1. the cultural characteristics in the post-political society
From 1949 to the end of 1980s, the society in China has been such a political society defined by Grancy and then it has been transformed into a post-political society in 1990s.

In the earlier stage of 1990s, the industry and capital concepts with the economic liberalization as their characteristics have brought about the re-structuring of the society in China. The politics has been transformed into a post-ideological organizational system and the establishment of the commerce and pop culture on the daily levels in the society in China has pushed the society of China forward into a post-political and cultural formation.

In 1990s, the society in China was also regarded as "the Red Heaven" in a sense of new Leftists. It has a new Leftist colour with a consumer trend of the Hedonism, i.e. trying to integrate the Leftist ideological system with the material consumption and the free market in 1990s, thus forming the cultural characteristics of the post-socialist concepts with the Chinese features. On one hand, the society of China has the cultural characteristics of the post-ideological system, on the other hand, the rapid globalization and commercialization in such fields as the propagation, commerce, the international trade and entertainments have taken place in the society of China. The unusual and unbelievable transformation has granted the social structures and the cultural background of China a completely new nature which is different from both the socialism and the capitalism. Whether the political centralization of powers, the capitalism or the classical thinking, all of them have the possibility of transformation into a new times of peace.

In the late 1990s, the essential transformations of the visual arts are embodied in the routinization and the visual symbolization.

The routinization and the new features of the post-political society is a very important theme in China of the late 1990s. Some of the young artists began to focus their attentions on the new ideas of life in the public space and the routinization of the indoor life which have been brought by the social transformations. They have depicted both the politics of the public consumption which came from the innermost recesses of lust in the 1990s and the ego crux arising from their deep involvement in the lust of the young generation. For the social contents, such an original theme has represented the end of the form of duality including the visual symbols of the politics and the absolute formalism with the artistic relationship in the period of the political society of 1980s. At the same time it also symbolizes the beginning of the contemporary art in China.

Its contemporary nature lies in a point that the young generation will never follows any ideology. "Waiting for the Sunshine" is the basic theme of the new Utopian visions in 1990s. "What to Get" seems unclear, but "Escaping from the Sufferings" is an absolute psychological requirement. Such a requirement is granted a new romantic color by the favourable advantages of materials provided in the era of the capitalism.

The typical tendency of the contemporary art in the late 1990s in China is the fashionable and vogue visual images and the contents of schizophrenia, which have embodied the new characteristics of their personal experiences and visual favours of the generation. It is depicted as the heart of their sentiments in a form of the fabricate agony. The agony is not like the visual hostile targets in the early stage of the capitalism: capitalists, merchandise, machines and money. These symbols have already lost their orientations of criticism ethically. Accompanied by a pretty sense of visualization and the insignificance that the life cannot endure, this generation has felt injured, but cannot find the origin of injuries. This characteristics has not only brought about a psychological aftereffect of a generation in the transformation period of the political society, but also become a basic theme of the visual arts in the late 1990s. It has embodied their visual descriptions of the new "Red Heaven", cognition, expression of sufferings and psychotherapy.

The re-confirmation of the political system of symbolization and the re-emergence of its variants is another important tendency of the contemporary art in the late 1990s. the generation born around 1960s can be regarded as a carrier of the visual system of the red revolution in the 1990s. Compared to such a system, the presentation of the new life in 1990s is a different or completely opposite "alienation" in a politically symbolic significance. The identification of the significance of the alienation can be classified as a post-subject action. It has confirmed the failure of the metaphysically symbolic system of visual images, but it has no alternative symbolic system to establish the formal significance of the daily images. In the eyes of Delaz, the post-subject is a "wanderer", or a "surplus subject". It has fled from the metaphysical system of the "Heaven" and become a vagrant. This is also the inner status of the generation who were born around 1960s.

The art is a post-subject art in the 1990s and its visual spirit is uncertain in moral and political contents. During the period, China, as a society with limited openness, is only able to grant the people such hopes as follows: the opportunity to start a business to become a middle bourgeoisie and wealthy man, the liberalization of the markets, the gradual break-down of such social taboos as sex and politics, the possibility of crazy consumption, and etc and the post-political society in the 1990s is provided with an acceptable legality. The ideology has transformed into a form of social control. In the political arena, the elite politics have been transformed into the politics of the pop culture and such a post-ideology is the basic characteristics of the artistic background in the late 1990s.

