'China Avant-Garde' at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford until 27 October 'CHINA Avant-Garde' is evidence of the rejection of Socialist Realism by China's contemporary artIsts.
The smiling faces and heroic poses of official art are seen here in blatant parody. Instead of the optimistic nist posters, the exhibition's mood is painfully desolate and despondent.
Most of the artists represent the human figure, especially the face - bleak renditions in which the face is anonymous, distorted by screams or the painter's technique, erased or given the where Mao's face is seen as a background subject or as an Icon.
Modern Art movements. are drawn upon by the artists.. Yu Youhan's paintings are deage of Mao making him a decorative motif rather than heroic.
Superficial
But, as with American pop art - Youhan's main influence - presentation of mass media images as superficial can cre. ale superlicial paintinos which are more commentary on popular culture than radical critique.
These paintings are cynical, in which empty triumphalist slogans on political posters have been replaced by brand names.
There is humour - but it is cynical humour which laughs bitterly at the bureaucratic control of information. Relief from these allenated images is found in a portrait by Zao Bandi which, although melancholy, is also tender and personal. Deng Yi's abstract paintings which appear as threads of woven colours are wonderful aids to contempla tion.
But inevitably one returns to more disturbing images. They reverberate with the bitterness of a cynical society -this is not an avant-garde which seeks to change the world. Progressive art which seeks to do more than repreility seems to have been almost extinguished in China.
A complementary exhibition of photographs taken of the democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square contains some optimistic images. It is the crushing of that demonstration which to a large degree explains the cynicism of Chinese artists working in the nineties.