Description
Milgram's Progress is one of Cheung’s earliest works to deal with the conflictual multi-layered identity of
contemporary China. In the centre of the painting’s lower section is an image of Stanley Milgram, the psychologist
made famous for his experiment establishing the human tendency to obey authority, even when it threatens our
morality. To the left of Milgram, a chain of figures are hauling a fishing net - the workers are appropriated from a
Chinese propaganda poster, transformed by Cheung into uniform blue lemmings lacking individuality. To the top
right, traditional Chinese landscape painting traditions clash with the towering spectacle of urban capitalist
progress, analogous to the contradiction in the reformed political ideology that begun to emerge at the time of this
painting’s creation.