On the whole, it is very difficult for the people to express the complexity of the social and cultural transformations in China in a single model about the political society or globalized evolutions. Just as the complexity of the contemporary culture in the North American commercial visual structures described in the film of "Matrix, it almost includes all of the alienations for the public consumption: the visual images with computer science and technology, the theme of saving the Christianity, the Kongfu Style of Hong Kong, the shooting of MTV and the naturalist scences (subways, slum buildings and drug addicts).

2. the unusual images of "the Red Heaven"
The revelations of the new unusual images and the re-confirmations of the symbolic systems of politics in the 1980s have played an important role in the art of the late 1990s. It is carried out around the imagery experiences and the variations of explanations.

Basically speaking, in the late 1990s, the new "Heaven" landscape in a market-socialism China is a moral image in the visual arts in a broad sense. Such two unconscious levels as the uncertainty of the moral significance and the fantastic acceptance of the beauty are no other than the descriptions of the unusual environment and the poetry.

In comparison with the education background of the 1980s (the Leftist ideology, the revolting culture of the young generation in the late 1960s, the avant-garde and modernism), it is no doubt that MacDonald's, bars, the fashionable girls, the electronic games, sex and more is the unusual image of the new culture. Since 1998, Zhong Biao has been making his efforts to integrate the presentations of the new life with the symbolic system of culture and politics into an unusual realm of the post-political society. The new skyscrapers in Shanghai, the Western beauties, the Red Guards, the symbol of MacDonald, the furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the images on the restructuring of the spirit of Lei Feng in a religious sense have highlighted the important background which was taking shape in the society of the late 1990s in China: the post-modern public ideology. Not only the globalized product industry has provided the contemporary society a rich material life, but also, as a fabricate industry of a fashionable culture, the global consultancy industry has been replacing the concepts of intellectuals, the abstract influences of charts and grammar in a materialized and perceptional means. Although almost 20 years later than the West, such a change has turned China into an alien world with imaginations in quite a short time in the late 1990s.

How does the body emerge from under the coat of the symbols of ideology and move towards the perceptual, routine and materialized life. The post-modernist sculptures of Liu Jianhua have presented the basic styles and contents on a daily base after the post-political society was established in the late 1990s. His works have displayed a new historical attitude: the contemporary art is unavoidably the side products of the special system of the society and the definition of the art in a political society did not have any essential changes in the 1990s. The expressions of such basic imagery as the symbolic objects, limbs and styles have a evolutive relationship in languages with the background of the 1980s, whether these backgrounds have already disappeared in the past, or still exist behind the objects at present. For example, sofas, bath tubes, the flirtatious postures of ladies--sitting, lying and prone positions. Even the fashionable qipao in the period of colonized Shanghai in 1930s is also the bourgeoisie symbols to be prohibited in the period of the political society. By the 1990s, they have reflected the re-comprehension of the proletarians in the post-political society and their new Utopian visions. In 1999, Liu Jianhua began to place the bodies in the indoor landscape composed of sofas, bath tubes, woman and fashionable qipaos and the bodies was introduced into the forms of routinization and dramatization and have a fabulous quality. They have brought to light the reasons and experiences of the self through the dramatic auxiliaries on the daily basis.

The post-modern sculptures of Liu Jianhua are depicted visually as the imitations of the photographic works. For the impressions of the photographic works, the models or the prop-like scales strengthened the visual dramatization of the fables. Its ceramic luster conforms to the sentiments of the post-political society: the tranquility, intoxication and the sense of freedom that the Chinese people have regained have hinted that such an unrestrictedness has play an important part in the formation and stability of the post-political society of China in 1990s. There is no negation of the political society of the 1980s behind the sluggishness, affectedness and imitations of coquette. It (the body) has its own orientation and perceptual power coming from itself. The body which acted in symbolic coatings has already come to its end in the 1990s, i.e. they have already disappeared as a visual symbol of the capitalist significance, but they have not established a definite symbolic significance of the post-socialism. Therefore, they are listed as the other category which have a sense of freshness, but no symbolic significance.

Around 1998, Xu Yihui put the fast-food boxes, RMB and Quotations from Chairman Mao together and change them into a pop sculpture. The three elements have embodied the psychological manifestations full of perceptual anxiety in the symbolic re-confirmations: materialization, commercialization and fast-foodization is unacceptable while materialization, commercialization and fast-foodization is also acceptable. The former is the existing reactions from the education background of the 1980s and the latter is from the human infatuation of the 1990s.

