張曉剛

signed in Chinese and dated 2006, framed

Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is somewhat brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is very minor wear to the top right corner tip. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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The austerity and palpable atmosphere of Boy encapsulates a critical juncture in Twentieth Century Chinese history. Archetypal of Zhang Xiaogang’s highly acclaimed Bloodline series which he began in 1993, the present work invokes a monumental dialogue with the revolutionary spirit of the Chinese avant-garde. Conjuring allusions to a China under the authoritarian aegis of Chairman Mao, Zhang’s paintings recall the country’s turbulent political past. Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao's communist regime sought to dismantle the traditional order and hierarchies which had been in place for centuries. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) particularly, the new "people's communes" were designed to replace - and destroy - the nuclear family as an institution, even as couples were encouraged to have more children to improve economic productivity. Uprooting China's traditional and deeply held ancestral veneration, a greater emphasis was instead placed on the family as a metaphor for national political cohesion. In this sense, Zhang’s archetypal sitters represent anonymous brothers and sisters of a nation stripped of cultural heritage and bonded by the levelling principles of the revolution. Though intrinsically linked to memories of his childhood spent growing up within this period of intense political unrest, the haunting young subjects of Zhang’s paintings are inherently universal. Taking on a distinctly personal significance as well as a collective import these intensely psychological works explore identity and the complex relationship of the individual with that of the state.

"Old family photos and those charcoal drawings you see everywhere on the streets of China... touched my heart... Perhaps because even today those old images not only satisfy people's love of reminiscence but also contain a simple directness and a unique visual language" (the artist cited in: Lorenzo Sassoli De Bianchi, From Heaven to Earth, Chinese Contemporary Painting, Bologna 2008, p. 243). First inspired by the pictures of his mother as a young woman, these works negotiate a complex dialogue between romantic nostalgia and austerity. Though reminiscent of such vintage black and white photographs, Zhang channels the stringent sensibilities of the era - the formality of pose and seriousness of attitude projected by his sitters evoke an attitude of careful self-presentation. Though displaying a calm, detached exterior, these portraits hint at a tumult of melancholy held at bay behind a screen of watery-eyes. Very much attuned to this by-gone era via the link of photography, Zhang Xiaogang’s work owes a pronounced debt to Gerhard Richter’s 1960s Photo Paintings. Richter’s detached painterly confrontation of Germany’s cultural baggage as mediated by photography forms a strong precedent for Zhang’s own seemingly dispassionate and melancholic response to China’s recent political history.

Set against a nebulous grey background, the delicate blood-red line trailing from the pale-red patch tinting the young boy’s right eye links this work to an entire dynasty of Zhang Xiaogang’s haunting portraits. In the context of his art we feel instinctively that these features are troubling. Indeed, these bloodlines are not only the carriers of cultural heritage but also of genetic inheritance. While on one level Boy stands as a metaphor for repressed destructivity and the violence of revolutionary struggle, it is also Zhang’s potent personal metaphor for human biology and the power of individual genetics. Such a reading is particularly pertinent to the artist’s biography. As a child he witnessed his mother suffer with schizophrenia, and in turn suffered the prejudice that mental illness fomented: ostracism from society was the inevitable result of the stigma attached to a congenital defect. Within the present work, there is a tangible disquiet and underlying threat of the guilt attached to passing defects on to the next generation. This fear is an ominous subtext to the painting, in which the potential for transmission besmirches the uniformity and equivalence so cherished a part of the national ideal.

At once universal and painfully personal, Zhang’s bloodline paintings are poignant expressions for a collective trauma. As an extraordinary magnum opus, the vast artistic project of the Bloodline series paints a vivid picture of familial and societal relations at a pivotal and still prevalent political moment in modern history. Standing tribute to Zhang Xioagang’s sole concern for over a decade, Boy powerfully delivers the sophisticated conceptual language that has earned the artist recognition as one of the most influential painters in modern China today.