Authors
Huiyu Cara Zhao1; 1 Durham University, UK Discussion
In the 1950s, more than a hundred titles of Soviet art books, including survey of art history, art theory and artists’ writings, were translated into Chinese and published in the fledging People’s Republic of China. In the early PRC, the translation of books on history of art in Russian was more active than in other languages. Along with the translation and distribution of those books, the Soviet style writing of art history, art historiography and art theory arrived in China together with the tortuous relation between China and the Soviet Union in the early Cold War era. This essay explores the cultural exchanges between China and the Soviet Union during the period of “Sino-Soviet friendship” by using the Chinese translated Soviet art history books as a case study. Even under the umbrella of “Sino-Soviet friendship,” the cultural exchanges between the two socialist brothers usually implied an unequal relationship between Moscow and Beijing. However, this essay argued that the ideas, methods and theories of Soviet art did not perform such a huge influence on its Chinese counterpart as stated in the previous scholarship of contemporary Chinese art. The selection, translation and publication of those Soviet books of art history in China, reflected a rather critical and selective process when Chinese cultural workers encountered the Soviet doctrine of art and culture, for example, the socialist realism.This essay will use the acceptance and rejection of Soviet artistic models to demonstrate the previously unknown exchanges between China and the Soviet Union in the field of visual arts before the Sino-Soviet split. 