There is a Lakanian connections of unconciousness with the images in the semantic relationship of Xu Yihui. The nature of images of fast food is the outer imagery of money and the latter is a symbolic object of opposition and hostility against the symbolic significance of the "Red Treasured Books". Xu's somnambulistic expressions of the objects in the consumer society have manifested that the visualization used in the society and symbolized political system is just the beginning of the inner transformations in individuals, i.e. the concrete and materialized imagery are granted a definite orientation of symbolization and orders and degrees (high class and low class, the obverse and the reverse, and etc.) within the political and social systems of China in the 1980s. Entering the 1990s, not only the positions of the images have been reversed in the symbolic orders of significance, but also the expressions have never been proved metaphysically, but by the bodies.

This is a post-subjectivity: the critics of the principal consumers constitute a part of the principal consumers. If the subjectivity is for lust and utility, then, the post-subjectivity is relative with the nature of body, the moral confirmation of lust and the subject of materialized positivism and its language or the visual significance itself is relative with the adaptation of interest and objects.

In the visual arts of the 1990s, the expressions of the post-subjectivity lie in the re-establishment of a subject by sampling of new and different images and historicizing and practicing the images of the Leftist culture which have been existing since the 1960s. the "On the Way" expressions in search of a new "Red Heaven" is not the heaven, but a different realm in search of the heaven and the nomadic poetry.

During the 1990s, Liu Dahong tried his efforts to re-compile a imagery system for the politics of the red revolution in a way of visual atlas and grant a scene of the red heaven like a new fairy tale. "A Tale of Two Cities", created in 1998, integrated Paris during the French Revolution and Shanghai During the Cultural Revolution into "a City of Heaven" of the young infatuations. "A Tale of Two Cities" is same as a narration of the illustrated history of exodus about the modern tales of revolutionary. It is a narrator of the spirit of the great revolutionary tale as an illustrated allusion of the politics.

As a post-political artworks, "A Tale of Two Cities" of Liu Dahong has represented their suffering and memories of the generation of the 1960s in a way of psychological hiatus because they had an experience of the Utopia, revolution and divinity in the Leftist tides as an experience in "the Red Heaven". He has been trying to fabricate the experiences and a psychological theme of a young generation in a Utopian era of revolution, i.e. on the magic power, the Lost Eden and the daydream spirit, in order to identify the modernity. Liu's creations have represented the influences of the deep-rooted ideological education of the generation and there exist a Utopian spirit with the abstract and post-ideological characteristics against the background. He has been trying to confirm the influences of ideology on the social morality and the living imagination from a historical angle of the contemporary spirit.

As for reviewing the imagery system of the Leftist history and politics, a representative is an imitation of the classical painting of politics by Wang Xingwei, "Mao Zedong to Anyuan". Wang Xingwei painted himself on the position of Mao Zedong in the classical painting. It is a definite characteristics of the post-politics to insert an individual subjectivity in a position of the fabricated history.

The experimental drama of Wang Jianwei accompanied with the video art of the drama has also reflected the influences on our deep memories by the psychological visualization of the political society in the late 1990s.

As a matter of fact, the new imagery of life in the post-political society and the visions of the red revolution have been observed in a confused and multilevel system of cultures in the 1990s. As for the points of view that the visions of different images are that the Chinese art has fallen into the pit of the comprehensive reactions of psychology in the period of the political transformations. The influences come from different levels: the reality of globalization with internet, the financial system of capital and the transnational corporations is at a level, China, as a representative of the Asian society, is an important part with the example of the natural adaptation of the Asian society to the post-modern commercial carnivals. Their direct characteristics of culture come from their infatuation in the actual world without any subject for a post-political society. In addition to this, the contemporary art of China has been introduced into a grand imaginative system in the 1990s. Such a system involves the participation of Europe, North America, Australia and the East Asia--they imagine how China looks like and how the future of China will be. At the imaginative level, China is regarded both as an indicator which produces ideological thinking and as a political and material reality.

