“On Beauty and Ugliness in Life: Notes on Aesthetics (Yao Wenyuan)”; “Commentary: Toward a Socialist Vision of Beauty”

In the 1961 essay “On Beauty and Ugliness in Life,” the literary critic Yao Wenyuan takes up the task of articulating a positive vision of proletarian aesthetics. This translation and commentary aim to illuminate the historical context and intellectual traditions within which Yao’s essay found purchase. Published in the aftermath of the multiple failures of the Great Leap Forward, the question of the aesthetic was particularly fraught in the People’s Republic of China at the time. Cadres in the cultural sphere seriously questioned the Maoist embrace of mass participation as a driving force of cultural production. Yet Yao insisted on a full rejection of subjective standards for beauty and on immersing aesthetics within social relations, offering a vision of the aesthetic that came to characterize the most prominent art and culture produced in the PRC, especially during the Cultural Revolution.