This study investigates cultural exchange between the Surrealist movement and the People’s Republic of China (1949-present).
Surrealist art was officially prohibited under Mao’s rule (1949-1976). However, the book interrogates potent tensions in clandestinely created surrealist artworks by Zhao Shou and Sha Qi, who discovered the movement while studying abroad. Furthermore, Walden explores how several European Surrealists aligned Chinese calligraphy with automatism as well as Michel Leiris and Marcel Mariën’s travels to Maoist China and their diametrically opposed visions of the nation. Amidst post-socialism, the book posits that the ’85 New Wave consciously employed Surrealism to process the traumatic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and react to newfound societal freedoms. Subsequently, the volume considers why a new artistic tendency of ‘surrealist pop’ emerged in the 1990s. At present, Lauren Walden reveals how Surrealism has become officialised and even promoted by Chinese authorities owing to revolutionary resonances between traditional Chinese art and the western avant-garde.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Chinese studies, and Surrealism.
Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
Pátio da Claridade near the Barra district of old Macao consists of a long alleyway of 48 buildings originally fishermen’s homes and that was then formerly managed by STDM as a social housing project for the elderly. The north side of the patio consists of a row of two-storey units. The south side of the patio is a row of identical units with two overlapping dwellings occupying the same plot, both with a small courtyard and access ways facing the inner street. On the main street, the first-floor balconies double as a continuous sidewalk canopy alongside a street front-facing ground floor with mezzanine level. The Pátio is now severely degraded, almost totally empty and boarded up although there are apparently plans to develop it as a “food street” (click in here to see those plans)… Anyway, here’s what Pátio da Claridade looked in October 2025…
the old legation entrances of Great Britain, Japan and France – the first two on Zhengyi Lu (formerly Canal Street) and the French on Dongjiaomin Xiang (Legation Street).
“A large and rare Chinese silk painted green-ground ceremonial ‘Dragon’ banner, Qing Dynasty, 19th century, of triangular form with orange-ground flame cut edges, painted to both sides in gold coloured pigment to depict a scaly four-clawed dragon, chasing a flaming pearl, amidst clouds, 274cm x 243cm
Footnote; The family, by repute, always thought that this had been removed from the Summer Palace, Beijing, in 1860 under the leadership of the 8th Earl of Elgin.”
The description makes sense as does the origin of the flag, taken during the Second Opium War. Banners of the Lord of Suiyuan (a deity worshipped in Hunan Province) – sometimes known as “Junk Flags” (a common name for imperial Chinese dragon flag or a Chinese junk boat flags – were not official items of the Qing imperial army but rather had ritual and ceremonial purposes. It is possible that it came the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) and the family/auctioneer have the Yuanmingyuan and the Yiheyuan (Summer Palace) confused. The Yuanmingyuan was indeed looted and burnt by a combined Anglo-French expeditionary force in October 1860. The exact total number of items looted from the Old Summer Palace in 1860 is unknown, but over a million objects are estimated to have been looted
A couple of similar flags are part of the collection of the Royal Museum at Greenwich – here and here….
As with the Chinese screen I noted back in September this flag should of course be returned to China and not sold on for profit by the descendants of the looter and the auction house.