In the 1990s, "the native land" and "the nationalization" have been upgraded as a concept which is used of our own will and the identity and practices have crossed the boundaries of the regions by and by. This includes that the young Chinese artists have been traveling by Boeing airplanes for the international art biennial all around the world. For example, Ma Liuming made physical contacts with the people from different regions in the European and Asian exhibition halls, presenting the global applications of sex and nakedness. But the body performance of Ma Liuming is still regarded as the post-ideology in China. This is the very difference that cannot be remedied by flying a Boeing between China and Europe and North America.

3. Analysis of Youth Self-symptom
In late 90s,China modern art began to focus on the problem of self-symptom of the 90s' transitional period. In a sense, the self-symptom is just an expression of self-inadaptation caused by social changes from spiritual supreme and elite guide to material consumption and revelry of popular art. In fact people is inadaptable not to the social realities but to the presentation of the other category, symbols and new life, and the variation of the cultural explanation .

This kind of self-inadaptation caused by the social transition also existed in basic concepts of value such as politics and moral. In the 90s' modern Chinese art, an important trend was that self-anxiety and spiritual symptom contained in the new realistic presentation used to be expressed by realistic creative methods, in another word, the art have the value of the depth psychology of self-transition in materialized periods.

In late 90s', another important trend--establishment of individual subject and revelation of privacy emerged. The earliest clue could be found in the early 90s' paintings of new generation represented by Liu Xiaodong . The paintings,finished by those who are still in youth, belong to "the subject of youth" that is on an earlier depiction and summary of adolescence experience and world view. The main theme can be divided into three categories: angry youth, injuried children and worried intellectuals. In a sense, the 90s' art of "subject of youth" expressed more ideas of youth than the 70s' literature of school graduates, the latter in fact was just the memory and rethinking of past youth by adults.

In earlier 90s, painter Xi Haizhou began to portray the generation of 60s' who were indulged in the electronic games. He aimed at either a gang of young people playing billiards or playing electronic games. The general appearence of Xi's painting emphasizes the degree of the distance and the quality of no exchange between the creator and objects, he and those young people seem close but can not be closer. The gaming youth were always be portrayed as "the other category" or stranger different from the popular. Up to the late 90s', these youth in Xi's paintings became a set of larger faces and exaggerated eyes, and the faces and eyes were laden with little grief or in a trance. In Xi's paintings the youth are " the other category" or "new youth " that can't be explained and difficult to ascertain.

The "youth" series of Xi Haizhou paintins try to surpass the limits of photography, so in his works endless exaggerated faces show more realistic affects of feelings than photography. The apperance of pictures seems to express a visual spirit analysis, and because the objective is hard to understand, the author's uneasiness covers the entire appearence of the picture. Sometimes facial expression of the picture seems a symbol of self-analysis and information transmition. In a word, Xi Haizhou gives a picture of this generation's fragility, loss of inner heart, and specific sink and unsaved sorrow.

The art of youth subject leans to self-exposure in order to discover a psychological baseline. It is always based on the body parts in post political society, revealing the ill-treat, illusion, game and self-sorrow in the daily life. When a generation abandons the past, they would be uneasy for the psychological change, and At this time, he needs to see himself as an object. This is a creative way of fable.

Injuries is basic youth subject of late 90s'. Since 1998, Xie Nanxing has created a seris of fables attempting to tell an cruel instance of a conflict bretween children and adults, and just this instance gives much unforgettable brutal visual memorial. Xie's words is ironical, a brutal scene is covered by a hazy poetic favor. Injuries and growing up are still steady subject of post political society, Xie Nanxing portrays the basic symptoms of the generation: more sensitive, more cruelly being hurt but more hard to find why being hurt.

The same subject could be found in 1999 sculpturesque environment arrangements making up by young sculptor Qing Ga. The works dipicts naked men and women in a hopeless and depressing bathroom, having self-comfort, suiciding or lying deathly. The cruel image of the works of Qing Ga and Xie Nanxing is combined with touching poetic favor and beauty.This is a visual characteristics of youth subject of late 90s'.

