Xu Bing

(panel 1) Quotation From Chairman Mao [talks at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art]
Calligraphy by Xu Bing
In the last analysis, what is the source of all literature and art? Works of literature and art, as ideological forms, are products of the reflection in the human brain of the life of a given society. Revolutionary literature and art are the products of the reflection of the life of the people in the brains of revolutionary writers and artists. The life of the people is always a mine of the raw materials for literature and art, materials in their natural form, materials that are crude, but most vital

(panel 2) and fundamental; they make all literature and art seem pallid by comparison; they provide literature and art with and inexhaustible source, their only source. They are the only source, for there can be no other. Some may ask, is there not another source in books, in the literature and art of ancient times and of foreign countries? In fact, the literary and artistic works of the past are not a source but a stream; they were created by our predecessors and the foreigners out of the literary and artistic raw materials they found in the life of the people of their time and place. We must take over all the fine things in our literary and artistic heritage, critically assimilate whatever is beneficial, and use them as examples when we create works out of the literary and artistic raw materials in

(panel 3) the life of the people, our own time and place. It makes a difference whether or not we have such examples, the difference between crudeness and refinement, between roughness and polish, between low and high level, and between slower and faster work. Therefore, we must on no account reject the legacies of the ancients and the foreigners or refuse to learn from them, even though they are the works of the feudal or bourgeois classes. But taking over legacies and using them as examples must never replace our own creative work; nothing can do that. Uncritical translation or copying from the ancients and the foreigners is the most sterile and harmful dogmatism in literature and art. Chinas revolutionary writers and artists, writers and artists of promise, must go among the masses, they must for a long period of

(panel 4) time unreservedly and whole-heartedly go among the masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers, go into the heat of the struggle, go to the only source, the broadest and richest source, in order to observe, experience and analyse all the different kinds of people, all the classes, all the livid patterns of life and struggle, all the raw materials of literature and art. Only then can they proceed to creative work. While I was living on a farm as part of the Cultural Revolution rusticated youth program, I read this text many times, because I wanted to become a good artist. The words rang true to me. Now as a participant in the contemporary art system, I am sensitive to some of its problems. During the past few years I have returned to this text, and still feel the truth of these words written by Mao about art.