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ART AND POLITICS IN CHINA 1949-1984. By Maria Galikowski. Sha Tin (Hong Kong): The Chinese University Press (distributed by the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI). 1998. x, 289 pp. (Photos.) US$37.50, paper. ISBN 962-201-649-9.
THIS BOOK is a very good addition to the literature on the arts, and specifically the fine arts, in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Based on the author's doctoral thesis at Leeds University, it covers the relationship between painting and politics over the first thirty-five years of the PRC, encompassing theory, policy and aesthetics, as well as the various schools of painting and the principal individual painters. Moreover, it exemplifies very well the stereotyped nature of control of the arts under Mao Zedong, as well as the immense expansion of freedom and individual creativity which characterized the 1980s.
One strong feature of the book is the references to forms of art other than painting, including film, literature and drama. There is...