Yan Yongsheng, Unite for Greater Victory! (1974)© Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum
The visual world of China during the 1960s and 1970s was as uniform as those worn by the Red Guard, with styles and subject matter officially sanctioned by the Party.
Simple graphics and bold colours were the order of the day, taken from the "socialist-realism" style-guide of the Soviet Union.
However, with the rupture between China and the USSR in 1960, traditional Chinese paintings - particularly ink landscapes - began to be used as an outlet for celebrating national achievements.
It was in these ink landscapes, however, that artists were given freer reign with artistic expression.
In this pair of exhibitions, the Ashmolean Museum is exhibiting works exploring both artistic sides of that pivotal decade between 1966 and 1976.
The Freighter Feng Qing (1974) (artist unknown)© Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum
It is this exhibition in which the striking iconography for which modern Chinese art is known for can be found: images of Mao abound alongside slogans of agricultural and industrial achievement.
The images in Art in China depict more traditional scenes, with mountainous landscapes shrouded in mist and rustic figures tending livestock.
Both styles were equally controlled by the state, however - they were produced within state-owned publishing houses, factories and work units, all run in accordance with political directives.
Both exhibitions demonstrate the extent to which artistic production during the period was a collaborative enterprise, with individual authorship discouraged.
At best, attributions may have been assigned to schools or groups such as the May 7 Cadre School or Jiangsu Arts Committee.
What both exhibitions manage to illustrate equally as well is that at no other point in history, bar Communist Russia, was politics so thoroughly infused with art.
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