April 12, Saturday -- China's use of art to promote socialist ideology during the years 1949-1989 will be the subject of an all-day symposium sponsored by the UC Davis Department of Art History. The symposium will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in room 217 of the Art Building on the UC Davis campus. It is free and open to the public.

Yang Peiming, owner and director of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre in Shanghai, will be the keynote speaker. Yang's private museum contains what is thought to be the largest collection in existence of post-World War II propaganda art from the People's Republic of China. A selection of his posters is on exhibit at the Nelson Gallery on campus through May 18.

Other symposium speakers will include Ellen Johnston Laing, an associate of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, who will discuss the fate of 1930s commercial calendar artists under Mao, and Julia F. Andrews, a professor of art history at Ohio State University, who will focus on poster art of the Cultural Revolution. Several UC Davis faculty members will also discuss their research, including Chen Xiaomei, a professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Chen, who was among the millions of urban Chinese youths who were relocated to rural villages during the Cultural Revolution, will discuss the disappearance and reappearance of Chen Duxiu, a founding father of the Chinese Communist Party, in propaganda posters. Other UC Davis speakers will talk about portrayals of women and gender in Chinese propaganda art; African American champions of Chinese communism, including "Black Boy" author Richard Wright; and the continuing influence of Maoist propaganda art on modern Chinese art.

"Propaganda posters are not only graphically powerful and aesthetically mesmerizing, they also offer an important window into Chinese culture," says symposium organizer Katharine Burnett, an associate professor of Art History at UC Davis. "They represent the history of China from the Chinese government's perspective from 1949 on, and show us what the government wanted people to understand. The more we know about Chinese culture during this crucial period in history, the better we can understand what the Chinese people have been through and where they are today."

For more information about the symposium and exhibit, call Katrina Wong at (530) 752-8500 or visit http://arthistory.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/publications/burnett/Spring%2008%20poster.pdf