Collecting Chinese propaganda posters

Landsberger, S.R.; Iskin, R.E.; Salsbury, B.

Citation
Landsberger, S. R. (2019). Collecting Chinese propaganda posters. In R. E.
Iskin & B. Salsbury (Eds.), Collecting prints, posters, and ephemera.
Perspectives in a global world (pp. 212-227). New York: Bloomsbury
Publishing. doi:10.5040/9781501338526.0020

Version: Publisher's Version

Licensed under Article 25fa Copyright Act/Law
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(Amendment Taverne)
Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3242800

Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if
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 Collecting Prints, Posters,
and Ephemera

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 1 09-08-2019 21:29:34

 Series Editor:
Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University, UK

Advisory Board:
Véronique Chagnon-Burke, Christie’s Education, USA
Christel H. Force, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA
Charlotte Galloway, Australian National University, Australia
Mel Jordan, Royal College of Art, UK
Alain Quemin, University of Paris 8, France
Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds, UK

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 2 09-08-2019 21:29:34

 Collecting Prints, Posters,
and Ephemera

Perspectives in a Global World

Edited by
Ruth E. Iskin and Britany Salsbury

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 3 09-08-2019 21:29:34

 BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
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Copyright © Ruth E. Iskin, Britany Salsbury and Contributors, 2019

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Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 4 09-08-2019 21:29:34

 Contents

List of Figures vii

Series Editor’s Introduction xiii

Introduction Ruth E. Iskin and Britany Salsbury 1

Part I Collecting Prints 7

Introduction, Part I: Collecting Modern and Contemporary Prints

Britany Salsbury 9

1 Henrietta Louisa Koenen’s (1830–81) Amsterdam Collection of Women

Printmakers Madeleine C. Viljoen 27

2 Loys Delteil (1869–1927): Community and Contemporary Print

Collecting in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Britany Salsbury 44

3 Women Collectors of Japanese Prints: The 1909–14 Paris Expositions des

estampes japonaises at the Musée des arts décoratifs Elizabeth Emery 61

4 Collecting Ukiyo-e Prints in Japan during the Nineteenth and Twentieth

Centuries Shigeru Oikawa 79

5 Building Hemispheric Unity to Serve Corporate Identity: IBM’s

Collection of Prints from the Americas Rachel Kaplan 95

Part II Collecting Posters and Ephemera 111

Introduction, Part II: Collecting Posters and Other Ephemera: From

Modernity to the Digital Era Ruth E. Iskin 113

6 From Commune to Commerce: Ernest Maindron’s Collecting Ephemera

and Posters, Late 1850s–Early 1900s Ruth E. Iskin 129

7 The Maurice Rickards Collection of Ephemera Michael Twyman 149

8 Hans Sachs: The Most Dedicated Collector of Posters in Germany

Kathleen Chapman 164

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 vi Contents

9 To Possess is to Belong: Carlos Monsiváis’s Collection of Ephemera and

Popular Culture in Mexico City Liliana Chávez Díaz 179

10 The David King Collection of Russian and Soviet Ephemera at Tate:

Expanding the Museum Narrative with Ephemera Sofia Gurevich 197

11 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters Stefan Landsberger 212

12 The Cuba Poster Project: Collecting for People, not Profit Lincoln Cushing 228

13 Collecting Pre- and Post-Revolution Iranian Movie Posters in the United

States and in Iran Hamid Naficy 245

14 The Challenge of Collecting Digital Posters and Graphics from the Web:
A Roundtable Discussion Anisa Hawes 262

Author Biographies 275

Index 279

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 11

Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters

Stefan Landsberger

Introduction—Chinese Propaganda Posters1

This chapter combines two narratives. One is a brief overview of the genre of the
propaganda poster and aspects of its production that are relevant for collectors. The
second is my personal trajectory of more than four decades of collecting of and research
on Chinese propaganda posters, which has resulted in a large private collection2 and
numerous publications.3 I will look at Western and Chinese collectors of posters and
their motivations for collecting from 1980 to the present. I will also discuss Chinese
initiatives to create museums dedicated to Chinese posters beginning in the late 1990s,
and discuss the market for posters.
More than forty years ago, in the early 1970s, I became interested in Chinese
propaganda posters, not out of political sympathies, but because I wanted to study the
use of art and political propaganda, and Chinese propaganda happened right before
my eyes. Initially, I tried to obtain them through the People’s Bookstore (Renmin
Shudian) branch in Amsterdam and other shops specialized in printed materials put
out by European Maoist and similar politically “progressive” fringe groups.4 By the late
1970s, I contacted the Chinese international distributor, the Guoji Shudian Company
in Beijing, directly. Going to the source struck me as the best way to obtain posters.
Guoji Shudian regularly sent out type-written lists of posters, on the basis of which
I filed my orders. This method went smoothly until Guoji Shudian started sending
materials I had not ordered, such as fairly expensive mounted scrolls of traditional
ink brush reproductions. It was almost as if the Company tried to steer me into
collecting more established types of Chinese art and not the posters I wanted, the ones
showing excited peasants welcoming Mao Zedong, the material abundance in the
people’s communes, or traditionally inspired fat baby boys with gold carp or in more
contemporary settings.5 I acquired the poster in Figure 11.1 from Guoji Shudian in the
late 1970s and have never encountered it elsewhere (Figure 11.1).
Visual aspects of revolutionary China have appealed to Westerners from the very
beginning, right from the founding of the PRC in 1949. One of the reasons was that
many Westerners sympathized with the new regime. Another reason was that many
saw Chinese poster art as something deliciously alien, subversive and mysterious.6
However, it was difficult to get hold of propaganda posters outside of China. Only

