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Spencer Michels takes a look at modern China as seen in the works of some modern Chinese artists.

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BRITTA ERICKSON, Stanford University: As we go through, I want you to look at these, and please speak up with your gut reaction, because that's what these artists are going for.

SPENCER MICHELS: Dr. Britta Erickson was taking her class through some of the gutsiest new art to come out of China recently. All the works on display at the San Jose Museum of Art were created in the years since the pro-democracy demonstrations and subsequent crackdown in Beijing in 1989. Gut reactions were as visible on this afternoon as the art on the walls, not just from these Stanford students but also from a local group that takes an interest in Chinese-American history and culture. Pictures like this grim hospital scene seem to cut through the differences in language and culture.

MAN: Reminds me of--well, I don't want to say bad things about my HMO, but-- (laughter among group)

SPENCER MICHELS: The new Chinese art is like that. Styles vary from expressionist to surrealist to satire, even pop art, something far outside the traditional Chinese artistic mainstream. But strong feelings are behind them all. Sometimes those feelings are in your face. But then strong feelings played a big role in recent Chinese history. The violent crackdown at Tiananmen Square is part of the raw input that some contemporary Chinese artists bring to their work. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960's, when the government cracked down on all artistic and intellectual freedom is another defining moment, so is the experience of living through constantly changing political ties. This exhibit showcases the first flowering of new art since the 1989 events. Most of these artists are young and developed their skills during and shortly after Mao's reign. They are in rebellion against the official art that dominated China for decades. But what they're doing is not precisely dissident art. None of the artists shown here is in jail. They merely work outside the official Chinese art world and find an audience through private sales.

SPENCER MICHELS: These paintings may not be on public display in China, but outside the mainland interest in them is growing. The show, which was on view in five North American cities, was a collaborative effort between Hong Kong and America and was put together precisely to heighten that interest.

BRITTA ERICKSON: What would you say is the difference between--

SPENCER MICHELS: Dr. Erickson follows these developments as an art lecturer at Stanford.

BRITTA ERICKSON: These artists had a very thorough training in oil painting techniques. Realistic oil painting was maintained in the Soviet Union, which then sent artistic advisers to Communist China, and they, in turn, trained the teachers of the people, who have exhibited in this show. So their technique is extremely good, and they have the tools which they can now use to express ideas that weren't the original intention of their teachers, but they're equipped to say whatever they want.

SPENCER MICHELS: Official propaganda images of Mao seem to form a kind of monument in every Chinese citizen's interior landscape. So it's not surprising that those images are refracted through the minds of China's contemporary artists. The process resembles American pop art, but from a different direction.

BRITTA ERICKSON: Do you remember what was really the big difference between how the Chinese artists did this, reworked Mao, and how Warhol reworked Mao's portrait. Warhol took someone like Marilyn Monroe and made her larger than life by showing a series of her images. And here he's taking someone who was so powerful and important to China and reducing him to a mirror image that's colorful and flowery and--

SPENCER MICHELS: Erickson believes that the habit of taking down the high and mighty was inherited from the Cultural Revolution, then turned in new directions.

SPENCER MICHELS: Are they making fun of the Chinese leaders and the regime?

BRITTA ERICKSON: Even though they're painting him in a manner that seems to be poking fun at him it's not in a nasty way necessarily. I think it's very cathartic to view all these paintings of Chairman Mao and to realize that you can mess around with his image in a way that you never could have dreamed of doing 10 years ago even.

SPENCER MICHELS: One theme that's almost absent from the show is Tiananmen Square, itself, with this one exception. Tourists from Shanghai are posing for the traditional snapshot but mysteriously some of them aren't all there. Evelyn Neely, the lecturer, led members of the Chinese Historical & Cultural Group in speculating about what it meant.

EVELYN NEELY: This is referencing a photograph--one of these famous photographs that Mao had condoned that could be published, you know, ad infinitum, of him and all of his, you know, loyal followers in the background, called "Founding of a Nation." And if you had been this loyal, you would have been one of the ones that would have been erased out as time went on, and then if you gained favor again, then they would put you back in. So that's why these people are fading in and out. And if you look back here, you know, this guy's on his way out. Maybe this guy's coming back in.

SPENCER MICHELS: The artists who work like this have been dubbed "cynical realists."

BRITTA ERICKSON: And they've decided they're not going to adjust themselves anymore; they're going to do what they do, and they don't care what anybody thinks about it.

SPENCER MICHELS: And yet, almost all the pictures here seem to have a very social and a political content to them.

BRITTA ERICKSON: And that's something that's extremely ironic, from having come through a period in China where all art was supposed to have a political purpose. Now they're still producing works of art that have political commentary in it, and yet it's of course the opposite of what political commentary used to be. But they can't break out of this mold of producing art with a political message.

SPENCER MICHELS: That message may not be completely clear to Western eyes, but that's part of the intrigue. These are not political posters whose meaning is instantly obvious. They're works of art, and part of their fascination as art is that they're works born of a rejection of politics that still can't help being political.

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