'[...] In her chronological account of the first three decades of the People's Republic of China, Andrews explores the administrative and bureaucratic dynamics that helped propel and shape artistic developments. She discusses the means by which cultural controls were asserted over art in the 1950s, the ways in which artists responded to the new system, and the works of art that emerged as a result. She examines the effects of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976): the mobilization of student artists to create a pictorial iconography, the destruction of the art bureaucracy, and the re-establishment of a streamlined, quasi-military art administration. [...] She places particular emphasis on the influence of the Soviet Union on Chinese art and the problems it created for the practice of traditional painting. For the artists, there was a new emphasis on technical facility and ideological uniformity, standards that have persisted in the art and criticism of subsequent decades. [...] Andrews finds an inverse relationship between bureaucratic efficiency and artistic creativity, with the most aesthetically pleasing art appearing in periods of great bureaucratic irregularity. [...]' (Front and back sleeves)

List of Chinese names and terms as well as selected bibliography are provided.