Art Mao Eblad by Paul Myatovich

horizons e d ition s

Art Mao

Art director: Pia Copper Editorial director: Christopher Copper-Ind Picture research: Lauriane Roger Design: Stefano Bianchi Printed and bound by Toppan in China

CONTENTS

Preface ÂŠ Ai Weiwei 2014 Text ÂŠ Horizons Editions 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced without the prior permission of the publishers. A record of this book is available from the British Library.

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Preface, by Ai Weiwei Art and Mao, by Francesca Dal Lago ART MAO Index of artists

Horizons Editions Ltd 27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3XX United Kingdom horizonseditions.com First published in 2014 by Horizons Editions ISBN 978 0 957 151239

Art Mao

Wu Junyong

Yu Youhan

吴俊勇

余友涵

I See Nothing, 2008, oil on Canvas, 100x80cm, courtesy of the artist

Yu Youhan, Pop Mao, oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm, photo Jean-Marc-Decrop/ Yu Youhan Collection, Hong Kong

b. 1978 in Fujian

Art Mao

Wu Junyong experiments with oil, animation, paper cut and installation works but his focus has always been political. He often portrays men in dunce caps, daigamao, a feature of the Cultural Revolution and its self-criticism sessions. “To wear a tall hat” in China meant original to flatter people, but Wu Junyong criticizes a society that is too much involved in flattery. Wu’s various representations of Mao, as a hairy man, refers to the homonym for Mao, which is “hair”. To portray a hairy Mao nude or in boxers in an easy chair is also a taboo in China. The portrait of Mao in profile is also satirical. The “wuya” or black crow is a founding myth. The world originally had ten suns represented by crows which all flew into the sky at one time. The crops then failed due to too much sun and the gods sent an archer to shoot all down except one. As for the portrait « I see Nothing », it represents the back of Mao’s head, perhaps turning his head symbolically on his own people, in his quest to look ahead into the future, thus provoking mass deaths such as during the Great Leap Forward.

b. in Shanghai in 1943 Inv. Nr. Künstler Titel Dimension Technik Jahr Standort Position Ausstellungen

YuYU Youhan is considered by many to Youhan 1273 be YU theYouhan founder of political pop art in Shanghai, bridging Untitled (Mao Marylin) the East and the West and a new artistic language. Yu 150inventing x 149 cm Youhan’s Mao portrait series is perhaps the Oil on canvas best known of all the works deconstructing 2005 Büron theLager Great Leader. His use of flowers, peonies, D5 symbol of happiness and good fortune, and - Hamburger Mahjong, 14.9.2006 of - 18.2.2007 almost part Kunsthalle, of the gaudy aesthetic the - Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mahjong, 21.7.-11.11.2007 Chinese countryside (almost like the pattern - Berkeley Art Museum, 5.9.2008-4.1.2009 (mahjong: Contemporary onChinese some Art hua buthefabrics produced during from Sigg Collection) the Cultural Revolution) make Mao appear - Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, 21.2.-25.5.2008figure. (Red Aside: Chinese more of popular icon and cartoonish contemporary art of the Sigg Collection) in full Despite the Cultural Revolution - Peabody Essex Museum, Salem/Boston, 18.2.-17.5.2009 (Mahjong: swing, Yu managed tofrom graduate from the Contemporary Chinese Art the Sigg Collection) Central Art Academy in Beijing inLuzern. 1973.Thema: China - Neue - Treuhand-Kammer, Kongress 2009, KKL As he says of himself : “Why did I paint Mao? I did so in part as a memorial to my past political life. I borrowed the method of Pop art and elements from Chinese folk art to represent an ordinary Mao in a way of resilience, a little humour, and few critical remarks, all mixed with a little admiration. I am proud that he is no longer a sacrosanct

Art Mao

Yu Youhan, Douanier Rousseau : Mao on the Long March (2005) Acrylic on canvass, 140x114cm, courtesy of the artist

Art Mao

Liu Wei

Tian Taiquan

刘韡

田太权

Mao Generation, 99299, oil on canvas,with carved woode frame, 102 x 85 cm, Photo Patrick Goetelen/Mythos Dynasty Collection

