Fan Bo (b 1966) depicts the intellectuals around him. His painting language emphasizes the disjunctive side of forms; the details are full of vitality and wit, and the people appear to have been crafted or molded. In the background, the elongated tree branches are painted in leisurely strokes, full of the verve of calligraphy, hints of desolation within vitality. His people are enduring and cautious, sometimes vexed by anxiety, but always self-consciously stubborn. In the artist’s nostalgia for the washed-out classical culture, we can see his pity of modern life.