Surrealism and the People's Republic of China

This study investigates cultural exchange between the Surrealist movement and the People's Republic of China (1949-present). Surrealist art was officially prohibited under Mao's rule (1949-1976). However, the book interrogates potent tensions in clandestinely created surrealist artworks by Zhao Shou and Sha Qi, who discovered the movement while studying abroad. Furthermore, Walden explores how several European Surrealists aligned Chinese calligraphy with automatism as well as Michel Leiris and Marcel Mariën's travels to Maoist China and their diametrically opposed visions of the nation. Amidst post-socialism, the book posits that the '85 New Wave consciously employed Surrealism to process the traumatic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and react to newfound societal freedoms. Subsequently, the volume considers why a new artistic tendency of 'surrealist pop' emerged in the 1990s. At present, Lauren Walden reveals how Surrealism has become officialised and even promoted by Chinese authorities owing to revolutionary resonances between traditional Chinese art and the western avant-garde. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Chinese studies, and Surrealism. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

Lauren Walden is a Research Fellow in Contemporary Chinese Art at Birmingham City University, UK.

Introduction 1. Clandestine Surrealism in Maoist China 1949-1976 2. The Soul versus Socialism: European Surrealists, Pseudo-Characters and China's Mao-Dao dialectic 3. European Surrealists in Mao's China: From Admiration to Alienation 4. Chinese Surrealism in the 1980s: an overview 5. Surrealism and the 85' New wave: the spiritual surrealism of the Red Travels group (1986-1988) and Northern Art Group (1984-1989). 6. Surrealist pop in 90s' China 7. Chinese Surrealism in the New Millenium: From Subverting the Western Canon to Internal Socio-Political Critique.