One of the images from Solange Brand's Cultural Revolution exhibition
Jonathan Watts reports on day three of the Dashanzi International Art Festival.
Today is Labour Day - as good a time as any to consider the legacy of the Cultural Revolution in Chinese art and society.
Like English gentlemen in bowler hats, or Japanese geisha in kimonos, the image of Chinese Red Guards in Mao tunics retains a powerful tug on the global imagination. It sells too, especially in the overseas market. That is no doubt that one reason why so many of the works on show at the Dashanzi festival play on the icons of that tumultuous period - the little red books, the propaganda slogans, the idealised vision of socialism.
It is long out of date, of course. Modern China is one of the most ruthlessly capitalist nations on earth. May Day ought to be an embarrassment to today's communist party, which has developed the economy by inviting foreign business to exploit hundreds of millions of cheap, ununionised migrant workers from the countryside.
Some of the most striking work on display this week is inspired by the contradiction between that idealised-yet-nightmarish past and the grimly materialistic but affluent present. It's an evocative mix of nostalgia and horror.
These feelings are stirred up by an exhibition of work by the French photographer Solange Brand. Taken in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution, one image shows two very young Red Guards - seemingly in their early teens - cowing a train carriage full of adult passengers with their political passion. Others show young women practicing with bayonets, huge political rallies and a furious demonstration outside the French embassy.
They are compelling images, which offer a strong riposte to criticism that Dashanzi - and China - is becoming too commercial and exposed to foreign influences. Every picture asks, "Do you want to go back to that era of political purity and patriotic insularity?" - and the answer is not always as clear as you might expect. Foreign visitors are fascinated and horrified by this period of chaos, which is perhaps why they snap up artwork relating to it.
But for many Chinese, the emotions raised are more complicated. In many cases, response is determined by age. Many old people still find the Cultural Revolution too painful to talk about, and certainly wouldn't countenance having artistic reminders of it hanging on their walls. Many of those who were children in the 1960s and 1970s, however, remain nostalgic about the idealism of their youth, even though they are increasingly aware of the carnage it caused.
The ideology of Mao worship provided a misleading but reassuring clarity to this generation's vision of the world. This is elegantly conveyed in the work of Zhang Xiaogang, who paints large, gently blurred pictures of that period. At first, they look very soothing until you realise that in the foreground of each one, there is one item - a loudspeaker, flag pole or other instrument of propaganda - that is painted in such sharp focus that it almost painful on the eye.
