In the series New China and Quotations from Huang Yan, the artist selected certain remarkable scenes and events from the period of 1949 to 1978. In New China, a flag is splayed across the bottom of the paintings to create a stage for the figures and landscapes, conveying the historical significance of the scenes and achieving a thematically epic effect. Huang adapts the realistic painting style commonly used for propaganda posters during the Cultural Revolution, a style taught at art academies to represent revolutionary realism.
In Huang Yan’s other series, Quotations from Huang Yan, the subjects are the workers, peasants and soldiers from the New China series. Below, the artist has selected text either found from old advertisements from the period or poetry the artist wrote between 1984 and 1991. The title of the series mimics the title of the famous red book, Quotations from Mao Zedong. Instead of trying to adopt the exalted connotations of Mao’s title, the artist seeks to restore the ordinary definition of “quotations”, which is literally “recorded word.” Huang pieces together the public record of social change in China from 1949-1978 with his private history of words to simultaneously show the spirits of both national and personal evolution.