From Visual Grammar to Grassroots Practice in Maoist China

This book explores how propaganda images can be 'read' as visual statements by applying a visual grammar framework built on the fundamental building blocks of Subject, Predicate, and Object (SPO), offering a systematic internal analysis of Chinese propaganda art from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

Drawing on both official propaganda posters and the largely unstudied Propaganda Poster Reference Manuals (PPRM), this book challenges the assumption that Maoist propaganda was a purely unilateral, top-down system, revealing instead the genuine grassroots creative participation that shaped it. Rooted in a Chinese tradition of art guidebooks stretching back to the Song dynasty, the PPRM empowered amateur artists to produce propaganda at the local level: a true massification of political art.

From Visual Grammar to Grassroots Practice in Maoist China is essential reading for scholars of visual culture, modern Chinese history, and propaganda studies. While grounded in the Chinese case, the methodology developed here has far broader applications, from Soviet political art to contemporary political imagery and advertising.