Genesis and development of Chinese Scar Art

Abstract

This work analyses the birth and development of Chinese Scar Art of late 1970s and early 1980s. With the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao Zedong, China went through a period of political and social loosening. This was also reflected in art and literature: following the motto "Seek the truth from facts", new scenarios opened up in the Chinese artistic and literary panorama, especially thanks to the works produced by young people returning from the Down to the Countryside Movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1968. They left little more than teenagers, returned as adults after more than ten years of forced labour and oppression in the countryside, they found a completely changed society. Afterwards, artists began to wonder the reason of what they had experienced, exposing in their works the reality of what they had seen and lived. The advent of Scar Literature first, and Scar Art later, upset public opinion. Based on realism and developed mainly in Sichuan, Scar Art included various currents: the art of the so-called Sichuan School of Painting (Native Soil Art, Melancholy Youth Painting, Contemplative Painting) and Life-stream Art. By analysing the artworks of artists such as Gao Xiaohua, Cheng Conglin, Luo Zhongli, He Duoling, Ai Xuan, Chen Danqing, this thesis researches how they exposed, and then tried to heal, the deepest and most intimate scars of an entire generation, denouncing what they had experienced or saw during the Cultural Revolution.