Anyuan by Perry Elizabeth;

Author:Perry, Elizabeth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

Figure 9. Liu Shaoqi and the Anyuan Miners, oil painting by Hou Yimin, 1961. Photo courtesy of Eugene Wang.

In one report, Hou Yimin, the man who made the painting, described some of the problems encountered in history painting: such as . . . the problem of how to depict the ideologically correct relationship between the leader and the masses. A preliminary version of the painting had Liu in profile at one side of the painting, leading a file of workers to a negotiation meeting to resolve the miners’ strikes in 1922. In the second version, the artist gave greater visual prominence to Liu by now placing him as seen from the front, in the center of the painting, and surrounding him on three sides with youthful miners as they make their way to the negotiations.106

Historically inaccurate though the image was — there is no evidence that Liu Shaoqi led the miners out of the coal pits, as the painting indicates — it was prominently exhibited on a wall of the Museum of Revolutionary History when it formally opened its doors to the public on June 29, 1961. According to a Red Guard account six years later, it was Deng Xiaoping who insisted that this outsized image of Liu Shaoqi’s revolutionary contributions be centrally displayed in the museum’s inaugural exhibition.107 Whether or not Deng actively intervened in planning the exhibition, art historian Julia Andrews concludes that “there is every reason to believe that the painting’s prominence in 1961 derived from a broad view of party history that corresponded more closely to the Liu-Deng view than to that of the Maoists.”108

Hou Yimin’s painting of Liu Shaoqi striding out of the Anyuan coal mine amid a crowd of miners was eerily reminiscent of a key visual pillar in the cult of Joseph Stalin, a famous 1931 poster by Gustav Klutsis that depicts Stalin marching alongside a procession of coal miners. Sociologist Victoria Bonnell explains that the iconic Soviet poster “marked a major point along the path toward a new sacred center. The appearance of Stalin alongside coal miners signaled the beginning of a process whereby the heroic proletariat was gradually displaced by Stalin.”109 The veneration of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Bonnell observes, acquired religious connotations akin to the worship of Christ.110

That the painting Liu Shaoqi and the Anyuan Miners was part of a proto-cult of personality developing around Liu Shaoqi at the time is revealed in the artist’s own discussion of its genesis and contemporary import. Hou Yimin wrote of his creative process:

After repeatedly studying historical materials and even going to Anyuan to live for a week, I began to explore the main theme and human subject. The image of the leader as a young revolutionary . . . moving heaven and earth kept reappearing before my eyes and making it impossible for me to calm down. . . . The image should not be based simply on the actual mundane conditions of that period but should also match the idealized image in the mind of the masses today of Comrade Shaoqi’s many years of revolutionary activities.

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