Two iconic photographs taken at the launch of the cultural revolution (1966-76) will mark the first appearance of so-called "red art" at an auction when they go under the hammer in Beijing tomorrow.

The photographs are part of the emerging wave of "red art" art about the cultural revolution and China's revolutionary wars, hot subjects in China and around the world.

The two pictures were taken by Weng Naiqiang, a retired photojournalist working for the Japanese edition of the Beijing-based magazine People's China, in 1966. They have never been published before, according to Li Xin, manager of the image department of Beijing Huachen Auctions Co Ltd, which will sell the two pictures during its annual autumn auction.

In one of the two pictures, red guards, dressed in green army uniforms and brandishing copies of "Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong," or the "Little Red Book," shout slogans at Tian'anmen Square.

In the other picture, Chairman Mao stands on the top of the Tian'anmen Rostrum and waves to the sea of people gathered in the square. The people are waving back, copies of the "Little Red Book" in hand.

Bidding for the two pictures will start at 76,000 yuan (US$9,500) and 120,000 yuan (US$15,000), respectively.

The photographer, now 70, was born and raised in Indonesia. He moved to China, his ancestral homeland, in 1954. He studied in the oil painting department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing from 1958 to 1963 and worked for People's China from 1964 to 1990.

He recently compiled 27 of his pictures into a Cultural Revolution Series, from which the auction committee chose the two pictures to be sold tomorrow.

Besides these two photographs, the company is also planning to sell a dozen pictures by other photographers who recorded the cultural revolution.

"These pictures will be the first images the cultural revolution to appear at a public auction," said Gan Xuejun, president of Huachen Auctions. She added that the sale had been approved by the central government.

Collectors both at home and abroad are drawn to the photographs' artistic and historical value, said Li, the manager of the auction house's image department.

"To many Chinese, they are reminders of a memory that will never be wiped out," she said. "To foreigners, they are records of a history that shall never be reproduced."

Besides the photos, the company will also present a series of 926 woodcarvings depicting the Red Army's Long March (1934-36) at its contemporary art session tomorrow afternoon.

The series, entitled "Red Ribbon on the Earth," was created by Shen Yaoyi, an art professor at Renmin University in Beijing, between 1988 and 1993. Bidding for this series will start at 10 million yuan (US$1.25 million).

(China Daily November 22, 2006)