Zhang Xiaogang

signed in Pinyin and Chinese and dated 1997

Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
Sotheby's New York, March 21 2007, lot 16
Acquired by the present owner from the above 

A brown coloured linear mark one cm from the right edge which may be left from the previous mounting, otherwise, generally in good condition
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Zhang Xiaogang has produced a body of work that increasingly seems of critical importance to his generation of Mainland Chinese artists. A resolutely figurative painter, Zhang has, in his Bloodlines and other series, not only represented Chinese people to the outside world, but also to China itself, in ways that recontextualize Chinese features as essentially anonymous. This anonymity refers to an earlier, but hardly forgotten time in Chinese history, when both men and women wore the obligatory Mao suit and cap, which deemphasized sexual difference in favour of class and gender equality. Zhang's idiosyncratic even eerie portraits, in which the faces of men and women are virtually the same, speak volumes about the kinds of social pressure within Maoist society at the time.

For Zhang, art encompasses the pursuit of psychological reality—there is no overt attempt to protest specific conditions, only an unspoken nostalgia that is ambivalent in its affiliations with the society of a past era. The method and gravity with which Zhang's images are painted reflects his preoccupation with the core of Chinese identity; his portraits are based on old family photographs and charcoal drawings he buys on the street in China. In Zhang's primarily cool-toned paintings, whose colour is usually limited to a small patch on the cheek, the thin red blood line, or occasionally a flash of colour prescribed by dress code, we see Chinese people from a less affluent period of the past.

Although the artist claims that his truths are personal, his art reaches beyond the psychological to present a way of life – one that he lived, too – which was then highly politicized. By focusing on one person at a time in his work, Zhang successfully describes the effect of Chinese politics on the common people. Despite the anonymity and visual repetition of the artist's portraits, there is always something – a colour patch on the figure's face, the thin bloodline – that moves the painting away from selflessness towards an assertion of identity. Individuality is present, no matter how narrow or rigid the society may be.

It is important, therefore, to recognize the dignity with which the artist invests the spirit of the anonymous individuals he portrays. Somehow, it seems, these portraits are meant to survive as trace images of identities that refused complete capitulation to self-sacrifice. Yet we are not sure whether Zhang's portraits exalt anonymity or independence of being. It is a question the works beg, which Zhang deliberately refrains from analyzing or answering.

Although it is possible to overemphasize the social implications of Zhang's portraits, it is nonetheless clear that he represents a broad swathe of society through the silent presence of those he paints. Their focused but mute regard and their obdurately obscure message have everything to do with the way the Chinese see themselves – not only during the Maoist period, but also today, when Chinese society is deeply interwoven with capitalist practices. As such, it is little surprise that the precise content of Zhang's enigmas is never fully explained, and the viewer's experience remains essentially one of enchanted mystery.

The attractiveness of his art today stems not only from his outstanding technical control, but also from the ambiguity of his meaning. The viewer's encounter with Zhang's subtly painted portraits requires an openness of view that is likely the most significant attribute of the artist's aesthetic. Even as his aesthetic develops over the course of his career, this open aspect of his work remains consistent. Sotheby's is pleased to offer a range of work by Zhang Xiaogang that surveys his fascinating career, from the mid 1990s to recent years.

Bloodline Series: Yellow Baby (Lot 612) offers a contrast of identities born of age and sex. The yellow baby, presumably female, although the hair and clothing suggest a male toddler, sits in what seems a dining room end chair. The younger pink baby, in this case clearly male, is relegated to his more protective high-chair. Yet both are set against a cool-toned backdrop with cottony white highlights and seem totally isolated in their worlds, the inviting, cottony softness of the background contrasting with the isolation such images evoke. This work is one of the most representative work from his Bloodline series in 90's.