Totem Recollection no.2, C-print

b. 1965, Beijing, China

Art Mao

Liu Wei is often thought of as the founder of the cynical realist movement with fellow Beijinger, Fang Lijun. Liu Wei uses garish colours to portray the reality of life in a Communist country after the liberalization of Deng Xiaoping, corruption, social instability, pollution,.... The cynical realist movement recognized the absurdity of a life emmeshed with politics and the impossibility of escape, except through humour. Liu Wei enjoys depicting the vulgar, rotting flesh, the erotic, sensual fleshy women. He is much like modernday Soutine, painting crude, almost ugly portraits of soldiers, workers, peasants and the new class emerging under the Deng Xiaoping, the businessmen. His works have often been called ”gaudy art” or as he calls it himself “rotten art”. His depiction the the perfect Maoist soldier family is ironic. The colours are gaudy, the clothes unfashionable, the people pudgy. It might also refer to his own background as the son of a general.

b. 1960 in Chongqing

Tian Taiquan’s photographs have always revolved around the Cultural Revolution and a particularity of history, the female Red Guards, often very young, who died in Sichuan during the Cultural Revolution. These heroines, portrayed by actresses, lie in dark, mossy cemeteries or drowning in an ocean of Mao badges, scarred and bleeding, a testimony to China’s lost youth. The cemetery of Red Guards Tin focuses on is located in Chongqing’s Shapingba district, called. The Red Guards were used a Mao’s revolutionary force, to unleash a terror on intellectuals and anti-party sentiment and reinforce the party morale, ousting dissenters. In 1966-68, two competing Red Guard factions fought in Chongqing, battles involving guns, mortars, tanks and even gunships on the Yangtze River. The casualties of this Red Guard war were buried at a dozen or more locations, but most of the cemeteries were demolished. Some of the girls buried there were as young as fourteen.

Art Mao

Li Shan

Yue Minjun

李山

岳敏君

«Rouge Series: No. 8,» 1990, acrylic on canvas, 105,4 x 149,9 cm, courtesy of the Farber Collection

Sea of the Brain (2001) Oil on canvass, 140 x 120 cm, © of the artist, courtesy, Herman Heinsbroek collection

b. 1942 in Lanxi, Heilongjiang

Art Mao

In Li Shan’s work, Mao is often depicted with a lotus flower in his mouth. The hehua or lotus has a double meaning in Chinese, it also means the courtesan. Li Shan is deconstructing the icon of Mao, light-heartedly, even coquettishly. He is part of the first wave of artists in the 1990s in Shanghai to take part in an unofficial political pop (zhengzhi popu) art movement in Shanghai, alongside artists like Yu Youhan and Pu Jie, which happens contiguously with the political pop art movement in Beijing (Wang Guangyi, etc).

B. 1943 in Pingliang

Yue Minjun is an artist who has pioneered the theme of the individual. His work, almost uniquely self-portraits, with a too wide, faultless grin/smile, with shining, white teeth is part of the “cynical realism” movement of the 80-90s in Beijing. Disillusioned with politics, the cynical realist artists decided to re-interpret reality in a sardonic way. Cinematographers such as Zhang Yimou with the film “To Live” were also a counterpart of the movement. This painting is an incredible statement, showing Mao swimming in the cranium of the artist, who is foolishly grinning. It highlights the absurdity of an individual life plotted against history, with the propaganda machine dictating his/her every thought and act. Yue Minjun claims that his smiling faces were inspired by a painting he saw of fellow artist Geng Jianyi (b.1962) in 1990, painting of a man smiling that he saw when he was still a student and still worked in the oil fields (his parents worked in the oil fields).

Art Mao

Feng Zhengjie

Shi Xinning

俸正杰

石心宁

Feng Zhengjie, China! China!, 2002, acrylic on canvass, 85 x 82 cm

Shi Xinning, Dialogue, 2001, oil on canvass, 89 x 151 cm Oil on canvas, courtesy of Uli Sigg Collection, Switzerland

born 1968, in Sichuan

12 ART MAO — 3Mao Art

Feng Zhengjie is part of the Sichuanese artist clique who came in the late 80s and moved to Beijing with artists like Zhou Chunya and Zhang Xiaogang. In his “Portrait of China series”, he uses gawdy colours; pink, red and turquoise to portray the women and men of the new China, part of the liberalized China, Deng Xiaoping created, the xia hai movement or “jumping into the sea of capitalism” movement. He borrows his style from the Sichuanese technique of mianzhu nianhua, local colourful aquarelles, showing people’s daily life. The figures in his paintings have Sichuanese traits, high moonlike eyebrows eyes, slit and googly eyes which go off in all directions like the chaos in modern-day China.

