And Now, Mao-Carve

In the world today, all art is geared to definite political lines. There is, in fact, no such thing as art for art's sake.

--Mao Tse-tung

When Comrade Mao calls for a hard sell, his patient peons try their darndest to produce paeans, and so in addition to Mao-think and Mao-speak, the Orient is now being flooded with Mao-carve. On display in Hong Kong are 1,000 statuettes, vases, panels and scrolls dedicated to the greater glory of the Chinese People's Republic. The titles are unlikely to win their authors any new accounts on Madison Avenue (typical stone-hewn example: Take Firm Hold of the Revolution, Promote Production). But if visitors can manage to avoid reading the copy, they will certainly be diverted by the eye-rolling ingenuity of the art.

With all the coy ferocity of a Ming dynasty dragon, a deftly carved ivory Guerrilla crouches, defending the motherland against the wicked U.S. air pirates. In Reception, a stalwart group of ivory workers, looking like a miniature convocation of George Segal's plastered everymen, hangs breathlessly on the open-ended words of a Susskindly Chairman Mao. As propaganda, China's purveyors of political wisdom have clearly produced sculpture that is less polemic than totemic, but as art for art's sake--the show has more chuckles than any fun house at the Venice Biennale.

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