Song Yonghong

signed in Chinese and dated 1994

Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
Acquired by the present owner from the above

China, Hong Kong, Hanart TZ Gallery, Song Yonghong: Burning Realities, 1995, pp. 28-29
Germany, Bonn, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Germany, Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt; Austria, Vienna, Vienna Künstlerhaus, China!, 1996-1997, p. 145

Song Yonghong, Song Yonghong, Beijing Art Now Gallery, Beijing, China, 2006, p. 168
Wang Huangsheng, Square of Desire Song Yonghong, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China, 2008, p. 100

This work is generally in good condition with minor wear in handling around the edges, most prominently along the right edge. There is minor cracking at the extreme edges, only visible upon close examination. A gentle stretcher mark is visible along the top edge with a minor vertical scuff mark near the top right corner. When examined under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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The Suppression of Desire
Song Yonghong

Song Yonghong, one of the Cynical Realist artists, adopts a bystander’s position, as described by the renowned art critic Li Xianting: “Song Yonghong's works always assume the perspective of a bystander with implications of indifference, ridicule, and voyeurism. He is skilled at finding the humour in the mundane, revolting, and artificial aspects of everyday life, which he uses to reveal the awkward actions of contemporary people, both pitiable and ridiculous”. As a Chinese contemporary artist in the 1990s, Song was particularly interested in the repressed sexual desires of urban China, which he repeatedly portrayed with his brush. The earliest example is Elderly Couple, which was exhibited at the 1992 Guangzhou Biennial. Beside the Pool and Moat of the Forbidden City, two other important works from early in the artist's career, also record the suppression of the individual by Chinese society in the 1990s. Both paintings represent the artist’s desire for individual freedom and liberation.

A member of the graduating class of 1988 at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, a youthful Song Yonghong came away with strong influences from fellow alumni Geng Jianyi and Zhang Peili. Along with their paintings of cool, collected objectivity, Song Yonghong’s own work was also displayed at the “New Generation Art Exhibition” in 1991. Over the course of next few years, the artist would slowly mature into his signature style. In his earlier days, Song would build compositions with simple figures set against ordinary settings, albeit contrived. Post-1989, the artist then learnt to fully realize the power of amalgamating a compelling narrative with technical proficiency. Ordinary people are portrayed against ordinary backgrounds. Bland, insignificant moments are captured, though never without a hint of mockery or absurdity. Upon beholding of his imagery, with its hints of Surrealism, feelings of awkwardness, anguish and very often amusement, are stirred. An ambivalence permeates his compositions; it is at the same time, the artist’s expression of a self-deprecation as well as an unforgiving reflection of contemporary sociology.

Song Yonghong’s first exploration of urban desire was 1992’s Elderly Couple, a painting in monochromatic tones of brown. The painting portrays an elderly couple, both topless and the husband’s hand resting on his wife’s breast, motionless and expressionless. A brown monotone governs the image, enhancing the air of incongruity and elevating the effect of tedium. Such a compositional formula would persist, as the artist continued to position naked figures in public sites. In the most restricted of spaces, Song Yonghong releases the most forbidden of urges. His shriek for freedom resounded into his eventual Bath of Consolation Series, where erotic themes became his creative axis.

The background of Moat Around the Forbidden City (Lot 742) is the northern entrance to the imperial palace from Beijing’s olden days, a setting richly evocative of the times. The painting depicts two couples leaning against the railing of the moat; the farther couple appears chaste and subdued, whereas the nearer couple fornicate wantonly, enjoying a passionate moment in the moonlight beside the water. The painting directly portrays desire and sex, which was highly daring in the cultural context of China at the time. Like many of Song Yonghong's works at the time, Moat of the Forbidden City could hardly be believed to be a portrayal of actual events. Nonetheless, it is true that private space was hard to come by in Beijing during those years, and the natural screens of darkness and the shade of a tree combine with the romantic atmosphere of the moat, one of Beijing's most beautiful sights, to provide fertile soil for passion. The lustful gaze of the woman and her bright red lipstick are evocative of an authentic repressed desire. Could this dramatic scene, directed by Song Yonghong in front of the Forbidden City and the authority it represents, constitute a cry of personal liberation for China in the 1990s? Moat of the Forbidden City influenced Song's subsequent works portraying sex in the urban context, and is a representative work from his oeuvre.

Pool Side (Lot 743), painted the same year, contains both hints of sex and a highly thought-provoking story. The woman in the painting is about to undo her bra, and a man holding a vessel for watering plants occupies the centre of the tableau, making him the subject of the painting. The shape of the watering can seems flaccid and dejected, a subtle sex joke at the man’s expense. In the distance, we can see a man diving into the pool, and also a bicycle in the water. Beside the Pool is full of story elements that seem both absurd and mesmerising—Song Yonghong's signature style. The water motif in the painting often reappears in Song's later work, frequently in the form of a bath or shower, culminating in the Bath of Consolation Series, which elevates bathing to a spiritual level and exhibits an intense, Surrealistic symbolism.

If Song Yonghong’s paintings exhibit an aura of ludicrousness, hilarity and agitation, it is because reality is unequivocally ludicrous, hilarious and agitating. As a silent bystander, the artist bares the many convoluted strata of conflicting sentiments repressed in contemporary society and manifests them on his canvases, inviting unexpected interpretations as well as ambivalent reactions. This is what the artist himself described as “the intuitive reality of the feeling of multiple burns”.