From “Mao Crazy,” Jed Perl’s review of Cai-​Guo Quiang’s “I Want To Believe” show at the Gugghenheim:

There are times when art should be the last thing on an art critic’s mind. The thun­der­ous pop­u­lar­ity of a number of con­tem­po­rary Chi­nese artists com­pels a polit­i­cal analy­sis. Much of the work is pow­ered by a star­tling and com­pletely delu­sion­ary infat­u­a­tion with Mao Zedong and the Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion. This is more sin­is­ter than any­thing we have seen in the already fairly aston­ish­ing annals of rad­i­cal chic. We are wit­ness­ing a glob­al­ized polit­i­cal white­wash job, with artists and assorted col­lec­tors, deal­ers, and syco­phants pour­ing a thick layer of avant-​garde double-​talk over the infer­nal decade of suf­fer­ing, destruc­tion, and death that Mao unleashed on his coun­try in 1966. And as we are also deal­ing with the house of mir­rors that is the art world, I have no doubt that some­body is ready to explain that I am con­fus­ing appro­pri­a­tion with appro­ba­tion or that fas­cism is just another way of spelling free­dom. I must say, the theory people have a lot to answer for. But here is the bottom line: the global art world’s bur­geon­ing love affair with Mao and the Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion makes a very neat fit with the cur­rent Chi­nese regime’s efforts to sell itself as the author­i­tar­ian power that every­body can learn to love.