Label Type
Tombstone LabelLabel
Drying Grain
He Yaling (Chinese, b. 1964)
1984
Paint on rice paper
2019.1.91
Gift of Andrea and Irv GreenLabel Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
This painting depicts communal harvest fields, where the workers – reduced mostly to hats rather than faces – emphasize the collective over the individual. The visual anonymity of the figures reinforces the idea that the harvest benefits the whole community rather than a single farmer or household. The circular and square patterns reflect common grain-drying methods in China, where freshly harvested grain is laid out in the sun for its final processing stage before storage.
He, a woman artist whose husband worked in agricultural production, considers this her first masterpiece. She designed the composition based on seat cushion patterns, but at the time, she knew little about color. After completing the design, she asked her tutors how to approach the coloring. Their advice was, "Just do it." With minimal instruction, He painted the background first, then added the foreground with intricate, textile-like detail. In the upper right corner of the center square, you can spot a teapot labeled “Good Harvest” and a New Life Water Bottle marked with “Double Happiness.”
Though painted in 1984 which was eight years after Mao’s death, Drying Grain still reflects the visual language and values of collective farming central to Maoist ideology. The emphasis on shared labor and the downplaying of personal identity align with the propaganda imagery of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which idealized rural life as the moral foundation of the nation.
This work earned He early recognition. It was exhibited in both Shanghai and Beijing, collected by the National Art Gallery, and featured in a book of selected women artists published by the National Women’s Federation. She has since created around 10 versions of this original composition. The painting’s patterns are intentionally open-ended, allowing viewers to imagine a variety of grains being dried. This underscores its universal rural message and its artistic roots in both tradition and experimentation.