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Chinese Brush, Western Canvas: The travels of Italian artists and writers, and the making of China's international cultural identity in the mid-1950s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2016

LAURA DE GIORGI
LAURA DE GIORGI*
Affiliation:
Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

After 1955 the People's Republic of China looked to Western Europe to develop new economic and cultural relations, and to project its new image as an independent Socialist state. In this new context, between 1955 and 1957 several Italian delegations visited China to explore the possibility of cooperation between China and Italy in the field of literature and art. This article investigates the most important of these delegations, led by the jurist, Piero Calamandrei, in 1955, and some subsequent initiatives, such as the exhibition of Italian artists held in Beijing in 1956. Drawing mainly from Italian published and private sources, the article explores how Socialist China's revolutionary cultural identity was understood and received in Italy in this period. It does so with special reference to the impact of Soviet cultural influence on China, and the prospect of Sino-Italian cooperation in the field of arts and literature as a way to bridge the East–West political and ideological divide.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 1: Circumventing the Cold War: The parallel diplomacy of economic and cultural exchanges between Western Europe and Socialist China in the 1950s and 1960s , January 2017 , pp. 170 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was financially supported by the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The author wishes to thank colleagues in the research team and the anonymous reviewer for comments and suggestions made to the earlier version of this article.

References

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17 Besides Calamandrei, the delegation included jurist, Norberto Bobbio; university professors, Emilio Durio, Rodolfo Margaria, Cesare Musatti, Lucio Benedetti, and Rosario Ruggeri; writers and journalists, Franco Antonicelli, Umberto Barbaro, Carlo Bernari, Carlo Cassola, Franco Fortini, Antonello Trombadori, Rocco Cacopardo, and Corrado Pizzinelli; sinologist, Maria Arena Regis; architect, Franco Berlanda; and painter, Ernesto Treccani.

18 This point was raised by Calamandrei in his reply to the harsh criticism of ‘La Cina d'oggi’ written by anti-Communist and anti-fascist intellectual, Nicola Chiaromonti. See Calamandrei, P. (1956). ‘Il tempo della malafede’, Il Ponte, vol. 12, no. 8–9, pp. 1529–1536 Google Scholar. Chiaromonti's activities were financed by the Congress for the Freedom of Culture, secretly supported by the CIA in Europe to wage a cultural war against the Soviet Union. On this see Stonor Sauders, F. (2004). La guerra fredda culturale. La CIA e il mondo delle lettere e delle arti, Fazi Editore, Roma Google Scholar.

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22 Ibid., p. 138.

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25 Ibid., p. 672.

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27 Calamandrei, P. (1956). ‘Guardare oltre la Grande Muraglia’, ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, pp. 61–72.

28 ‘Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza cinese’ (1956). ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, pp. 691–700.

29 Calamandrei, P. (1956). ‘Le relazioni culturali italo-cinesi’, ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, pp. 122–129.

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33 Antonicelli, F. (1956). ‘La casa di Lu Hsun’, ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, pp. 407–412. Interesting observations on Lu Xun's work were also written by another member of Calamandrei's delegation, the literary critic, Franco Fortini, whose travelogue of China—Fortini, F. (1956). Asia Maggiore, Torino, Einaudi—was one of the most interesting reports on Chinese revolutionary culture in post-war Italy.

34 On the reception of Lu Xun in the West, see Eber, I. (1985). ‘The Reception of Lu Xun in Europe and America: The Politics of Popularization and Scholarship’, in Lee, Leo Ou-fan (ed.). Lu Xun and His Legacy, University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp. 242–273 Google Scholar.

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36 Socialist Realism was incorporated into the Chinese state-sponsored aesthetic standards in literature and art in the 1950s, according to the international cultural orthodoxy elaborated by Andrei Zdanov in the 1930s for the Socialist camp. Since the goal of art was to celebrate the success of socialism, literature and arts had to focus exclusively on a positive and idealized representation of workers in the new revolutionary society in progress. Nevertheless, in China the term was not used until 1953, and instead ‘Proletarian Realism’ was preferred as a way to distinguish Chinese from Soviet revolutionary literature. On the political and ideological framework concerning usage of the term in China, see Bichler, L. (1996). ‘Coming to Terms with a Term. Notes on the History of the Use of Socialist Realism in China’, in Chung, H. et al. (eds). In the Party Spirit. Socialist Realism and Literary Practice in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China, Brill, Amsterdam, pp. 30–42 Google Scholar. On the transnational dimension of Socialist Realism, see also Lahusen, T. and Dobrenko, E. A. (eds) (1997). Socialist Realism Without Shores, Duke University Press, Durham Google Scholar.

