Drawing from Life explores revolutionary drawing and sketching in the early People’s Republic of China (1949–1965) in order to discover how artists created a national form of socialist realism. Tracing the development of seminal works by the major painters Xu Beihong, Wang Shikuo, Li Keran, Li Xiongcai, Dong Xiwen, and Fu Baoshi, author Christine I. Ho reconstructs how artists grappled with the representational politics of a nascent socialist art. The divergent approaches, styles, and genres presented in this study reveal an art world that is both heterogeneous and cosmopolitan. Through a history of artistic practices in pursuit of Maoist cultural ambitions—to forge new registers of experience, new structures of feeling, and new aesthetic communities—this original book argues that socialist Chinese art presents a critical, alternative vision for global modernism.

"Marvelous. . . . Drawing from Life offers both essential and sophisticated conceptual understandings of the categories of mass art that promise to enrich a multitude of medium-specific examinations.​" - Art Journal

"Christine Ho's Drawing from Life is a must-read for anyone working on Chinese modern art or on the transnational histories of realism and socialist culture. It is an important and intellectually stimulating book that substantially deepens our understanding of the multifaceted nature of art production in socialist China and successfully counters the notion that art was merely a political tool by showing how artists explored exciting new ground along their sketching tours." - Sehepunkte