Great article! Many thanks for the incredible attention to detail while at the same time honouring the artist and filling in the historical blanks for many of us.

When the Great Leap Forward sputtered out, the starvation deaths of at the high end of the famine (current estimates are 45-55 million people) many Generals and other politicians tried to hold Mao accountable for the devastation.

The Cultural Revolution was a blatant power grab response, replete with distraction, deflection and denial. Therefore, lamentably, those with the intellectual or political capability to challenge Mao were silenced.

Interestingly, I read this great book about how Einstein's Theory of Relativity didn't just change Physics but also Art, Philosophy and Politics.

It's main thrust was that since the Scientist's, Artist's or Individual's perspectives were now of paramount importance (think Picasso and other cubists) so too was the Dictator's.

It allowed for the murderous excesses of a Stalin or Hitler or Mao to not just follow the supposedly divine paths of the despotic Kings, the Czars or the Khans, but to also exceed them.

After all, since 'Relativity' mattered most of all, why not kill the sparrows, kill the flies and starve the peasants or those who would free them from the disastrous impulses of a demagogic narcissist.

Remember when I was in a 'China Watcher's' 1973 University Cultural Geography class who gleefully relished telling stories of landlords and teachers and the Gang of Four having to publicly confess their counter-revolutionary sins.

Since Canada's population was then around 22 million, I couldn't get my head around that many people starving to death in such a short period of time, so I asked the Prof about the famine ( the numbers being bandied about then were around 10-15 million) and if that had anything to do with the Cultural Revolution.

Crickets.

My point is that a Mao could not have visited such catastrophic destruction upon a people without the enabling idealogues, like my Prof, many of whom wanted a seat of power at the feast table of life, and most certainly did not want to share a place, a wretched spot at an barren trough.

After all, the second most common greeting in Mandarin literally translated is "Ni chi le ma" (have you eaten?).

Thanks again.