Proms 2004: Zhou, Casken, Hillborg, Vine, Talbot

Tempo ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (231) ◽  
pp. 49-51
Author(s):  
Martin Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Back Injury ◽  
Western Instruments ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The Immortal by the Chinese-American Zhou Long (b. 1953) – commissioned by the BBC World Service (apparently its first-even Proms commission) and premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its out-going chief conductor, Leonard Slatkin, on 20 July – is a tribute ‘to the influence of Chinese artists and intellectuals in the twentieth century’, as the composer notes in the score. He adds: ‘Having grown up in an artistic family during the time of the Cultural Revolution, I know from personal experience the struggles and hardships that past generations have endured to remain true to these eternal ideals’. Past generations? Zhou himself was sent to labour in the fields; a back injury had him re-allocated to a song-and-dance troupe, where he encountered notionally prohibited western instruments among the Chinese ones – a stylistic integration he maintains even when writing exclusively for the modern symphony orchestra.

The Gendering of the Cultural Revolution, 1919–1934

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Political Contributions ◽  
State Representatives ◽  
The Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mexican Identity

Chapter 2 analyzes the complex and often contradictory gendered positions of women artists associated with Mexico’s Communist Party during the first decades of the twentieth century. This chapter first examines the Mexican Communist Party’s official stance toward women from 1919 to the 1940s, and the changing global and national political framework in which the PCM operated. Next, this chapter highlights the artistic and political contributions of Tina Modotti, while recognizing her ambivalent position within postrevolutionary society. This chapter argues that even as state representatives grew increasingly concerned with Modotti’s communist leanings, Mexican officials nonetheless co-opted Modotti’s image in several ways. Not only did her photographs help to shape an “authentic” Mexican identity, but her very presence provided a cautionary morality tale to all women concerning the consequences of having “questionable” morals and even worse, of adhering to communist principles.

Eyewitness of the Cultural Revolution—

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
“Foreign Expert“
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Large Body ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Drawing a picture of China on the basis of personal experience alone presents several problems. First, “foreign experts” generally did not have access to much more material or information than did foreign journalists; when the movement began to make itself felt in foreign language institutes, in March or April, we were told categorically that it had nothing whatever to do with foreigners. Second, our outstanding advantage as observers–contact, and on the whole good relations, with students–was in general little exploited, in the beginning because we did not appreciate the importance of what was happening, and later, for fear of provoking our employers. Third, much of the most interesting “news” came as rumour from somewhere within the large body of foreigners living in the Friendship Hostel, and these sources were inevitably imprecise in their dating.

scholarly journals Figurative oil painting in China: from Mao to Nu

2019 ◽  
pp. 221-226
Author(s):  
S. Ke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Oil Painting ◽  
Figurative Painting ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The range of problems of the influence of realistic art on the genre diversity in Chinese painting is revealed in the article. The processes caused by the cultural revolution and the following historical events in China are shown by the example of the formation of figurative painting during the twentieth century. A variant of the typology of Chinese figurative painting of the studied period is proposed based on the analysis of the most typical paintings.

Visual Memory, Personal Experience, and Public History

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-180
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Public History ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grassroots Change ◽  
Innovative Techniques ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This article introduces an exemplary case of underground culture during the Cultural Revolution – the Wuming (No Name) painting group. The story of this case provides a counter-narrative against mainstream master narratives of the Cultural Revolution, contributing to an alternative history, a history of the creative actors and actions that were constitutive of grassroots change. The article further illustrates the challenges that memory and subjectivity pose for the writing of that history, and some innovative techniques the author has developed in response to them.

scholarly journals LIU ZEHUA 劉澤華 (1935–2018)

Early China ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Yuri Pines
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Chinese Political Culture ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

AbstractThis obituary surveys the biography and major works of Liu Zehua, a leading scholar of China’s intellectual history, political thought, and political culture. It explores the impact of Liu Zehua’s personal experience, in particular the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, on his conceptualization of Chinese political culture as subjugated to the overarching principle of monarchism. Liu Zehua’s critical engagement with China’s past distinguished him from proponents of revival of traditional values and made him one of the powerful opponents of cultural conservatives in China.

The Secret Listener

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan-tsung Chen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Red Guards ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

From the time she was a girl, Yuan-tsung Chen had had a literary dream, and in 1950 she embarked on a literary career, a journey filled with thrilling and dangerous adventures. She went to Beijing and got a job in the Scenario Department of the Central Film Bureau, where she found herself in a front-row seat during China’s culture wars as Mao Zedong demanded that literature and art serve the Party, while writers wanted culture to be distinguishable from propaganda. Hence she became a secret listener. Purges ensued. She narrowly escaped the Anti-Rightist Purge of 1957 by marrying Jack Chen, who, because of his connections, had avoided political trouble so far. Mao’s “class war” continued. His Great Leap Forward caused the plunge in agricultural production and the greatest famine of the twentieth century. It led to Mao’s last and most violent purge, the Cultural Revolution. His hitmen, the Red Guards, viciously attacked Jack. Yuan-tsung went secretly to ask Zhou Enlai, the prime minister, for help. Zhou tried but failed to protect them. They were sent out of Beijing and consigned to a rural backwater village, cut off from all recourse to friends. But Yuan-tsung figured out a way to get in touch, right under the noses of the Red Guards, with Jack’s American brother-in-law and asked him to arrange a speaking tour for Jack. He did, and thus Jack was able to accept an invitation to lecture on Canadian and American campuses. After a tense wait, on the prime minister’s personal order Jack and Yuan-tsung got permits to leave the country.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document