Wang Guangyi

framed

Guy Ullens Collection
Sotheby's Hong Kong, The Ullens Collection, 3 April 2011, lot 811
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

China, Macau, Contemporary Art Centre of Macau, FUTURO Chinese Contemporary Art, 2000, p. 47

Wang Guangyi, Timezone 8 Ltd., Shenzhen, China, 2002, p. 99
Ed. Huang Zhuan, Thing-In-Itself: Utopia, Pop And Personal Theology-Wang Guangyi, LingNan Art Publishing House, Guangzhou, China, 2012, p. 256-257
Wang Guangyi: Works and Thoughs 1985-2012, Skira Editore, Milano, Italy, 2013, p. 57

This work is in good condition with minor wear in handling around the edges. There are minor color separations and craquelures especially on the top corners and along the edges that are in line with the age of the work and inherent to the artist's choice of medium. No sign of restoration under UV examination.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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The Origins of Political Pop
Wang Guangyi

Existing cultural iconography is not infallibly correct, nor does it retain absolute authority.  We might review them with a critical eye and engage in modification if necessary.  This very ability to correct cultural confirms the meaning of our existence. --Wang Guangyi

Wang Guangyi first encountered Western classical art, philosophy, and aesthetics during his time at the China Academy of Art in the early 1980s. In addition to stimulating his creative thinking, the canonical images of classical art became the primary reference objects of his early creative plans. Wang was a leader of the Northern Art Group and the Rational Painting movement during the time of the ‘85 New Wave, and his artistic approaches during that decade can be divided into three phases. Prior to launching the Political Pop style, which drew the attention of both the art and business worlds, Wang Guangyi addressed various art issues in these three phases that established a foundation for his subsequent artistic explorations. It was on this foundation that Wang painted Madonna and Child (Lot 1027) and Mao Zedong OU (Lot 1028) in 1990 and 1991 respectively, two works that clearly reflect and summarize his experiments in the 1990s and also mark a turning point in the direction of Political Pop.

After his early Northern Wastelands series and his Post Classical period of 1986-1987, Wang Guangyi entered a third phase in the years 1988-1989 that was characterized by a major change in direction. Indeed, he had begun to doubt the artistic ideas of his previous two phases. In response to the increasing vagueness of the philosophical reflections of the ‘85 New Wave and its separation from reality, Wang put forward “parsing humanistic enthusiasm” as a new creative direction: “At present, I am mainly doing parsing work. That is to say, I am parsing the ‘flood of meaning’ that arises from the illogicalness of humanistic enthusiasm. First of all, I must parse myself. I believe that essence of contemporary art is an enigma of significance, and reaching that enigma requires an analytical approach to artistic language”.¹ Wang Guangyi’s specific “parsing” methods included a few elements, as summarized by the art historian Wu Hung: geometric structures composed of grids and dotted lines, letters or characters with no signifying function, and impenetrable, opaque layers of cover became the most common supplementary symbols in Wang Guangyi’s paintings.² The original purpose of the grids and dotted lines was to serve as a tool for enlarging images (in particular, official portraits of leaders). But as he painstakingly covered his canvases in these grids, he found that their qualities of balance and symmetry more evenly broke up the picture plane as a whole, compelling the viewer to re-examine the divided and scattered particulars.

The three successive series, Red Rationality, Black Rationality, and Famous Painting Covered with Quick-Drying Industrial Paint were the primary creative projects of Wang Guangyi in the late-1980s. Madonna and Child, painted in 1990, combined all the traits of these three series. As before, the artist appropriated a Western classical image: the Esterhazy Madonna, painted by Raphael in the sixteenth century. But this time, Wang only appropriated the shape of the arrangement of the people portrayed in the painting. He applied large swaths of highly pure red and blue paint to cover the background of the original work, then radically used red lines and strips of colour to “intervene” in the tableau. In this way, he created the illusion that his subjects were suspended in the painting by these lines and strips, thoroughly deconstructing the religious atmosphere and historical context of the original work. These lines and swaths of primary colour suggest the existence of a grid that is not fully revealed within the painting. This compositional element, along with the serial numbers, resembling those of printed on consumer products, that are scattered across the canvas, are motifs that frequently appear in the artist’s subsequent Great Criticism series.

As he attempted to reduce classical masterpieces to a normal status, Wang Guangyi also began to ponder new methodological considerations. He shifted his focus from artistic images to political images, and he began appropriating photographs instead of paintings. In 1988, Wang turned his gaze to the subject of Chairman Mao. After generating intense controversy with Mao Zedong: AO, his submission to the China Avant-Garde dxhibition, the current lot, Mao Zedong OU used a photograph of Chairman Mao in profile waving to the red guards as a documentary stand-in for the late political figure. He added the gridlines and English letters of his Red/Black Rationality series to the painting, elements that served as buffers in his transformation of a political idol into an ordinary person. He then introduced a new visual element: like the cut-out figures of the Black Rationality series, Mao renders Mao Zedong OU only as an outline. On the one hand, this visual “absence” forms a contrast with the artist’s previous, faux-earnest “positive official portrait” of Mao Zedong; on the other hand, it also serves to integrate the aforementioned supplementary symbols, reinforcing the artist’s intended deconstruction of politicized “humanist enthusiasm”.

Overall, the pop elements of Madonna and Child and the use of political material in Mao Zedong OU together stylistically anticipate Wang Guangyi’s subsequent Great Criticism series. Having engaged in “cultural revisionism” of history and mythology, and having parsed the overflow of humanist intentions, the artist was ready to take a conceptual forward with his great criticism of consumer culture. In this sense, these two artworks clearly delineate Wang Guangyi’s important transition from a modern self-awareness toward a critical postmodern approach.

¹ "Conversation with Wang Guangyi", Hua Lang, September 1989
² Wu Hung, "Wang Guangyi in the 1980s and Chinese Contemporary Art History Composition - A Proposal on Methodology", Thing-In-Itself: Utopia, Pop and Personal Theology, Huang Zhuan ed., Lingnan Art Publishing House, September 2012