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 212 09-08-2019 21:30:40

 AQ: Please
Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 213 check and
confirm
if the
shortened
running
head is fine

Figure 11.1 Designer unknown, Little guests in the Moon Palace (Yuegong xiao keren),
published by Renmin meishu chubanshe (Beijing), c. 1972, IISH/Stefan R. Landsberger
Collection, photo © International Institute of Social History.

foreign “friends,” sympathizers of the regime who had received an official invitation
to visit and witness the changes the nation was going through, had the opportunity
to acquire them first-hand.7 Posters served as souvenirs from revolutionary China,
as opposed to the more traditional handicrafts (silks, silk screens, calligraphy scrolls,
carvings, etc.) that foreign friends also brought back.
For the Chinese themselves, the propaganda poster was ubiquitous and impossible
to avoid. While the propaganda wall paintings usually were only visible on the spot
where they had been produced, printed posters were mass-produced and were
easily and cheaply available at the Xinhua (New China) bookstores.8 Posters carried
normative or political messages; they also brought some color to the places where
people lived. Posters reached all levels of society: they adorned offices and factory
workshops, houses, and dormitories. Schools used posters for teaching; factories, Party
offices, People’s Liberation Army meeting rooms, shop floors, community rooms, etc.

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 214 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

all had posters on their walls; so-called mass art centers (qunzhong meishu guan), run
by local cultural (Party) authorities and located in smaller urban communities and in
the countryside, offered the “masses” the opportunity to learn to produce their own art
and also organized poster exhibitions for workers and peasants.
Although it could be politically expedient to have a Mao poster on one’s wall, as
in Figure 11.2, most people liked the posters for their colors, composition, and visual
contents, but turned a blind eye to their political messages. PRC posters had the
same recreational functions that traditional New Year prints had had for hundreds
of years in Chinese culture. These cheaply available prints, which could be calendars,
traditional paintings, or simple block prints, had circulated widely long before the PRC
was established. New Year prints generally portrayed events a little more beautiful than
actual reality (Figure 11.2).

Figure 11.2 Xin Liliang, Chairman Mao gives us a happy life (Mao zhuxi gei womende
xingfu shenghuo), published by Sanyi yinshua gongsi (Shanghai), March 1954, IISH/
Stefan R. Landsberger Collection, photo © International Institute of Social History.

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 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 215

Art and Propaganda Posters

The Communist Party (CCP, established in 1921) and the PRC used posters to
visualize the abstract policies and their many different grandiose visions of the future.
Propaganda posters played a major role in the many campaigns that mobilized the
people, and became the favored medium for educational purposes; they could easily
reach the large number of illiterate Chinese in the early decades of the PRC. The
government mobilized the most talented artists, many of them former commercial
designers, to design the posters. Miklós Haraszti’s concept of the velvet glove of
political oversight over the arts is truly apt here.9
The idealized poster images did not show “life as it is,” but “life as it ought to be,”
stressing the positive and glossing over anything negative. Newspapers, journals, and
magazines reproduced original art works. These reproductions also appeared as wall
paintings and as large posters in the streets, in railway stations, and in other public
spaces. The smaller poster versions were distributed through the network of Xinhua
bookstores; some were turned into bookmarks, appeared on biscuit tins, mirrors,
cigarette packages, or matchboxes; a few even were made into postage stamps. In short,
propaganda images were everywhere.
But what exactly is a Chinese propaganda poster? And is it art? None of the posters
are originals; all have been mechanically reproduced. As Walter Benjamin famously
argued, reproduced artwork lacks a unique presence in time and space.10 In recent
years, an increasing number of the original designs (prior to being printed) for Chinese
posters have resurfaced. Ha Qiongwen’s and Dong Xiwen’s original designs and artwork
that were reproduced on numerous influential posters now are part of major Chinese
museum collections in Shanghai and Beijing, respectively;11 others are in a terrible
state of neglect. Reproduction, according to Benjamin, depreciates the original work,
its aura and authority. One can argue that poster reproduction has made the original
redundant, but the posters have another quality that Benjamin liked: their democratic
potential enabled the masses to become involved in art, culture, and politics.
Although the propaganda poster dominated the political and public reality of the
first three decades of the PRC, it was not a new medium. Throughout its long history,
the Chinese political system has actively presented and spread its ideas of correct
behavior and thought. It used paintings, songs, high- and low-brow literature, stage
performances, and other artistic forms, such as New Year prints, to make sure that the
cultured elite and illiterate masses behaved as they should. Once China attempted to
modernize after Imperial rule ended in 1911/12, both the Nationalist Party, founded in
the early 1910s, and the CCP employed visual art as a weapon to spread their messages,
and gain adherents and power.
Many Chinese artists and designers insist that the term propaganda art does not
apply to the contents of the posters. According to them, the visual arts consist of discrete
genres, such as oil paintings, woodcuts, and propaganda posters. This classification
mirrors the highly hierarchical bureaucratic framework that governs and administers
the arts. Formerly, watercolorists did not mingle with oil painters, woodcutters worked

