12 / Conflict and Resistance

• • CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Prague. August 1968. Warsaw Pact Troops invade Prague. In front of the Radio Headquarters.Josef Koudelka (Czech/French, b. 1938)	Guernica Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)	Y no hai Remedio (And There’s Nothing to Be Done)Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828)	The Execution of Emperor MaximilianÉdouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)	Afghan soldiers from the ruling Taliban movement and visiting journalists stand in front of one of the destroyed Buddha statues in the central province of Bamiyan, March 26, 2001.Sayed Salahuddin (Afghan, b. 1970)	The Legislative BellyHonoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879)
    Books!Aleksandr (Alexander) Mikhailovich Rodchenko, (Russian, 1891–1956)	Chairman Mao en Route to AnyuanChinese School	Converging Territories #30Lalla Essaydi (Moroccan, b. 1956)	Hagia Sophia (exterior)Anthemius of Tralles (Greek, active 6th c.) and Isidorus of Miletus (Greek, active 6th c.) (architects)	The Earth Spider Creating Monsters in the Mansion of Minamoto no YorimitsuUtagawa Kuniyoshi (Japanese, 1797–1861)	Battle of Til-Tuba (Battle of the River Ulai) (detail)Unknown artist(s), Nineveh, Iraq
    Fish and RocksBada Shanren (Zhu Da) (Chinese, 1626–1705)	Calvinist IconoclasmFranz Hogenberg (German, ca. 1540– ca. 1590)	La quema de los Judas (The Burning of the Judases)Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957)	Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)Kara Walker (American, b. 1969)	The Third of May, 1808Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828)

expert perspective

Melissa Chiu Museum Director and Vice President for Global Art Programs, Asia Society

“

Posters from the Cultural Revolution served a very important educational role that when, in fact, we think of the Cultural Revolution, which spanned from 1966 to ’76, we think immediately of posters. So if anything, they really define for many the art of this period. In a time when China was really going through great political turmoil and change, in fact, the Cultural Revolution is often known to people more as a period of destruction of not just traditional arts and ideas of traditional feudalism, but also in terms of a modernization process. It was a time when China sought to modernize itself by destroying anything that resembled tradition. And posters became a part of that. They disseminated in a very quick way political messages, but also the types of images that were deemed revolutionary in their time. What most people don’t realize is that the posters were actually based on large scale oil paintings, many of them dealing with historical subjects or validating Mao’s role in the revolution, or even talking about the life of workers or peasants during this period who were the heroic figures. Some of the oil paintings, such as Liu Chunhua’s Mao goes to Anyuan, were reproduced nearly a billion times. And so you had, I think, more than any other country and any other period in time, a really wide dissemination of visual culture. There was not a person living in China during this period that did not know this painting.”