Then some smaller paintings - more portraits of Mao, but Mao in the style of Gauguin, Cubist Picasso, Van Gogh. Of course the abstracts are much easier to show in China. Yet one does hear occasional stories of suppression - for example, a recent show organised by a group of young artists in a Shanghai supermarket was shut down after a few days. The excuse was that it contained videos, and videos need a special entertainment licence. Nevertheless, art in China seems to go in whatever direction it pleases.
All roads are permissible.
In addition to visiting Yu Youhan's studio, I visit and talk to a number of other artists in Shanghai and in nearby Hang-zhou. The one difference from these remote ancestors is that they are painted on a dull gold surface which makes the artist's task much more difficult, since it will barely hold the ink. Each scroll takes six months to complete. In Hang-zhou we call on the most respected maker of woodcuts in China, Zhao Yannian, a man now in his early seventies. His powerful prints have a kinship with those by German artists of the early years of this century, such as K the Kollwitz, and through her with certain varieties of Russian Socialist Realism.