1950 Spick Span

Revolutionary art about more than just nostalgia and irony

Looking through albums at wedding clubs, one may notice pictures of young Chinese couples dressed like Red Guards from the era of Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Indispensable elements are a spick and span uniform, a red star in hat and a Mao badge on the coat. Such wedding images, just like T-shirts and mugs with Maoist slogans, are part of a fashion among Chinese youngsters. Browsing online, one may bump into a few video spoofs making fun of red classics. A latest example is a video integrating Cultural Revolution model drama with a recent Chinese folk song "Tante". A male character from the model drama, who's supposed to be very dignified, appears very amusing with his distorted face expressions dubbed over. But red culture has undergone a few changes. One important change is collective reflection on the pre-1980s personality cult. For many foreigners, images of China's red culture are instantly reminiscent of the tragedies of the Cultural Revolution, and "red" is at times a sarcastic word. But that blind aspect of red culture has been removed for decades. Chinese society has a general consensus that such times will not come again. Patriotism is another major theme in red culture. Many of the old songs either depict the beauty of the country, or remind people of the possible dangers of foreign imperialism that China faced when it was previously weak. Some of these songs, like "My Motherland," are still popular today and were sung by many during crises such as the 2009 Wenchuan Earthquake. Today some young people claim they wanted to go back to the 1980s, or even the 1950s. They "miss" the supposed equality, plainness and social collectivism of those days. They long for meaning and wider purpose, and so talk up the past. Traditional Chinese values, or those of the revolutionary era, attract those who feel lost in an era of chaotic and contradicting values.

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A nine month exhibition is organized in the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts. Partnered with MCASD, the gallery exhibits the imperative and rare paintings and sculptures of the chief modern artists between 1960’s and 1970’s. Pop Art is an art movement in 1950’s that established the modern culture. Minimalism is a movement which of spick and span type of paintings using basic colors and shapes in cool arrangements. The art work of Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, famous for the above movements are included in the exhibition. Stella’s Sabra III, Roy’s Mirror are some of the masterpieces put on display up to September 2009.

Modern proverbs and proverbial sayings

1958 MProcter Man in (NY) 167: All the others are spick and span. ... 1950 1Fletcher Bennett's (I) 63: He was the spit of his father. ...

The English novel in history, 1950-1995

Why, here'sthe Stucconiaof the Veneerings, those bran-new, spick and span new people, lying shockingly adjacent to PortmanSquare, and the shadyangle ...

The color of words, an encyclopaedic dictionary of ethnic bias in the United States

For other slurs for Hispanic people, see HISPANIC. spic and span. ... person of mixed black and Puerto Rican descent (New York City usage around the 1950s). ...

Germany and the Germans, an anatomy of society today

A spick and span suburbia where the shops shut early The post-war rehousing of the ... and with typical German energy this went racing ahead: in the 1950s, ...

Dictionary of American slang