Chairman Mao

Chen Shilin|Unknown|Mao Zedong

1964 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

During his thirty-three-year reign, Mao Zedong’s personality cult was fortified by a series of official portraits in which the aging visage of the Great Leader was painstakingly retouched to project an image of flawless benevolence. This portrait served as the frontispiece to Quotations from Chairman Mao, known in the West as the “Little Red Book,” and was omnipresent in the Chinese landscape during the waning years of the Cultural Revolution. The image achieved fame outside China when Andy Warhol used it as the basis of a series of silkscreens in 1973.

Artist

Chen Shilin|Unknown|Mao Zedong

Date

1964

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2011