow the loss was considered “acceptable” for the gains of becoming a 1st world power.(Jacob)

It would seem a shock for Mao to represent himself to the Chinese people as one to be trusted in another leadership venture, but the Liu Chunhua piece painted in 1967 is proof that he wanted another go at leadership and political agenda realization. Instead of incorporating imagery of the teams or brigades as a reminder to the GLF’s failure, he requests an image from his youth where he succeeded in organizing a non-violent strike of 13,000 miners and railway workers in 1922 in the city of Anyuan. His youthfulness in this portrait isn’t realistic. At the time of the painting he was nine years from his death. The Red Army was created from miners enlisting to promote his ideology of the new Chinese Communist Party. (Chiem) Wearing the traditional Chinese gown could also be seen as contradictory seeing that he instructed the radical youth to attack the old customs, habits, culture and thinking. He was direct in calling these ways “the 4 olds.” The background inclusion of the telephone poles and damboth hint to aperceived role in the industrialization of China without reminding the viewer of the horror of the GLF years. Including the umbrella as a subject seems puzzling. Is it a reference to his preparedness in protection? Maybe it anchors him to the ground so that the image of a super-human revolutionary man with vision could be commonly practical. (Andrews, 2016) Maybe he should carry an agricultural manual, instead. The attempt to gloss over his mid-career tragedy can’t be understated so smoothly, but somehow his popularity continues today despite the facts distributed internationally. Many times in the later years of a leader’s life, they find it necessary to tell their own story of how things happened with heavy influence on their intentions. Chairman Mao’s propaganda agenda during the Great Leap Forward and in the later years of his life must have been successful to encourage so many people to abandon their homes for such a painful existence and to renew trust in a leader that orchestrated horror.

Evaluation

Mao Propaganda Quiz (attached)

Propaganda Collage Rubric:

30pts - 3 layers of space (background, mid-ground, & foreground)

15pts –exaggeratedly large, youthful dominant subject anchored to the foreground

30pts – 3 subordinate images as accomplishments symbols in mid-ground and background

15pts –color palette selected for symbolism (key written on back)

10pts - filling the 12” x 16” space with media: clippings, photos, and/or print-outs

Student Handouts

Guided note wks (attached)

Item list for day 2:

1) a full length“selfie” (if only a head shot, see #6)

2)the best place you’ve ever been,

3)multiple sky pictures,

4)pictures of your 2 very best accomplishments or goals

5)an item to hold

6)a body with shoes that represents your personality/goals

7)poster board, glue, scissors, and construction paper

Resources List

Andrews, Julia F.“Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China 1949-1979.”Berkeley and University of California Press, December 16, 2016. Accessed March 9, 2017.

Chiem, Kristen. “LiuChunhua, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan.” Khan Academy, no date. Accessed March 9, 2017.

Cushing, Lincoln, and Anne Tompkins. “Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003.

Jacob, Edwin Daniel. “Mao and the Great Leap Forward.” Newark College of Arts and Sciences Rutgers, no date. Accessed March 9, 2017.

Trueman, CN. “The Great Leap Forward.” The History Learning Site, May 26, 2015. Accessed March 9, 2017.