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The Universal Message in Woodcut Art

            Benedict Anderson's theory of nationalism defines a nation as an imagined political community that is inherent and sovereign. Members of the state are not physically connected, but they share a belief or culture that makes them belong to a particular characteristic grouping known as the state (Anderson 1983, p49).In the 1900s, Chinese peasants in the countryside started making paintings in black and white to depict the struggles they were facing and make the families in towns aware of their problems, this kind of art became known as the Chinese revolutionary woodcuts. The art was used as a medium of raising awareness and familiarizing the mass with the problems being faced by countryside families. Communication through art created an imagined community by invoking observer's feelings and instigating the imminent rise of a revolution. In this paper, I am going to analyze the Chinese revolutionary woodcuts using Benedict Anderson's theory of nationalism. I will accomplish this by looking at the main aims of the Chinese revolutionary woodcuts in line with Anderson's theory of nationalism, the way the art exhibitions was carried out and the results of the exhibitions. Due to the broadness of this subject matter, I will mainly focus on the aims of the Chinese revolutionary woodcuts because that was fundamental to the whole movement.
             The primary objective of the art pieces was to reintegrate the art into the praxis of life (Tang 2008 pg. 3). Chinese revolutionary woodcuts were painted using black and white because they were meant for exhibition to both educated and uneducated people. Since the art was readable to everyone, the message in the art pieces spread easily to everyone who went to see the public exhibitions of the art. People who had access to the art formed an imagined community based on the same information they got from the Chinese revolutionary woodcuts. The imagined community came together to build a nation-state and participate in the Chinese revolution.


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