Li Hua And The Chinese Woodcut Movement

Li Hua (1907-1994) was a Chinese artist who was born in Guangzhou, China. Li first studied oil painting at the Canton City Art School from 1924 to 1927. In 1930 he went to study in Japan for a year. Upon his return the Japanese army overran the northern part of China. The Early 1930s in China was a time when of war during war and resistance against Japanese invaders. At the same time there was a civil war between the Kuo Ming Tang (The Kuomintang of China is a major political party in the Republic of China on Taiwan) and the Communist Part of China.

In 1934 Li Hua began to teach himself woodcutting techniques, in which he held his first solo exhibition of woodcuts in 1934. The interest in using woodblock prints was based on its alternate and new way to express the political and social climates in China during the harsh environments. Hua extensively believed that this art form would be the best medium to convey human suffering while also providing an insight into the government.

The Chinese Woodcut movement was an artistic movement that Li Hua was associated with during this time. Scholar Xiaobing Tang who wrote “Echoes of Roar, China! On Vision and Voice in Modern Chinese Art” suggests that purpose of the movement was to provide a commitment to connecting with society. The artist in the Chinese woodcut movement sought to exhort their audience… to actively change its own situation and destiny. The artists in the movement wanted to transform the viewer into an expressive subject whose newly acquired voice affirms its subjectivity and agency. Concurrently, there was a commitment to representing the underrepresented, to reorganizing the con-temporary visual order and consciousness by bringing back what had been excluded or erased therefrom. This commitment directly led the first generation of woodcut artists like Li Hua to populate their prints with peasants, beggars, prisoners, rickshaw pullers, famine victims, war refugees, and political protestors.

Li Hua China’s Roar name express a cry out for Chinese citizens during a rough time in the early 1930s. In order to understand the work the viewer should to analyze three main features of the print the lines, the rope and the body position of the figure. Li Hua depicts a wood block print of a bounded distressed prisoner tied to a wooden pole. The first aspect of the print to analyze is the lines that outline the figure. He utilizes strong and bold lines to outline the man’s body. The bold lines that expresses a strong sense of passion that is being emitted from the subject. That provide an in-depth feeling of agony that thin lines wouldn’t be able to voice. The second key detail to look over is the rope binding the prisoner. The ropes are seemingly similar to methods police used in East Asia to arrest criminals. According to the author Brian Kennedy, rope techniques were used to arrest criminals who chose to resists. In addition, the Shanghai police were issued manuals for the purpose of using rope restraints sometime around the 1920s and 1930s. The bold and thick rope is used for restraint so the prisoner can not escape or harm others. The rope is positioned in griping positions. First, the rope around his neck is suffocating. His teeth are receding back away from his teeth providing more of an emphasis of pain. Lastly, note the position of the prisoner and the way his body is shifting. The area of rope around the arms are areas where there are pressure points. He positions himself into an almost squatting position which enables the strangulation of the rope onto his throat. With his crippling right hand he struggles to grasp a conveniently placed knife behind his right foot to escape from being a capturer.

There’s stress and tension that Li Hua showcases through the subjects hands and feet with the angles and position. Not only are the lines that make up the contours of the body are bold but the rope that is suffocating his body are too. The man expression is showcasing so much pain with the contorting of his body and awkwardly placed body positions it is quite painful to look at.