ABSTRACT
In the early 1950s many young guohua painters such as Jiang Yan, Tang Wenxuan and Yang Zhiguang gained national and international fame by responding to Jiang Feng’s call for reform. The 1950s’ Chinese version of Socialist Realism advocated by Jiang Feng is no more than a cultural translation of this ‘imported’ Stalinist art doctrine to which it adds merely some rhetorical flair. The Chinese theoretical version adds nothing constructive to a Soviet cultural myth called Socialist Realism; in practice, however, many Chinese guohua painters from the 1950s indeed managed to ‘further enrich the image’ of Socialist Realism in Gorky’s terms. The Chinese version of Socialist Realism with ‘a smiling face’ complied with the demand of ‘revolutionary art administrator’ Jiang Feng that it should be committed to ‘guohua reform’.