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 216 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

separately from painters, and propaganda poster artists were at the bottom of the
hierarchy. Chinese artists further maintain that only the use of slogans turns art into
propaganda. They do not consider posters with explicit political or propagandistic
contents that do not have slogans, as propaganda posters. Conversely, posters with one
or more slogans, but without political or propagandistic images, qualify as propaganda
in their opinion. Over the years, I have talked with many artists and designers. They
acknowledged that they also had mixed up the various styles, in particular during
the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), when all
art had to have propaganda value and be politically inspired. But whatever goal or
movement propaganda posters were designed and produced for, they had to provide
information and change attitudes or even behaviors.
Themes of politics and economic reconstruction dominated posters since 1949.
Most featured political obedience, and glorified work and personal sacrifice for
the greater wellbeing. The images only paid attention to the personal and private
dimensions of the people’s lives to show how these had improved. In periods when the
political grip on artistic production relaxed, posters of landscapes, historical scenes,
and images from popular Beijing Opera plays were published.

Collecting Posters
After 1949, the Chinese had no private time; the government linked every activity
directly to attaining its goals. Not being productive raised questions about one’s
political trustworthiness. Pursuing hobbies, like collecting, came in for criticism as
“wallowing in petty bourgeois amusements.”12 The omnipresence of the posters in
public and private also held many Chinese back from collecting them, because they
appeared to have no value whatsoever. This changed when the nation embraced the
strategy of reform and opening up to the outside world in the early 1980s. Some
Chinese started collecting “calendar girl” posters, advertising posters from the 1920s
and 1930s in an Art Deco-inspired style.13 Posters from politically problematic eras
however, such as the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, brought greater political
risks to the collectors; the leadership was still debating the official verdict on these
events. Collecting such materials could bring political trouble to the collector.
Once China freely allowed visitors from the West in the late 1970s, collecting
became easier. I and other Western poster collectors merely needed to find the nearest
local Xinhua bookshop in every city or town we went to.14 Each Xinhua bookshop
had a poster section, with the available posters on display. When I went into a Xinhua
bookshop during my first visit to China in 1980, it was like entering Poster Heaven.
Shop assistants and curious onlookers peppered me with questions: “Why are you
buying propaganda posters?” “Why do you like them?” “Why don’t you rather buy the
‘real’ art that other foreigners buy?” By “real art” they referred to (reproductions of)
traditional Chinese painting, stone rubbings, calligraphy, etc. They refused to believe
that I wanted to use the posters for research purposes: “Nobody in China is interested

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 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 217

in these things, so why would you study them,” etc. Some shop assistants refused to sell
posters, whereas others went out of their way to help. In 1987, in a small Xinhua store
in Qufu, Shandong Province, now a major tourist destination, the section head started
to take posters off the wall, as the posters in stock had been sold out. If I did not mind
the holes left by the thumbtacks, I could have them; I bought them, of course.
One can still buy such posters from the past, but no longer at the Xinhua bookstores.
The highest levels of officials in the propaganda system decided, probably around the
mid-1990s, to stop producing propaganda posters for sale. Presently, propaganda
is distributed through other media such as popular music, films, computer games,
television, and the internet. The posters have been relegated to open antique markets
such as Baoguosi and Panjiayuan,15 both in Beijing, where collectors, foreign and
Chinese, young and old, converge during the weekends. Indeed, most Chinese collect
something these days, and growing numbers of them are interested in posters, rationing
coupons, Mao buttons, Red Guard uniforms, and other objects, mostly because of
their potential future value. A considerable number of private sellers, often collectors
themselves, have emerged as the most valuable source for buying posters. The internet
also is now a major source for acquiring posters. A number of Chinese and Western
sites specialize in posters. Although it is risky to ascertain the authenticity and quality
of posters on the basis of a digital scan, when one’s relationship with the seller is good,
one usually can trust the latter’s judgment about authenticity.