b. 1969, Liaoning

Inv. Nr. SHI Xinning 315 Künstler Shi Xinning SHI Xinningis the master at inserting Titel Duchamp Retrospective Exhibition in China Mao in various seminal photographs of Dimension the twentieth 100 x 100 cm century featuring Marilyn Technik Oil onSofia canvas Loren, Andy Warhol and Monroe, Jahr 2000-2001 Peggy Guggenheim, and then transforming Standort Lager Büron them into paintings. B. into a PLA soldier Position C9 family, Shi Xinning started this humorous Ausstellungen Mao series late into his career, years - Kunstmuseum Bern, Mahjong, 13.06. -ten 16.10.2005 Hamburger Kunsthalle, 14.9.2006 - 18.2.2007 after- graduating fromMahjong, the Shenyang Lu - Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork/ Ireland, The Year of the Golden PigXun Arts School. This works portrays the Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, 11.3. - 17.6.2007

Chairman and colleagues inspecting Marcel - Red Aside: Chinese Contemporary Art ofinstallation the Sigg Collection, Fundacio Duchamp’s famous ready-made Joan Miro, Barcelona, 21.2.-25.5.2008 urinal entitled Fountain and signed R. Mutt, 1917.- The urinal was rejected for exhibition Berkeley Art Museum, 5.9.2008-4.1.2009 (mahjong: Contemporary and subsequently photographed by Alfred Stieglitz. The work also refers to the routine Communist inspection of factories for national goods. If it were not for the signature on the urinal, this could simply be another « Mao inspecting factory » propaganda work. Shi Xining’s work also refers to the isolationist policy of Mao, which began in 1949, which kept China free of foreign

Art Mao

Duchamp Retrospective Exhibition, 2000-2001, oil on Canvas, 100 x 100cm, courtesy of Sigg Collection, Switzerland

Art Mao

Qu Lei Lei

Sui Jianguo

曲磊磊

隋建国

We are Invincible, 2012, Chinese ink and Xuan paper, 91x170 cm, courtesy Hua Gallery

Legacy Mantle, 1997 Cast aluminium, 244 x 179 x 122 cm, courtesy Pace Gallery

b. 1951 in Heilongjiang

Art Mao

Qu Lei Lei is considered one of the founding members of the Stars group. He is a modern Chinese calligrapher, painter and writer who emigrated to England in the 80s. His family were branded as capitalists during the Cultural Revolution and he worked as a barefoot doctor in Manchuria. It was only after Mao died in 1976, that he was able to take up his ink brush, having suffered too much during the Maoist years. His ink drawing Lei Feng, the hero Mao invented to egg on the masses, is dressed as a terracotta warrior, a sort of symbol of the need of an army to unify the country as Qinshihuangdi did during the Han dynasty. His drawings are an ironic take on China’s rise to world power and pre-eminence, referring to history as a reminder of how fragile empires can be. Qu Leilei is a visiting tutor at Ruskin College, Oxford and a teacher of traditional Chinese painting techniques at the Christies/SOAS Institute in London.

B. 1956 in Qingdao

Sui Jianguo was a true child of the Revolution. He went to work in a factory alongside his parents at the age of ten. Schooled in Maoist thought, endoctrinated by Maoist propaganda, he only started to paint age eighteen when a broken arm prevented him from working in the factory. His first works were commissions : socialist realist propaganda posters. It was only in 1976 at the death of Mao that he dared to complete his first painting, a landscape. With the liberalization of China, Sui Jianguo switched to more conceptual installation art. He began his ‘Mao Suit’ series in 1997. Drawing on this piece of clothing, which was obligatory, and the only outfit available during Maoist times, Sui Jianguo is commenting on freedom and memory. Standing alone, the Mao jacket can have the appearance of a straight jacket. Today, it is seldom worn and yet is universally recognized as a symbol of power.

Art Mao

Zhang Hongtu, Chairmen Mao, 12 units photo collage and acrylic on paper 8.5 x 11 inch each, 1989, courtesy of the artist

Art Mao

Art Mao

Art Mao is the first comprehensive attempt to collate this remarkable art and present it in a portable, easy-to-use format. Art Mao, the little red book of Chinese art since 1949, includes works by artists Ai Weiwei, Yu Youhan, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Huan, Zeng Fangzhi, Shen Jiawei and Xiao Feng – to name but a few – and is published to coincide with the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth.

ART MA

Chairman Mao is one of the most reproduced images of all time: countless millions of interpretations remind the world of the man’s (or the myth’s) importance to China. This visual celebration has been revisited in recent years through art; Chinese artists grappling with Mao’s legacy and his policies – and often challenging, at the same time, modern politics in China.