Cultural censorship, as well as self-censorship, has been the main means to reign in the criticism of the Chinese government’s political systems, policies, and leaders throughout Chinese history. In response, Chinese literati painters started to use implicit speech – an allegorical method originated from traditional Chinese literature and philosophy – to communicate political expressions in their practice as a form of passive resistance. Since the increase of particularly severe cultural censorship dating from 2013, political artists in China have been compelled to express the political dimensions of their work in increasingly subtle ways, grappling with the dual challenges of cultural censorship and self-censorship. Meanwhile, when contemporary Chinese artists make or present political allegorical paintings in the West, their artistic autonomy is always ignored by a Western discourse of simplifying political expressions into a mere political stance.

Although political expression in contemporary Chinese art has been widely discussed in the fields of art history and cultural criticism, to date very little critical attention has been paid to painting, especially through the lens of allegory. In this case, this research identifies and examines art and literature that puts forward theoretical generalisations about Chinese allegorical paintings in the contemporary era in order to reformulate a more comprehensive account of understanding political expression in Chinese allegorical paintings under censorship. My research contributes a vital perspective to art criticism and political science, highlighting the complex dialogue between cultural heritage and contemporary artistic expression in the face of political constraints.

The central question of this project is:

To what extent, or how, can we understand and approach allegorical painting as a critical practice operating under self-censorship and cultural censorship in China?

The supporting questions are:

1. What are the historical and cultural conditions of allegory in Chinese literati painting and post-Cultural Revolution political paintings?

2. How does Bada Shanren’s use of allegory and irony, ahead of its time, resonate with contemporary socio-political issues and provide new insights into navigating censorship?

3. Drawing inspiration from Bada Shanren and Jörg Immendorff, how can allegory and irony in my practice navigate and critique the dual constraints of cultural censorship and self-censorship in contemporary China through bridging aesthetics, ethics, and politics together while maintaining its artistic autonomy?

In order to answer these questions, this research will work through practice and writing. In my practice, I will combine the spirit of traditional Chinese painting and the Western form of oil painting, especially Neo-Expressionism, to explore how allegory can serve as a mechanism for cultural critique and resistance under censorship. On a theoretical and methodological level, I will read paintings as literature, using a combined strategy that sits between close and distant readings, as well as applying critical theory (Benjamin and Jameson), ideological critique (Jameson and Moretti) and colonial discourse analysis (Tang and Spivak) to examine the current position of Chinese political allegorical painting in the post-modern era, defending its complexity in representation as a cultural product instead of political stance.