Collecting Chinese Posters Today: Issues and Methods

The sustained use of posters for mass campaigns suggests that they were produced
in massive numbers. Up until now, I have not been able to establish which publisher
published which posters in what quantities. There is no central, comprehensive
catalogue covering all poster publications since 1949. Although the National Library
of China in Beijing has served as a “legal deposit” authority (and continues to do so)
to which all publishers have to present a copy of their productions, the Library’s poster
section is in disarray and not well-looked after.16 The Library lacks the official and
political support, funding, and the motivation to make this treasure trove accessible
in any form.
In January of 1998, I visited the major publishing houses in Beijing and Shanghai.17
In interviews with their representatives, many stressed that they had no records of past
poster publishing activities and that archives or samples of these activities did not exist.
If the publishers themselves did not, or no longer, maintain records of the posters they
produced, we need to turn to alternative sources for information. In the 1950s and early
1960s, poster publishers sent out illustrated brochures of their planned production
to the Xinhua bookshops that sold posters. Such brochures can help to reconstruct
the poster production of a single publisher. However, this does not tell us how widely
available posters were. Did the publishers in Beijing and Shanghai monopolize the
market, or did the Hunan, Liaoning, or Shaanxi publishers have a share, too? Given the
problems of infrastructure and distribution that plagued China in the 1950s and later,

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 218 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

one must assume that local production determined the availability of posters. In the
early years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–69) for example, poster production was
almost completely decentralized to the provincial, municipal, or lower-level publishers.
Moreover, Red Guard factions all over the country published their own posters, often
in a much sought-after, simple, red-black-white color scheme that resembled the
block prints produced in the late 1930s–early 1940s, as in Figure 11.3. Even for these
seemingly “spontaneous,” “locally produced” posters, the central levels often provided
the originals18 (Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3 Dandong Red Headquarters of the Lu Xun Art Academy Mao Zedong
Thought 65th Battalion, General Department of the Lu Xun Art Academy Mao Zedong
Thought Red Guards, Listen to the words of Chairman Mao, swear to follow the model of
“Support the army, love the people”! (Ting Mao zhuxi de hua, shizuo “yongjun aimin” de
mofan!), publisher unknown, c. 1968, IISH/Stefan R. Landsberger Collection, photo ©
International Institute of Social History.

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 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 219

Collecting Posters: Scope of Publication Numbers

Although we do not know how many posters were published, we can estimate on the
basis of incomplete statistics. The journal Renmin meishu (People’s Art) calculated
in April 1950 that in the year 1949, 379 different poster designs were published
nationwide, with a total print run of almost 6.8 million copies. Some 10 percent of them
featured the founding of the PRC, and 13 percent showed the deep love of the people
for the new leadership. Another 10 percent illustrated the close relations between the
Army and the people, and 31 percent of them dealt with agricultural production.19 The
scholar Kuiyi Shen20 has calculated that the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing
House published more than 2,000 poster designs in 40 million copies between 1954
and 1966, whereas the Beijing People’s Fine Arts Publishing House published 500
poster designs in some 28 million copies between 1951 and 1959.21 Aside from these
incomplete figures, many individual posters provide some information in the imprint
in the lower right hand corner. These imprints give details about the publisher, printer,
size of the poster, print number, number of editions, and the size of the print runs.

Collections and Museums in the West

One can classify the collections of Chinese propaganda posters, both in China and the
West, as either private or institutional. In recent times, the advent of the internet has
made these collections much more visible and accessible. In some Western collections,
the Chinese poster holdings form part of a much broader collection, enabling a
comparative study of, for example, the development of graphic design. The Swiss
collector René Wanner is a representative of this group of collectors of graphic design,
and there are many others.22
Many Western private collectors spent time in or close to China. After their
retirement or death, they often donated their collections to (academic) institutions
or libraries to allow their use as research materials. The personal archives of the
missionaries who worked in China in the late 1800s–early 1900s, for example, are
important sources for late Imperial and Republican posters. Haverford College
(Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States) has some spectacular anti-communist and
anti-Japanese posters collected and later bequeathed by Dr. William W. Cadbury and
his spouse Catherine J. Cadbury, Quakers who worked as medical missionaries in
Southern China in the 1900s–40s.23
The late Professor Jon Sigurdson donated his superb collection of some 1,200
posters, acquired in China in the period 1962–83, to a Swedish institute of higher
learning.24 Ann Tompkins25 went to China on invitation in 1965 and lived and worked
there for five years. The posters she bought and collected during her sojourn in China,
now named the Ann Tompkins (Tang Fandi) and Lincoln Cushing Chinese Poster
Collection, were donated to the UC Berkeley’s East Asian Library and the Center for
the Study of Political Graphics.26 The British journalist and China expert John Gittings

