The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 triggered a deluge of artistic challenges for the Chinese ink painter. Lu Yanshao (1909-1993), an artist skilled in poetry, painting and calligraphy, had built his renown on landscape paintings following a traditionalist style. As of 1949, however, Lu began to make figure paintings that adhered to the guidelines established by the Communist Party.
Dramatic social and political changes occurred in the 1950s under the new Communist regime. The Anti-Rightist Campaign, launched in 1957, targeted a large number of educated people, including many artists. Lu Yanshao was condemned as a Rightist and was forced to endure four years of continuous labor reform (laodong gaizao) in the countryside before finally ridding himself of the label of Rightist in 1961. Starting in 1957, Lu shifted his focus from making figure paintings for the country’s sake to his personal interest – creating landscape paintings. In 1959, the artist completed the first twenty five leaves of his famous Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems. The surviving fourteen leaves combined painting, calligraphy and poetry, and are considered to be early paintings of Lu’s mature phase.
Lu Yanshao had studied Confucian texts since he was very young. In this thesis, I argue that changes in his approach to art and to his artistic career after being labeled a Rightist in 1957 can be productively considered from the perspective of the Confucian teaching of Mencius: “If poor, they ["men of antiquity"] attended to their own virtue in solitude; if advanced to dignity, they made the whole kingdom virtuous as well.”That is to say, a scholar privileged to hold office will do everything in his power to serve effectively; if suffering from adversity, however, the scholar will cultivate his personal talents instead. It was by focusing on his own artistic virtue while otherwise suffering as an alleged “Rightist” that Lu gradually entered the mature phase of his artistic career in 1959.
Between 1949 and 1957, Lu Yanshao made figure paintings based on the Communist Party’s guidelines because he wanted to contribute to the newly established country through his artwork. Serving the country through art accords with the idea of making “the whole kingdom virtuous.” However, in Lu’s view, the art bureaucracy, which enforced the Party’s ideology, rejected him by labeling him a Rightist in 1957. At this time, Lu experienced a psychological nadir. After years of adjusting himself as a Chinese ink painter in the new society between 1949 and 1957, Lu returned to Chinese landscape painting, developing a brilliant style out of a desperate situation. This maturation in Lu Yanshao’s art can also be considered from a Confucian perspective, especially Mencius’ teaching, “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”