page_title: The Founding Ceremony of the Nation
section_title: Later history and political changes
hierarchical_section_title: The Founding Ceremony of the Nation / Later history and political changes
caption_attribution_description: Tourists take photographs of Dong Xiwen's "The Founding Ceremony of the Nation". Believed to be the original version.
context_page_description: The Founding Ceremony of the Nation is a 1953 oil painting by Chinese artist Dong Xiwen. It depicts Mao Zedong and other Communist officials inaugurating the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949. A prominent example of socialist realism, it is one of the most celebrated works of official Chinese art. The painting was repeatedly revised, and a replica painting made to accommodate further changes, as the leaders it depicted fell from power and later were rehabilitated.
  After the Communists took control of China, they sought to memorialize their achievements through artworks. Dong was commissioned to create a visual representation of the October 1 ceremony, which he had attended. He viewed it as essential that the painting show both the people and their leaders. After working for three months, he completed an oil painting in a folk art style, drawing upon Chinese art history for the contemporary subject. The success of the painting was assured when Mao viewed it and liked it, and it was reproduced in large numbers for display in the home.
  The 1954 purge of Gao Gang from the government resulted in Dong being ordered to remove him from the painting.
context_section_description: In February 1954 Gao Gang, the head of the State Planning Council, was purged from government; he killed himself only months later.  His presence in the painting immediately on Mao's left placed arts officials in a quandary.  Given its popularity among officials and the people, The Founding of the Nation had to be shown at the Second National Arts Exhibition (1955), but it was unthinkable that Gao, deemed a traitor, should be depicted.  Accordingly, Dong was ordered to remove Gao from the painting, which he did.
  In erasing Gao, Dong expanded the basket of pink chrysanthemums which stands at the officials' feet, and completed the depiction of  Yongdingmen gate, in the original seen only in part behind Gao.  He was forced to expand the section of sky seen above the people assembled in Tiananmen Square, which affected the placement of Mao as the center of attention.  He compensated for this, to some extent, by adding two more microphones to Mao's right. Julia Andrews, in her book on the art of the People's Republic, suggested that Dong's solution was not entirely satisfactory as the microphones dominate the center of the painting, and Mao is diminished by the expanded space around him.  The modified painting was shown in the 1955 exhibition, and in 1958 in Moscow.  Although the painting was later altered again and does not exist in this form, this version is the one most commonly reproduced.
  When the Museum of the Chinese Revolution opened on Tiananmen Square in 1961, the painting was displayed on a huge wall in the gallery devoted to the Communist triumph, but in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, radicals shut down the museum, and it remained closed until 1969.  During that time, Liu Shaoqi, accused of taking a "capitalist road", was purged from government.  His removal from the painting was ordered in 1967, and Dong was tasked to carry it out.  Dong had suffered during the Cultural Revolution: accused of being a rightist, he was expelled from the Party for two years, sent to a rural work camp, and then was "rehabilitated" by being made to labor as a steelworker.  Dong's task was difficult, as Liu was one of the most prominent figures in the first row, standing to the left of Madame Song.  Officials wanted Liu replaced with Lin Biao, much in Mao's favor at the time.  Dong was unwilling to give Lin prominence he had not then had, and though he could not refuse outright at the dangerous time of the Cultural Revolution, he eventually got permission to merely remove Liu.  The figure was too large to simply delete, so Liu was repainted as Dong Biwu, and made to appear as if in the second row.  According to Andrews, the attempt was a failure: "the new Dong Biwu does not recede into the second row as intended.  Instead, he appears as a leering, glowing figure, a strangely malevolent character in the midst of an otherwise stately group".  Officials deemed the revised work unexhibitable.  Andrews speculated that Dong may have been trying to sabotage the change, or may have been affected by the stress of the years of the Cultural Revolution.
  In 1972, as part of a renovation of the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, officials wanted to exhibit Dong's painting again, but they decreed that Lin Boqu, whose white-haired figure was furthest left, must be removed.  This was because the Gang of Four, then in control of China, blamed Lin Boqu (who had died in 1960) for opposing the marriage, in the revolutionary days, of Mao with Jiang Qing (one of the Four).  Sources differ on what took place regarding the painting: Chang-Tai Hung related that Dong, terminally ill with cancer, could not make the changes, so his student Jin Shangyi and another artist, Zhao Yu, were assigned to do the work.  The two feared damaging the original canvas, so made an exact replica but for the required changes, with Dong brought forth from his hospital for consultations.  According to Andrews, Jin and Zhao created the new version because Dong would not let anyone else alter his painting.  Jin later stated that the painting, while effective politically, also sho
caption: Visitors take photographs of The Founding Ceremony of the Nation, National Museum of China, in 2018
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