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 220 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

started collecting propaganda posters and Chinese daily necessities while stationed in
Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s.27 His vision was to establish the Chinese Visual
Arts Project, a collection of artifacts that made daily life in China visible and tangible
for Western students. He founded the China Poster Collection at the University of
Westminster, London, in 1977, with some 800 posters from the late 1950s up to the
early 1980s.28 The British Museum and the British Library,29 both in London, have
received or acquired significant posters over the years, as has the Library of Congress
in Washington DC. In 2009, the latter discovered a hitherto unknown collection of
some 6,000 items related to the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45).30
My own collection, the IISH/Stefan R. Landsberger Collection, currently numbers
some 6,000 items, spanning the period 1937 to the present. Together with the Chinese
poster holdings of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and the

Figure 11.4 Designer unknown, Defeat Japanese imperialism (Dadao Riben

diguozhuyi), published by Junshi weiyuanhui zhengxunchu, c. 1937, IISH/Stefan R.
Landsberger Collection, photo © International Institute of Social History.

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 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 221

collection of an unnamed private collector in Amsterdam, the Landsberger Collection

forms one of the most comprehensive ones in the world, totaling more than 10,000
items. Some 1,500 posters from these combined collections are accessible online, with
information about the images, date of production and the designers.31 A large selection
of images from these three collections is also available elsewhere online.32 These two
sites aim to make as many high-quality scans of Chinese propaganda posters as possible
available in the public domain. The three collections collaborate in the Chinese Posters
Foundation and are still expanding.
I estimate that I picked up 30–40 percent of my collection from the Xinhua bookstores
in the period 1980–95. Later additions largely came from private sources. After my first
book on the subject appeared in 1995,33 the circles of collectors that emerged in China
in the 1990s classified me as a collector and not a dealer; this enabled me to develop
relations with many Chinese collectors all of over China. Other sources from which I
acquired posters ranged from Hong Kong collectors and sellers to archives of Friendship
Associations in Europe, auctions, etc. Presently, my collecting activities mostly take
place over the internet and by going to China, to maintain contacts and scour antique
markets. My earliest posters date from 1937, a series devoted to the Anti-Japanese War
which I acquired outside China (Figure 11.4). My most recent ones are posters from
2015, published for official use on the occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the
Victory of the Chinese Anti-Japanese War and the Global War Against Fascism that was
marked with a military parade in Beijing in August 2015.

Collections and Museums in China

The focus of Chinese collectors often differs from that of Western collectors. A great
number of the former are mainly interested in collecting Mao images. Only in recent
years have Cultural Revolution posters increasingly drawn the attention of Chinese
collectors. When identifying representatives of the Chinese collectors’ field, some
names immediately spring to mind, because their early online presence and other
activities have put their collections in the spotlight. But there are many others.
Yang Peiming was one of the first Chinese collectors to start exhibiting his
collection. He has become renowned among many as the proprietor of the Shanghai
Propaganda Poster Art Center in Shanghai.34 Yang started collecting posters in 1995
when government organizations started destroying propaganda materials out of
political expediency. He established a physical museum in a single room in 2002; this
has gradually developed into a three-room establishment totaling 400 square meters,
housing thousands of posters. In March 2012, the museum obtained an official license
from the Shanghai municipal government as a private museum; being private instead
of official allows Yang the necessary leeway to operate. Yang has a collection of over
6,000 Chinese propaganda posters from 1940 to 1990, with a large number of Cultural
Revolution posters; he has an additional collection of hundreds of original Shanghai
“calendar girl” posters from 1910 to 1940. Yang also sells high-quality posters.

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 222 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

