China's censors may not fully understand contemporary art, but they know what they don't like. Since the start of this month, police and propaganda officials have launched their biggest crackdown on Beijing's counterculture hothouse -- Dashanzi art district -- where at least three galleries have been ordered to remove politically sensitive works.
On their orders, down has come an oil painting by Gao Qiang (
Residents say there has been nothing like it in the three years since Dashanzi began its transformation from an old arms factory into one of the world's most fashionable contemporary art centers.
The Xindong Chen gallery was among the first to fall foul of the censors, when its exhibition, "Charm and Strength -- Mao Zedong and the Chinese Contemporary Artists," was abruptly closed last October.
"I was surprised because, after 25 years of economic reforms, I thought China was ready to accept creations like these," owner Chen Xindong said. "These are great contemporary artists. Their work is shown all over the world. Why not in China?"
That clampdown reflects the dramatic changes in the Chinese art world. An increasingly confident generation of artists is pushing at the limits of acceptability, as foreign galleries open branches in Beijing to cash in on the boom in Chinese contemporary art. The authorities, meanwhile, are struggling with a new desire to promote alternative culture and an old instinct to control it.
* Brothers Gao Zhen, 50, and Gao Qiang, 44, from Shandong Province were on a blacklist and unable to leave China until 2003. They use photography to explore social and political topics such as protesting peasants. Famous for "Hug," a work that encourages strangers to embrace.
* Huang Rui is a Beijing avant garde artist and a founding father of the Dashanzi art district. Uses wordplay to satirize political slogans. Censors ordered removal of his work, "Chairman Mao 10,000 RMB," which was an ironic take on the capitalist legacy of the late leader.
*Sheng Qi, 41, is a painter and performance artist whose motif is his mutilated left hand. He cut off the little finger in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
* Wu Wenjian is a Beijing artist who used a child's style of painting to depict slaughter by tanks and soldiers in 1989. Police ordered them removed.
* Gao Qiang is a Beijing-based painter whose garishly colored portraits of Mao Zedong have been deemed unsuitable for public display. Source: THE GUARDIAN
The censorship rules seem unclear. If there is a pattern, it is that private and commercial freedom is almost unlimited, but anything public and political is subject to controls. Galleries in Dashanzi openly display nudity and sexually explicit pictures. But even a flat image of political leaders seems to make the censors queasy. One of the pieces that had to be removed is a grey painting of the current leadership all in the same dark suits and ties with the same hairstyle.
The Gao brothers (
"We felt it was important to create an opportunity for artists to express themselves on subjects that are part of our history," Gao Zhen said. "But we were very cautious. We put the most sensitive works at the back of the exhibition room, where fewer people were likely to see them."
Within a week, however, police ordered the work taken down.
Despite the crackdown, the Gao brothers said the climate was improving. From 1989 until 2003, they were on the government blacklist and forbidden to leave the country. But they are now part of a new wave of Chinese artists wowing galleries abroad. Next week, they will visit Nottingham, England, to recreate their renowned work, Hug, in which they persuade strangers to embrace.
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