Forty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period – the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet – and examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age. Chapters by scholars of Chinese history and art and by artists whose careers were shaped by the Cultural Revolution offer new insights into works that have transcended their times. In this national convulsion the arts played a strikingly large role, a process described with great care in Art in Turmoil. -- Robert Fulford ― “A new level of art criticism,” National Post, June 15, 2010 This is a brilliant, thorough study of art created during the disastrous decade in China’s modern history. The recent flood of publications on China’s contemporary art scene make this book on the immediately preceding period necessary reading because of the polar opposite forces that brought the two periods into play.… Essential. ― CHOICE This volume compellingly illustrates that the artistic products of the CR period were anything but “artless, sterile, without depth, without truth, and without reality” (189). Moreover, present-day artistic producers and their works, as well as society at large, continue to be influenced by them. -- Stefan R. Landsberger, University of Amsterdam ― The China Beat The level of scholarship throughout is high, with extensive reading in Chinese-language primary and secondary sources combined with personal experience. It is recommended reading for all students of contemporary Chinese culture and society. -- Bonnie S. McDougall, University of Sydney, Australia ― Pacific Affairs, Vol 84, No 3 The passage of time and passion, as well as the availability of new materials, bring a new focus to work on the Cultural Revolution. Memoirs of participants put a human face on the decade-long movement. The personal experiences and new documents in Art in Turmoil combine with exquisite scholarship to deepen our understanding of the artistic life of Maoist China. -- Richard Kraus, author of The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture There have been many books on the Cultural Revolution within the field of politics, sociology, and anthropology, but very few largely relevant to the art of the decade available in either Chinese or English. Art in Turmoil will thus be welcomed as playing a pivotal role in constructing a framework for further and wider discussions. -- Jiehong Jiang, author of Red: China’s Cultural Revolution A decoding of the rhetoric of China’s turbulent decade, a time of both brutal iconoclasm and radical experimentation in the arts, that offers new insights into works that have transcended their times. Forty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period - the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet - and examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age. Forty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period - the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet - and examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age. Richard King is the director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives and an associate professor of Chinese studies at the University of Victoria.