A specialized collector is Beijing-based Guo Lei. A staff member of the Olympic

Affairs Committee under the Ministry of Sports, as well as secretary of the Sports
Committee of the Chinese Association of Collectors and editor in chief of the journal
Chinese Sports Collecting, Guo focuses on sports-related propaganda in all its forms.
He also maintains a website that highlights his spectacular private collection of sports
posters and paraphernalia.35 In 2012, he showcased his collection in Inspire China: New
China Sports Posters (1952–2012), published with the Beijing-based Contemporary
China Publishing House.
Dong Zhongchao, also from Beijing, is the last private collector I want to mention.
He was one of the first to move beyond selling posters (initially at the famous antique
outlet Curio City, next to Panjiayuan) into related fields. His poster collection numbers
some 6,000 examples, some of which appeared in his book Hong hua - Red pictores
1966–1978 (sic) (Hong Kong: Zhongguo guoji tushu chubanshe, 2011). Dong has
become increasingly interested in collecting the artifacts and props that appear in the
posters he has collected. These range from thermos flasks, alarm clocks, and aluminum
tea mugs to travel bags and children’s toys.36 Dong has become involved in the
management and organizational aspects of collecting. As one of the Vice-Secretaries
of the nationally approved Association of Red Collectors under the Chinese National
Association of Collectors, he plays a major role in articulating collectors’ interests and
in organizing exhibition activities. The most recent one was an exhibition to mark
the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, which was
held at the Urban Planning Museum in Chaoyang District, Beijing, in August 2017.
The compilation of Red Collection Exhibition Halls, Museums and Private Exhibition
Venues, the first comprehensive overview of Chinese collections that are on display
in one form or another published in September 2017, is another milestone of the Red
Collectors Association.
One of the destinations where some of the posters and objects that Dong Zhongchao
has collected over the years end up is the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Anren Town,
Sichuan province.37 Where Yang Peiming tries to run a museum under the watchful
eyes of the Shanghai municipal government, the former property developer and
real estate mogul Fan Jianchuan has so much local clout and influence that he has
been able to build a complete 100,000 square meter “museum settlement.” Yet, it is
still a private museum, which has to navigate both local politics and national censors.
With thirty buildings planned, eighteen are in operation at present; thirteen of these
display materials and provide information on the Anti-Japanese War, the Wenchuan
earthquake (2008), and the Cultural Revolution. Fan’s overriding aim is to present the
true history of China of the last 100 years. Of particular interest for this chapter are
the five so-called Red Age (i.e., the Mao era)38 Museums, devoted to porcelains; daily
necessities; Mao badges, table clocks and official seals; mirrors; and educated youths.
Fan Jianchuan is one of the most important and voracious Chinese collectors
at the moment. Quoting Denise Ho and Jie Li, as a boy he “began collecting things
related to the Cultural Revolution—Mao badges, Red Guard armbands, and various
flyers and pamphlets—eventually amassing an astounding collection of millions of
‘red artifacts.’”39 He allegedly has brought together “30 tons of handwritten materials,

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 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 223

20,000 diaries, a hundred thousand propaganda posters, and millions of Mao badges”;
some of them are already on display, some still await an appropriate location.40
The newly established M+ Museum for visual culture, focusing on twentieth- and
twenty-first-century art, design, architecture, and moving images, fairly recently
emerged as a collecting unit.41 Located in the West Kowloon Cultural District in the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Zone and scheduled to open officially in 2019, M+
aims “to become the hub for Chinese propaganda posters in Asia, while presenting
an alternative perspective of contextualizing them with contemporaneous materials
from other disciplines such as visual art, product design, graphic design, comics, and
publications.”42 In its M+ Pavilion, the first exhibition space of the complex to start
operation, M+ presented some of the posters it had acquired in the “Collectivisation:
China under Mao” section of Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection, a show
that ran from the November 30, 2016, to February 5, 2017.43

Collecting Posters: The Market

The increased demand for posters has driven up prices in the past ten years, while the
number of interesting posters on offer has decreased dramatically. The posters one
could pick up in the 1980s for only two mao (approx. €0.03 in May 2017 prices) now
fetch up to 2,000 yuan or more (€265 based on May 2017 prices). On many urban
street corners, cheap fake posters, mainly recent reprints are on offer. For those not
in the know, and even for those who are, with ever improving printing and copying
techniques and facilities, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the real
from the fake.
With more Chinese collectors active, including major ones like Fan Jianchuan and
the M+ Museum, the poster market in China is getting tighter. Chinese collectors have
an advantage over non-Chinese collectors because they speak the language, know the
culture, and often have extensive contacts or networks sourcing interesting materials
for them. While the widespread use of the internet has made it easier for Western
collectors to identify and communicate with potential Chinese poster sellers, it has
also made collecting more complicated. It is difficult to establish the authenticity of
posters offered on the internet, and shipping them, clearing (Chinese and Western)
customs, payments, etc. can also pose problems.
Many members of the Red Collectors group under the Chinese Association of
Collectors are active in one or more informal internet chat groups. Using the WeChat
(WeiXin) app for instant messaging, commerce, and payment services, developed by the
Tencent Company and first released in 2011,44 they communicate freely, refer each other to
interesting opportunities, enquire about rare editions, discuss pricing strategies, etc. Many
of them are nostalgic about the past, in particular about Mao Zedong and the Cultural
Revolution. The increasingly nationalistic and patriotic tone of the communications in
some groups has puzzled me. Japan and the United States, and more recently South Korea,
serve as the usual targets of their vitriol and hatred. But a hostile attitude has developed

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 224 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

toward foreign collectors as well. In some online exchanges, sellers express alarm about
posters that they consider important ending up in the hands of foreigners; in their
reasoning, such posters should remain in China as they are the property of the Chinese
people. They call upon each other to refrain from selling to Westerners.
It should also be noted that the market for posters exists in China only, even though
Western collectors participate in it. Incidental Western auctions aside, the market for
posters outside of China is very small. There is no set price for a poster and the pricing
policies and strategies are opaque: one seller may sell a poster for a lower price than
another; today’s price may be higher than yesterday’s; buying in quantity may get one
a better price; a Chinese customer may pay a lower price than a foreign one, etc. The
absence of an objective, binding pricing system makes poster appraisal extremely difficult.
Despite rising prices and dwindling supplies, every time I go to China I encounter
posters I did not know existed beforehand—posters that I am desperate to add to
my collection. I know that other collectors have the same experience. The chance to
stumble upon an unexpected find, to haggle for a better price, to scour markets—
all these aspects urge me on in my quest to bring together the most comprehensive
Chinese poster collection possible. Over the years, collecting Chinese posters has
become easier and at the same time more complicated, but it is one of the most
fulfilling activities I can imagine.

