Nightmare #2, 1989, Zhao Yannian

Teaching Gallery Label:
“Changing the World: Images of Revolution,” Feb-2009, Kate Meyer and Kris Ercums
Following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Zhao created colorful prints and posters in the ideological style of Socialist Realism, which conformed to Mao’s famous dictate that art and literature should “serve the masses.” However, following the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)-a movement designed to purge Chinese society of feudal vestiges and create a classless utopia-Zhao, like many print artists, returned to the early roots of the Creative Print Movement. Inspired by the technique, style and subject matter of such European artists as Käthe Kollwitz and Frans Masareel (1889-1971), Zhao carved his own blocks and used a more staid black-and-white style to critique the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Nightmare #2 depicts the cruel denouncements that ruined countless lives during this period. Printed in 1989, the same year as the Tian’anmen Square Massacre, it is a haunting prediction of the backlash against progressive social politics that characterized the early 1990s.

Archive Label 2003:
Zhao Yannian is a major figure in the New Chinese Woodblock Print Movement (Creative Print Movement), founded in 1931 by the social critic, writer, and intellectual father of the Chinese revolution, Lu Xun (1881-1936). Inspired by the technique, style and subject matter of such European artists as Kaethe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Frans Masareel (1889-1971), Zhao and other artists in this movement carved their own blocks and used their art to comment on current social and political events and to influence revolutionary politics.

Throughout his long and illustrious career (which includes prestigious positions in Chinese art organizations and a professorship at the National Academy of Arts), Zhao has remained a bold and forceful social critic. Nightmare #2 from 1989 is part of a daring series that criticized the Cultural Revolution.

Exhibition Label:
"Printed Art and Social Radicalism," Jun-2002, Stephen Goddard
Zhao Yannian is a major figure in the New Chinese Woodblock Movement (Creative Print Movement), founded in 1931 by the social critic, writer, and intellectual father of the Chinese revolution, Lu Xun (1881-1936). Inspired by the technique, style, and subject matter of such European artists as Käthe Kollwitz and Frans Masereel (both exhibited here), Zhao and other artists in the movement carved their own blocks and used their art to comment on current social and political events and to influence revolutionary politics.

Throughout his long career, Zhao has remained a bold and forceful social critic. Nightmare # 2 is part of a daring series that criticized the Cultural Revolution.

Exhibition Label:
"Selections for the Summer," Jun-2006, Mary Dusenbury
In the 20th century, China experienced revolutionary zeal, brutal violence, the affirmation and rejection of tradition, fear, hope, despair, and dizzying radical changes. The four artists whose work is shown here interpreted the life of their times in very different ways: Ding Cong’s handscroll is a biting political satire; Zhao Yannian, another daring social critic, used his rough-carved woodblock prints to aid and celebrate the revolutionary cause; Zhao Shao-ang’s ink paintings evoke the past and the timeless beauty of nature and at first seem unrelated to the realities of contemporary Chinese life; Xu Bing plays with Chinese ideographs to comment on meaning and the distortion of meaning.

Zhao Yannian is a major figure in the Creative Print Movement founded in 1931 by Lu Sun (1881-1945), a social critic, writer, and the intellectual father of the Chinese revolution. Inspired by the technique, style and subject matter of such European artists as Kaethe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Frans Masareel (1889-1971), Zhao and other artists in the movement carved their own blocks and used their art to comment on current social and political events and to influence revolutionary politics.

Throughout his long and illustrious career (which includes prestigious positions in Chinese art organizations and a professorship at the National Academy of Arts), Zhao has remained a bold and forceful social critic. Nightmare #2 from 1989 is part of a series criticizing the Cultural Revolution, something that at least one Chinese critic has said no one else at the time had the courage to attempt.