In 1998, young female paiter Yang Fan began to portray the girls in southern Chinese towns. These girls were fashional, heavily made up, smoking cigarettes and modeling for the movie stars. The urban materilized girls of late 90s in Yang Fan's paintings with the portrait nature of depth psychology, are just same as west capitalist countries. Even countryside girls are just same. They like to use internationalized cosmetics, chothes and other products. It is more important that their illusion is concerted, for example, they model for the same beauty, learn from the urban struggle stories, have the same thought of success, and are influenced by the US and Asian capitalist popular industry. Yan's painting reveal the fantascy of young females in the period of transition--to save themselve by possessing a materialized life and industrial products. These girls whose regional difference and countryside characteristics are losing has a internationalized qualities: temptation for other places, free making up and excited for pleasure, to be as beautiful as others, entering a strange crowd, casting themselve into a fictional Utopia,and cutting the link with past life. These girls are even more open than those in Beijing and Shanghai. Even living in the countryside, they could know the story between Clinton and Lewinskey. Many girls go beyond the regional, set up the knowledge of post industrial culture and are filled with fantascy for other place.

Yan Fan's paintings relay an unconcious self-recall when global culture and capitalist populur culture have a great impact on the next generation. Her theme is about influenced sorrow and influenced road to liberation.

The photograph taken by Zhen Guogu is just like a ducument about modenization and commerialization and internationalization of Chinese towns. He took the photograph of the scene of the streets and daily life of young people of Yangjiang a town near GuangZhou. Yangjiang youth, much influenced by the popular culture of HK,Japan and the US like the girls in Yang Fan's painting, like to have hair dyed, are dressed fashionally and engage in business. Zheng put together all kinds of photograghs with automatic camera taken by young people there, Zheng gave us a complete picture of life and youth reminisnce of young people in town. Yangjiang youth is just an epitome of all Chinese youth in small town in late 90s', they quickly finished transition from town youth to internationalized youth.

The creatives by Li Zhangyang reveal another realistic part of Chinese society under the system of post ideology. His sculptures reflecting private life and street scenics of 90s' common people has a new realistic spirit: the "San Pei Girls"(bar girls) series involves the scene of playing Mahjong, massage house, haircutting, singing Karaoke and so on, and street series with ceremony opening in street, administrators and pedlarsks, and fighting in street. All the works reflect the conflict of community interests, life struggle and maddness of human nature. His scultpures are imbued with boyish youth curiosity of"heaven cinema", pure peek excitement and self-baffle.

The photographic words of Yang Fudong have a thicker youthful flavor of little intellectuals. His photography is an simulated play of a scene, reflecting the inward change of little intellectuals because of uncertainty of their status transition to modern white collars. In 2000, his work "the first intellectual" fictioned an image of an angry youth: a white collar youngman, dressed in bloody torn suite, is stanging on the avenue at the finance ane trade district, and attempts to fight desperately with bricks in hands. Yang Fudong reflects a picture that young intellectuals suffer the inward injury after the entrance of capitalism to China.

The 3D-film"the rock on the road of new long march" which was created by young artist Lao Jiang should be an outstanding video art in late 90s. He reinterpreted the rock music of Cui Jian with visual measures. The film shows the youthful unrestrained qualities of the latest generation in post political society. This "Internet" generation seems not to take everything seriously.

In late 90s of China, the most influential creatives should be those made by li Zhangyang and Yan Fan. Their main works had a significent impact on youthful aesthetic standard, life style and word view. In fact, the 90s' deeper reforms was enormously influential to Chinese modern art. In this environment, the artists themsevle not only could receive a lot of new visual resources and aesthetic experiences but also influenced and changed directly. In reality, both the influenced self-predicament and ideological self-symptom had become an important theme which is mainly about the material life and self-analysis. The theme is embodied in the 90s' political cultural revolution, so the modern art finds a cultural expression to meet the demand of public consumptions and political balances which in a broad sense should be a kind of post political cultural concepts; the basis of post cultural lies in reslism of moral and politics. The cultural features in late 90s' is the philosophical and aesthetic return and concrete expression, because the social discussion about abstract ideology has gone away. At this point, the self-expression from a personal view is a valuable exit. The cultural features of post politics -- materialization, show of body and perceptiveness become a blueprint of new red heaven designers. So self-return in late 90s' is almost an escape of new generation to a secret kingdom.

In early 90s, the new generation art revealed intellectual seriosness after lose of Utopia and pained romantics. up to late 90s, when post capitalism thoroughly went into China, unfinished youth combined with a hope for capitalist good life, self-moral anxiety and inward injury in modern commercial system after extreme politics became an obvious feature that was different from earlier "post new generation". The late 90s' art with emphasis on beautiful appearence and inward injury is a continuousness of the "post new generation".