Notes
1 This chapter has benefited enormously from the decades’ long cooperation,
discussions, and talks with Mr. Marien van der Heijden, International Institute of
Social History, Amsterdam.
2 Parts of this collection are available on https://chineseposters.net/ and https​://ww​w.fli​
ckr.c​om/ph​otos/​chine​sepos​tersn​et/
3 Stefan R. Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters - From Revolution to Modernization
(Amsterdam, Singapore/Armonk: The Pepin Press/M.E. Sharpe 1995, 1998/1996);
Landsberger, “Contextualising (Propaganda) Posters,” in Visualising China, 1845–1965:
Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, ed. Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin
Yeh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 379–405; Landsberger, Marien van der Heijden, and Shen
Kuiyi, Chinese Posters - The IISH/Landsberger Collections (München: Prestel Verlag,
2009); Landsberger, “The Deification of Mao: Religious Imagery and Practices during
the Cultural Revolution and Beyond,” in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution:
Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives, ed. Woei Lien Chong (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002).
4 The People’s Bookstores (Renmin Shudian) were foreign branches of the Xinhua (New
China) bookstore company.
5 This section is based on Landsberger, “Confessions of a Poster Collector,” China
Information Anniversary Supplement (Summer 1994), 37.
6 Landsberger, “‘Revolutionärer Kitsch’: Das Beispiel China,” in Kitsch und Nation - Zur
kulturellen Modellierung eines polemischen Begriffs, eds. Kathrin Ackermann and
Christopher F. Laferl (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2016), 248.

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 224 09-08-2019 21:30:43

 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 225

7 For example, Gerhard Pommeranz-Liedtke, in charge of art publications and

exhibitions at the state-run Academy of the Arts in Berlin (East), who visited China
three times in the period 1953–8. Patrizia Jirka-Schmitz, Chinese Vintage Posters
from the Collection of G. Pommeranz-Liedtke (Cologne: Lempertz Auction 981,
2011), 4.
8 Lincoln Cushing and Ann Tompkins, Chinese Posters—Art from the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution (San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2007), 24.
9 Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison; Artists under State Socialism (New York: Basic
Books, 1987), 129–41.
10 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936),
http:​//www​.marx​ists.​org/r​efere​nce/s​ubjec​t/phi​losop​hy/wo​rks/g​e/ben​jamin​.htm.
11 For Ha Qiongwen, see: https​://ch​inese​poste​rs.ne​t/art​ists/​haqio​ngwen​.php;​ for Dong
Xiwen, see: https​://ch​inese​poste​rs.ne​t/art​ists/​dongx​iwen.​php.
12 Shaoguang Wang, “The Politics of Private Time: Changing Leisure Patterns in
Urban China,” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China—The Potential for Autonomy
and Community in Post-Mao China, ed. Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry
Naughton, and Elizabeth J. Perry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
155.
13 See Ellen Johnston Laing, Selling Happiness—Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in
Early-Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).
14 Landsberger, “Confessions,” 38.
15 Many sellers have a small shop on the second floor of the Modern Collection Area at
Panjiayuan. The “Red” collectibles are presented here: http://www.panjiayuan.com/
hc.
16 Based on talks with representatives of the Poster Department of the National Library
in Beijing in 2013 and 2015.
17 The People’s Publishing House, People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, People’s Sports
Publishing House, People’s Educational Publishing House (Beijing), Shanghai
People’s Publishing House and Shanghai’s People’s Fine Arts Publishing House
(Shanghai).
18 Geming da pipan baotou xuanji (A Selection of Revolutionary Great Criticism
Mastheads) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin meishu chubanshe, 1970).
19 Jian An, “Yijiuwuling nian nianhua gongzuode jixiang tongji” (Some Statistics on
New Year Print Production in 1950), Renmin meishu 2 (April 1950): 52–3.
20 Kuiyi Shen, Professor of Asian Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the University of
California, San Diego, is an expert on twentieth-century Chinese art, contemporary
Chinese art and mass culture.
21 Kuiyi Shen, “Propaganda Posters and Art during the Cultural Revolution,” in Art
and China’s Revolution, ed. Melissa Chiu and Zheng Shengtian (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009), 156.
22 http://www.posterpage.ch/.
23 See https​://ww​w.hav​erfor​d.edu​/east​-asia​n-lan​guage​s-and​-cult​ure/n​ews/w​orksh​op-ha​
verfo​rds-c​hines​e-pro​pagan​da-po​ster-​colle​ction​ and http:​//lib​rary.​haver​ford.​edu/f​i le-i​
d-910​.
24 http://chinaposters.org/front/front.
25 Ann Tompkins, a social worker, attended the 1965 World Peace Congress in
Helsinki. She was invited to China in 1965 and worked as an English language
instructor at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute for five years.

