Shanghai propaganda poster art centre.

Wednesday afternoon, my contemporary art class took a field trip to the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre. It's not a typical museum or gallery. PAC is located in the basement of an apartment building near the French Concession, so it's in a very nice area. There's obviously no sign advertising the center and the staircase to the basement is scary, at best. Yang Pei Ming is the Director, and he has been collecting Chinese propaganda posters for over 30 years. He often buys posters directly from printing houses, or from scholarly collections (say, ECNU decided to get rid of their collection, Mr. Yang would look at it and buy some of them). Over the years he has collected over 5000 posters.
All the posters are in Chinese, so I had no idea what they were saying, but it was interesting to see the similarities and differences in drawing/painting style from decade to decade. Most of the posters use primary colors and lots and lots of red. I don't have an interest in politics, so it was very different for me to think of propaganda as an art form.