Fang Lijun

Soobin, Singapore
CP Foundation, Indonesia
Private Collection, Singapore

Li Xianting, Pi Li and Shu Hewen ed., Fang Lijun, Changsha, 2001, pp. 170-171, illustrated in color
Zhang Qunsheng ed., Chinese Artists of Today: Fang Lijun, Hebei, 2006, p. 413, illustrated in color

This work is in generally good condition overall. There is one 8 cm and one 4 cm mark resulting from the light restoration of two creases along the right edge of the painting near the center. This is visible on the catalogue illustration. This work was not examined under UV light.
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.
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Fang Lijun, one of the founders of the Cynical Realist style in China, portrays his generation's disillusionment through the repetitive motif of bald-headed thugs who do not so much display as enact their alienation.  The barely hidden aggression of Fang's figures, whose features seem to be modeled on the artist himself, offers a dissolute view of contemporary Chinese society, which seems to have been overwhelmed by an every-man-for-himself materialism.

Fang has portrayed this dystopian view consistently, and his status as a reigning star of the art of his time has not diminished over the years.  Indeed, the artist's arresting combination of cruelty and lyricism - the persistence of bright colors, flowers, and children alongside his iconic characters of dispossession - remains durable and noteworthy for its ability to call out, with rage and mockery, the failed success of his cohort's idealism.  The complete loss of idealistic faith, borne of both public and private lack of initiative, is the major disappointment of his generation, a generation old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution and witness the revamping of socialism into the rabid materialism of American-style capitalism.  Few have depicted this sense of loss as acutely as Fang, who remains a powerful voice detailing the estrangement of an age bracket now coming into its prime.

In 98.10.1 (Lot 24), however, the artist deploys a lighter tone, fitting into a large canvas a group of his familiar bald lowlifes.  Many of them look above into a lyrical, blue, partly-cloudy sky, which appears to be pelting a bouquet of rainbow-colored roses upon them.  Fang's persistent vision of beauty and power is here rendered not in his usual disaffected realism, but in a more bucolic, one might even say joyful mode—although the group might well be a collection of prisoners aimlessly gazing at the sky as though waiting for deliverance.  The floral emblems of beauty which punctuate the men's gazes and the surface of the picture itself might be read two ways:  as redeeming the painting's bleak view of apparently lost symbolic figures, or emphasizing the deliberate ridiculousness of the scene, the juxtaposition of the oversized heads with dainty flowers only a momentary mirage amidst the chronic plight of Fang's characters.  Despite Fang Lijun's pessimistic outlook, he paints with a dynamism and technical esprit that belies his would-be hopelessness; the sheer energy of the painting, its abundant forms and vigor, suggest that art itself is a palliative for the disaffection Fang describes.