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 225 09-08-2019 21:30:44

 226 Collecting Prints, Posters, and Ephemera

26 Cushing and Tompkins, Chinese Posters. http:​//www​.docs​popul​i.org​/Chin​aPost​ers.h​

tml.
27 http://www.johngittings.com/.
28 http:​//chi​napos​ters.​westm​inste​r.ac.​uk/ze​nphot​o/pag​e/abo​ut.
29 https​://ww​w.bl.​uk/co​llect​ion-g​uides​/chin​ese-p​ropag​anda-​poste​rs.
30 https​://bl​ogs.l​oc.go​v/int​ernat​ional​-coll​ectio​ns/20​16/09​/post​ers-o​n-the​-sino​-japa​nese-​
war-o​f-193​7-45-​at-th​e-asi​an-di​visio​n-lib​rary-​of-co​ngres​s/.
31 https://chineseposters.net/.
32 https​://ww​w.fli​ckr.c​om/ph​otos/​chine​sepos​tersn​et/.
33 Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters (1995).
34 The Museum site is at http:​//www​.shan​ghaip​ropag​andaa​rt.co​m/abo​ut.as​p. See also
Borders of Adventure, “The Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre—The Director’s
Cut” (http​s://w​ww.bo​rders​ofadv​entur​e.com​/shan​ghai-​propa​ganda​-post​er-ar​t-cen​
tre/)​; Wikipedia (http​s://e​n.wik​ipedi​a.org​/wiki​/Prop​agand​a_Pos​ter_A​rt_Ce​ntre)​
; and TripAdvisor (http​s://w​ww.tr​ipadv​isor.​com/A​ttrac​tion_​Revie​w-g30​8272-​d1887​
174-R​eview​s-Sha​nghai​_Prop​agand​a_Pos​ter_A​rt_Ce​ntre-​Shang​hai.h​tml).​
35 http://www.gc1999.com. The site of the Sport Collectors Association is at http://
www.ticang.com.
36 Emily Williams, “Collecting the Red Era in Contemporary China,” Made in China 2,
no. 3 (2017): 81–2.
37 The Museum site is at http://www.jc-museum.cn/en/.
38 Denise Y. Ho and Jie Li, “From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia: Reincarnations
of a Chinese Museum Town,” Modern China 42, no. 1 (2016): 27.
39 Ho and Li, “From Landlord Manor,” 26.
40 Ibid.
41 The Museum site is at https://www.westkowloon.hk/en/mplus.
42 Personal briefing by M+ curator Pi Li and others in Beijing, May 25, 2017.
43 https​://ww​w.wes​tkowl​oon.h​k/en/​shift​ingob​jecti​ves/e​xhibi​tion-​trail​er.
44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat.

Selected Bibliography
Chiu, Melissa and Zheng Shengtian, eds. Art and China’s Revolution. Asia Society/Yale
University Press, 2009.
Cultural Revolution and Beyond, Chinese Propaganda Posters—From Revolution to
Modernization. Amsterdam, Singapore/Armonk: The Pepin Press/M.E. Sharpe 1995,
1998/1996.
Cushing, Lincoln and Ann Tompkins. Chinese Posters – Art from the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2007.
Ho, Denise Y. and Jie Li. “From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia: Reincarnations of a
Chinese Museum Town.” Modern China 42, no. 1 (2016): 3–37.
Laing, Ellen Johnston. Selling Happiness – Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in Early-
Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.
Landsberger, Stefan R. “Contextualising (Propaganda) Posters.” In Visualising China,
1845-1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, edited by Christian
Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh, 379–405. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 226 09-08-2019 21:30:44

 Collecting Chinese Propaganda Posters 227

Landsberger, Stefan R. “The Deification of Mao: Religious Imagery and Practices during
the Cultural Revolution and Beyond.” In China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution:
Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives, edited by Woei Lien Chong,
139–84. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.
Landsberger, Stefan R., Marien van der Heijden, and Shen Kuiyi. Chinese Posters - The
IISH/Landsberger Collections. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2009.
Williams, Emily. “Collecting the Red Era in Contemporary China.” Made in China 2, no. 3
(2017): 78–83.

Collecting Prints, Posters and Ephemera.indb 227 09-08-2019 21:30:44