37 This included: the fourth part of Guo Moruo's historical drama, Qu Yuan; selected chapters from: The Sun Rises on the Sanggan River by Ding Ling; The Wall of Bronze by Liu Jing; The Changes in Li Village by Zhao Shuli; the 1951 edition of The White-haired Girl (which had been awarded the Stalin Prize); The Wine Pot, a short story by the soldier writer, Cui Bawa; The Shop of the Lin Family by Mao Dun; New Life, a long tale by Zhang Tianyi as well as some so-called Political Fables (a selection from the Modern Fables by Feng Xuefeng) and poems by Tao Mingyuan, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Mao Zedong at the end.

38 Guidacci, M. (1956). ‘Lettera aperta a Piero Calamandrei’, ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, pp. 391–395.

39 Calamandrei, ‘Questionario sul caso Hu Feng’, p. 671.

40 Ibid.

41 Calamandrei, P. (1956). ‘La pittura’, ‘La Cina d'oggi’, Il Ponte, p. 626.

42 On the relationship between figurative art and politics in the People's Republic of China, see Andrews, J. (1994). Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1979, University of California Press, Berkeley Google Scholar.

43 Calamandrei, ‘Questionario sul caso Hu Feng’, p. 671.

44 Renato Guttuso, much like Pablo Picasso, was one of the iconic painters of the Western Left who played a fundamental role in bridging the Cold War divide. On his role and more generally on political art in the West during the Cold War, see Mensch, C. (2013). Art and Politics. A Small History of Art for Social Change Since 1955, I.B. Tauris, London, pp. 15–43 Google Scholar.

45 Cassola, C. (1956). Viaggio in Cina, Feltrinelli, Milano Google Scholar.

46 Treccani, Ernesto, Relazione manoscritta e dattiloscritta sul viaggio in Cina e l'arte cinese, Archivio Fondazione Corrente, Milano, Cartella 7, fascicolo 14-6, 1957 Google Scholar.

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48 On the place of Qi Baishi in the PRC's cultural policy, see Andrews, Painters and Politics, pp. 86–87.

49 Treccani, Relazione manoscritta e dattiloscritta sul viaggio in Cina e l'arte cinese.

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51 See Baudin, A. (1997). ‘Why is Soviet Art Hidden from Us? Zdhanov Art and its International Relations and Fallout 1947–1953’, in Lahusen and Dobrenko, Socialist Realism Without Shores, pp. 227–256.

52 Antonietta Raphael Mafai, Travel journal, 4 June 1956, Centro Studi Mafai Raphael, www.raphaelmafai.org, [accessed 2 August 2016].

53 For a introduction to the works of Tono Zancanaro in China, see Gaddi, M. and Micieli, N. (1987). Tono/Cina, Nuovi Sentieri, Belluno Google Scholar.

54 Notes from the travel notebook of Tono Zancanaro, Archivio Zancanaro, Padova; with kind permission of Archivio Zancanaro.

55 Antonietta Raphael Mafai, Travel journal, 3 May 1956, Centro Studi Mafai Raphael, www.raphaelmafai.org. The negative judgement of Turcato's work was not surprising, since Abstract Expressionism was considered to be at odds with the principles of Socialist art. In contrast, during the cultural Cold War, in the West it was seen as the most significant expression of the freedom of artistic creativity. On this see Cockroft, E. (1974). ‘Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War’, Artforum, no. 12, pp. 39–41 Google Scholar; Sauders, La guerra fredda culturale.

56 On Yan Han, see Andrews, Painters and Politics, pp. 96–105. For a recent reflection on the dilemmas of Chinese intellectuals in Mao's China and beyond, see Cheek, T. (2016). The Intellectual in China Modern History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Google Scholar.

57 Han, Yan (1957). ‘Xu’, in Yidali fang Hua meishujia zuopin xuanji [Selected Works of Italian Artists Visiting China], Renmin meishu chubanshe, Beijing, pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

58 Andrews, Painters and Politics, pp. 176–200.