Chinese Police Raid Exhibition, Confiscate 6 Nude Paintings

Chinese police have raided an exhibition of nude paintings influenced by Tibetan Buddhism and shown to a shocked Beijing public, artists said Sunday.

A security van with flashing lights rushed to the Beijing Artists Gallery on Saturday evening. Uniformed policemen confiscated six paintings and questioned artist Cao Yong, a witness said.

The exhibit had been open for 5 days and was being packed up when police arrived. The raid followed the closing of several nude photographic exhibitions in the eastern city of Nanking recently.

Artists said the authorities wanted to put the brakes on a new wave of artistic freedom that is taking China by storm.

Earlier Saturday, officials from the legal department of Beijing’s cultural office visited Cao’s exhibition to tell him that members of the public had complained.

One painting shows a heap of naked women below Buddhist-monklike figures and another depicts a woman dragging two men by their genitalia out of a fire.

Friends said Cao, 26, an ethnic Han Chinese--had spent a lot of time in Tibet and was sympathetic to the Himalayan region’s culture and religion.

“The authorities are still not sure of the dividing line between art and pornography in China,” said one avant-garde artist.

Artists won a major cultural battle last month, opening a controversial exhibition of nude paintings in Beijing’s national art gallery. Huge crowds flocked to see it.

The show was followed this month by a major exhibition of avant-garde art that was closed temporarily after the artists angered the authorities with performances of “action art.”