Collecting the Revolution
British Engagements with Chinese Cultural Revolution Material Culture
Emily R. Williams
Collecting the Revolution
British Engagements with Chinese Cultural Revolution Material Culture
Emily R. Williams
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Omschrijving
Collecting the Revolution is an exploration of British engagements with Chinese Cultural Revolution material culture from 1966 to the present. It examines the ways in which the Cultural Revolution and Chinese Communism more broadly was understood, mediated, and represented through its art, propaganda, and material culture.
Williams’s original and meticulous research of the Cultural Revolution objects in the United Kingdom offers us a unique angle to understand both the Global Sixties and the UK-Sino relations during and after the Cold War. Embodying the many political fantasies and aspirations of the British left of the time, these objects continue to compel us to ask what China means to the West now amidst the formation of a new Cold War. An invaluable contribution to the studies of Global Maoism.
Focusing on the travels of Mao-era objects and the people who collected them, Emily R. Williams offers a new perspective into the British fascination with the Cultural Revolution and shows how the engagement with China was not only political and intellectual but also affective and aesthetic. Clearly written and brilliantly argued, Collecting the Revolution is an original and insightful contribution to our understanding of Global Maoism.
How did Chairman Mao’s badges, propaganda posters, paintings, papercuts, and porcelains end up in personal collections and museums in Britain? This fascinating study brings to life the international itineraries and multifarious meanings of Cultural Revolution art and artifacts that traveled from China to Britain via exhibitions, diplomats, students, antique dealers, museums, and the internet, providing illuminating reflections on how material objects could serve as sources of knowledge and memory.
Emily R. Williams is an assistant professor in the department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, where she teaches on modern Chinese history and society. Her research focuses on the art and material culture of the Maoist period, its legacies in contemporary China, and the collection of this material in China and the United Kingdom.