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Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf (Special) (Paperback)

~ Anchee Min (Author), Stefan Landsberger (Author), Duo Duo (Author), Michael Wolf (Illustrator) "Four hundred propaganda posters to look at..." (more)
Key Phrases: communiste chinois, des tigres, les affiches, Mao Zedong, Lei Feng, Volksverlag Shanghai (more...)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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7 new from $65.00 18 used from $16.49

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Besides reproducing the stunning, otherworldly beauty of Michael Wolf's massive Chinese propaganda poster collection so brightly it practically gives you a suntan, his book gives you a sense of how the illiterate masses used these images instead of newspapers and TV to get the news and define themselves. In the introduction, the brilliant Anchee Min explains how the 1974 poster of a pigtailed girl heroically posed amid martyrs made Min change her own look, which got her recruited by Madame Mao to star in a propaganda film. Soon Min appeared in a poster--or rather, Min transformed, muscularized, rendered in shining primary colors. As you page through the hundreds of posters, you see how nimbly the artists handle symbolism and composition, favoring right angles (Mao rising rocketlike from the horizon of the marching populace) and diagonals (citizens' rifles form an X pattern echoed in the next panel by the US jets they've downed, as Mao crows, "The atom bomb is a paper tiger the US reactionary uses to scare people! It looks terrible, but in fact, it isn't."). Dong Cunrui, who used his body as a post supporting explosives to blow up a bridge, is a common vertical image, balanced by the dramatic diagonal pose (so like Captain America) of Huang Ji-guang, who blocked US machine guns with his body in Korea. Whenever a poster shows a young guy or girl at an angle, battling waves or giving a running dog a noogie, the image quotes Ji-guang, the visual equivalent of a rap sample of an old-school riff. This book should've been arranged chronologically; instead, it's whimsically structured to correspond with the chapters of Mao's Red Book. Even so, you can't miss the amazing shift that came around 1980: unisex suits give way to flashy Western clothes, prim pigtails to windblown coifs, tanks to TV sets and snazzy fridges, socialist realism to Norman Rockwell and Seattle World's Fair futurism. --Tim Appelo

Product Description

With his smooth, warm, red face which radiated light in all directions, Chairman Mao Zedong was a fixture in Chinese propaganda posters produced between the birth of the People's Republic in 1949 and the early 1980s. These infamous posters were, in turn, central fixtures in Chinese homes, railway stations, schools, journals, magazines, and just about anywhere else where people were likely to see them. Chairman Mao, portrayed as a stoic superhero (a.k.a. the Great Teacher, the Great Leader, the Great Helmsman, the Supreme Commander), appeared in all kinds of situations (inspecting factories, smoking a cigarette with peasant workers, standing by the Yangzi River in a bathrobe, presiding over the bow of a ship, or floating over a sea of red flags), flanked by strong, healthy, ageless men and "masculinized" women and children wearing baggy, sexless, drab clothing. The goal of each poster was to show the Chinese people what sort of behavior was considered morally correct and how great the future of Communist China would be if everyone followed the same path toward utopia by uniting together. Combining fact and fiction in a way typical of propaganda art, these posters exuded positive vibes and seemed to suggest that Mao was an omnipresent force that would accompany China to happiness and greatness. This book brings together a selection of colorful propaganda artworks and cultural artifacts from photographer Michael Wolf's vast collection of Chinese propaganda posters, many of which are now extremely rare.

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Product Details

Paperback: 319 pages
Publisher: Taschen; illustrated edition edition (July 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3822826197
ISBN-13: 978-3822826195
Product Dimensions: 14.6 x 9.8 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #157,071 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

#9 in	Books > Home & Garden > Antiques & Collectibles > Posters
#65 in	Books > Arts & Photography > Design & Decorative Arts > Graphic Design > Printmaking
#82 in	Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Regional > Asian

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
Four hundred propaganda posters to look at. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
communiste chinois, des tigres, les affiches, propaganda art, propaganda posters, rechts unten, des paysans

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mao Zedong, Lei Feng, Volksverlag Shanghai, Shanghai People's Publishing House, Shanghai People's Art Publishing House, Chairman Mao, Lin Biao, Volks-Kunstverlag Shanghai, Jiang Qing, Zhang Daxin, Xiang Xiuli, Yao Zhongyu, Volksverlag Shandong, Bilderverlag Shanghai, Chinese Communist Party, Erziehungsverlag Shanghai, Shen Shaolun, Volksverlag Peintre, Yang Furu, Editions Educatives de Shanghai, People's Liberation Army, Volksverlag Liaoning, Yuan Nous, Chao Deren, Commando of the City of Qingdao

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Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 6 books:

Selected Works by Cleveland Museum of Art on 5 pages
War And Peace (Greenwich House Classics Library) by Leo Tolstoy on page 66, page 69, and page 74
Selected Works. by Vladimir Ilich Lenin on page 63, and page 202
Mao Zedong by Jung Chang on page 32, and page 167
The State and Revolution (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on page 63

See all 6 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Before Mao by Patrick Lescot

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Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Xing Lu

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	45% buy the item featured on this page: Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf (Special) 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
	21% buy Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) $13.57
	18% buy Chinese Propaganda Posters 4.0 out of 5 stars (3)
	9% buy Soviet Posters: The Sergo Grigorian Collection 4.8 out of 5 stars (6) $16.50

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mao's Great Big Red Book., November 27, 2003

By	Robin Benson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Michael Wolf collected the hundreds of posters shown in this sumptuous book and it occurred to me while looking through the pages that the originals have probably been seen by more people than any others in the world. They were stuck up in every public place (including homes) and published in magazines. Predictably many of them show Chairman Mao, the Great Leader, Teacher, Helmsman, Commander urging the masses forward with the wise fertiliser of his thoughts. To reinforce greatness artists were not allowed to paint figures above his head.

The posters are organised according to the thirty-three chapters in Mao's Little Red Book. Chapter twenty-three, Investigation and Study, has some interesting images including an 1981 painting of various jet aircraft and one from 1978 showing two open hands encasing a stylised atomic graphic. Not all Chinese posters just show peasants looking to the future.

I was surprised to see some quite creative painting styles, for instance, Chao Deren has a brush stroke style similar to the best of the European movie poster artists, Deng Xiu and Zhang Ruiheng could easily have been doing fiction illustrations in the American consumer magazines of the fifties and sixties. Perhaps the strangest poster paintings are those of babies and children, the faces are all rather plump and adult looking, as if the artists imagined this was how a baby Mao looked

This large 320 page book is beautifully designed and printed and if you are interested in political posters or colorful graphics you'll enjoy it. BTW, Taschen have been rather naughty by replacing the head of a child, in one poster, with a head icon they use as a competition promotion. It doesn't spoil the book for me but I thought it rather unnecessary.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Propaganda ART, December 8, 2004

By	Adam Kruvand (Evanston, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book. So many images. I was expecting mostly communist propaganda posters, and a lot of the same message in similar style over and over - but there is so much more. In fact most of the images are more art or paintings than posters. Tons of images - and notice - 14.5" - this book is HUGE! Another good source book by Taschen.

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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Other Suggestions, September 30, 2005

By	Ssenjobe Art - See all my reviews

I saw the list of other similiar items. But there's one more you should consider if you really like the genre. "Carteles de la Guerra: 1936-1939" (Posters of the (Spanish Civil) War) is a collection of mostly socialist and anarchist posters from the brutal civil war that engulfed Spain before the true outbreak of WWII.

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