Art Mao Eblad

1Art MAohorizonsedit ions

Art MAo 3Art MAo

Art director: Pia CopperEditorial director: Christopher Copper-IndPicture research: Lauriane RogerDesign: Stefano BianchiPrinted and bound by Toppan in China

Preface © Ai Weiwei 2014Text © 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.

Horizons Editions Ltd27 Old Gloucester StreetLondon WC1N 3XXUnited Kingdomhorizonseditions.com

First published in 2014 by Horizons EditionsISBN 978 0 957 151239

CONTENTS

5 Preface, by Ai Weiwei11 Art and Mao, by Francesca Dal Lago19 ART MAO293 Index of artists

4 Art MAo 5Art MAo

b. in Shanghai in 1943 Yu Youhan is considered by many to be the founder of political pop art in Shanghai, bridging the East and the West and inventing a new artistic language. Yu Youhan’s Mao portrait series is perhaps the best known of all the works deconstructing the Great Leader. His use of flowers, peonies, symbol of happiness and good fortune, and almost part of the gaudy aesthetic of the Chinese countryside (almost like the pattern on some hua bu fabrics produced during the Cultural Revolution) make Mao appear more of popular icon and cartoonish figure. Despite the Cultural Revolution in full swing, Yu managed to graduate from the Central Art Academy in Beijing in 1973. 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

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

Yu YOuhaN余友涵

Inv. Nr. YU Youhan 1273 Künstler YU Youhan Titel Untitled (Mao Marylin) Dimension 150 x 149 cm Technik Oil on canvas Jahr 2005 Standort Lager Büron Position D 5 Ausstellungen - Hamburger Kunsthalle, Mahjong, 14.9.2006 - 18.2.2007

- Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mahjong, 21.7.-11.11.2007 - Berkeley Art Museum, 5.9.2008-4.1.2009 (mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection) - Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, 21.2.-25.5.2008 (Red Aside: Chinese contemporary art of the Sigg Collection) - Peabody Essex Museum, Salem/Boston, 18.2.-17.5.2009 (Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection) - Treuhand-Kammer, Kongress 2009, KKL Luzern. Thema: China - Neue

b. 1978 in Fujian 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.

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

Wu JuNYONg吴俊勇

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

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b. 1965, Beijing, China 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 modern-day 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.

Mao Generation, 992-99, oil on canvas,with carved woode frame, 102 x 85 cm, Photo Patrick Goetelen/Mythos Dynasty Collection

Liu WEi刘韡

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.

Totem Recollection no.2, C-print

TiaNTaiquaN田太权

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b. 1942 in Lanxi, Heilongjiang

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).

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

Li ShaN李山

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).

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

YuE MiNJuN岳敏君


b. 1969, Liaoning Shi Xinning is the master at inserting Mao in various seminal photographs of the twentieth century featuring Marilyn Monroe, Sofia Loren, Andy Warhol and Peggy Guggenheim, and then transforming them into paintings. B. into a PLA soldier family, Shi Xinning started this humorous Mao series late into his career, ten years after graduating from the Shenyang Lu Xun Arts School. This works portrays the Chairman and colleagues inspecting Marcel Duchamp’s famous ready-made installation urinal entitled Fountain and signed R. Mutt, 1917. The urinal was rejected for exhibition 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

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

Shi XiNNiNg石心宁

Inv. Nr. SHI Xinning 315 Künstler SHI Xinning Titel Duchamp Retrospective Exhibition in China Dimension 100 x 100 cm Technik Oil on canvas Jahr 2000-2001 Standort Lager Büron Position C 9 Ausstellungen

- Kunstmuseum Bern, Mahjong, 13.06. - 16.10.2005 - Hamburger Kunsthalle, Mahjong, 14.9.2006 - 18.2.2007 - Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork/ Ireland, The Year of the Golden Pig- Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, 11.3. - 17.6.2007 - Red Aside: Chinese Contemporary Art of the Sigg Collection, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, 21.2.-25.5.2008 - Berkeley Art Museum, 5.9.2008-4.1.2009 (mahjong: Contemporary

born 1968, in Sichuan 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.

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

FENg ZhENgJiE俸正杰

ART MAO — 3


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


b. 1951 in Heilongjiang 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.

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

qu LEi LEi曲磊磊

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.

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

Sui JiaNguO隋建国

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Zhang Hongtu, Chairmen Mao, 12 units - photo collage and acrylic on paper8.5 x 11 inch each, 1989, courtesy of the artist

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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.

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.

410pp | 284 images | Paperback | 120x170mm | September 2014 |ISBN 978 0 957 151239

£29 €35 $45

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