Ye Yushan and Sichuan Academy of Arts, Rent Collection Courtyard

The Rent Collection Courtyard is a vivid depiction of the fierce class struggle between the Chinese peasants and the ruling feudal landlords prior to the socialist revolution.  Arranged in six scenes, the more than one hundred clay figure sculptures reveal the misery and political strife of human oppression in the former rent collection courtyard of despotic landlord, Liu Wen-tsai.  Tired of the ceaseless exploitation of the working class, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Tse-tung the peasants overthrew the imperialist authority and established the People’s Republic of China.

Chairman Mao reformed the culture of China to coincide with the new Chinese Communist Party in many ways.  This included changing the context of art expression, in particular, the creation of the Rent Collection Courtyard.  Mao recruited a group of eighteen professional and amateur revolutionary Chinese sculptors and instructed them to intermingle themselves with the laboring class to learn from their experiences and stories of pre-revolution times.  The artists lived among the workers and came to empathize with them, developing passionate feelings themselves against systems of exploitation that are clearly evident in the features and flow of the scenes.

The work was a milestone for peasant representation throughout China, giving the people a voice in a manner that would be caught in time and never forgotten.  In conforming to the peasant class, the materials of which the sculptures were formed also appealed to them.  The clay and straw mixture was cheaper and easier to use than traditional plaster or bronze, and it is a material available anywhere in the countryside of which the laborers live.  Wooden frames anchor the clay figures and the outer surface is an amalgam of clay, sand, and cotton.  Black glass was used for the eyes and new carving techniques gave the features an especially dynamic appearance, an approach incomparable by previous clay sculpture. 

The Rent Collection Courtyard was completed in four and a half months and put on exhibition on October 1, 1965.  Peasants immediately traveled hundreds of kilometers to see the work that truly gave them a voice.  The following year the people demanded another set be added to the work, increasing the number of figures from 114 to 119 by the work of Szechuan sculptors and other revolutionary artists.

The political, moral and artistic significance of the Rent Collection Courtyard makes it one of the most monumental works in Chinese history.  It’s form and attention to detail evokes philosophical and nationalist agendas from across the ideological spectrum.  Drawing from a mass of millions of demoralized people with a renewed outlook on life, this exhibition brought artistic expression to new and profound heights.

Britt Paulson, Art 259 Fall 2004