Zhang Xiaogang

Galerie de France, Paris
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie de France, Zhang Xiaogang Forget and Remember, 2003, pp. 40-41, illustrated in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Shenzhen, He Xiangning Art Museum, Image is Power, 2002, p. 89, illustrated in colour
Pascal Le Thorel-Daviot, Nouveau Dictionnaire des Artistes Contemporains, Paris 2004, p. 321, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is lighter and brighter in the original. The child's head has less red and softer tones throughout in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are very light handling marks along the centre of both edges and a small rub mark with associated small losses at the top of the lady's head. There is a very faint diagonal crease to the man's forehead above his right eye, one towards the centre of the left edge and one towards the top left corner. There is a very faint rub mark in the lady's hair and a few very small unobtrusive paint losses in her left cheek. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet 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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Measuring three metres in width, Big Family No. 1 is by far the largest work by Zhang Xiaogang to come to auction. Executed in 2001, it is the culmination of the artist's highly acclaimed Bloodlines series which he began in 1993, a corpus of work which was his sole focus for over a decade. As such, this ranks among the most important works in the series, a monumental embodiment of the revolutionary spirit of Chinese avant-garde art in which we witness the maturation of his earlier style and the resolution of a distinct and powerful conceptual language.

 

The atmosphere of Big Family No.1 encapsulates the mood at a critical juncture in twentieth-century Chinese history, conjuring allusions to received impressions of China under the authoritarian aegis of Chairman Mao, whose influence is still felt today. Although painted at a time of fast-paced change and modernization in China, Zhang Xiaogang's paintings look back to the country's turbulent political past, to a time when the misjudged policies of the Cultural Revolution brought protracted periods of widespread social, economic and political Chaos. Working from vintage black and white photographs, Zhang Xiaogang taps into the sensibilities of that era, identifying something quintessentially Chinese in the formality of the poses and the seriousness of the attitudes that the sitters project. These are not the informal, spontaneous snapshots of family life of today's generation, but rather the highly staged, formulaic group photographs in which the proletariat of yesteryear conventionally sought to commit their dreams and aspirations to immortality in front of the lens. Set against a nebulous grey background, the red colouration of the young boy is reminiscent of the practice of hand-tinting black and white photographs, a technique which was widespread before the development of colour film processing. Filling his studio with such images, predominantly those of his own ancestral heritage, the artist imbued himself in the zeitgeist of a bygone era.

 

Zhang Xiaogang felt a particular communion with images of his own parents, photographs of his mother as a young and beautiful woman as they began their young family in the 1960s at the height of the chaos. The present work, with the configuration of youthful mother, father and single child, bears striking similarities with a photograph of the artists' parents with holding him as a young child, the youngest of four brothers.  Standing before this monumental work, one senses the personal empathy of the artist as he connects with the trauma endured by his own family and their entire generation. As the limpid, watery eyes of the sitters stare out at us like glistening black pearls, there is a tangible sense of catharsis for the suffering that they endured.

 

On a trip to Germany in the early 1990s, the artist encountered the 1960s photo paintings of Gerhard Richter, and the exquisitely soft, contour-dissolving technique exhibited here is indebted to the German master's influence. However, through Zhang Xiaogang's artistic process, the postcard-sized source photograph is dramatically enlarged to monumental proportions in this painting. Holding incredible power from a distance, Zhang Xiaogang owes his facility with working on this scale to his formal training in the State run arts education program of the PRC, in which students were expected to reproduce propagandistic images on billboard scale. As you approach this work, the gorgeous nuanced mid-tones dissolve into liquid passages of abstract greys which offer equal reward for the eye from distance and close range.

 

Crucially, the augmentation in scale drastically alters its semiotic charge of the image, as the pocket-sized keepsake photograph is enlarged to be considered in the context of a work of art. On the one hand Big Family No. 1 is a comment on the indefatigable importance of the family in China, in which, rather like the Royal Houses of Europe, the unbroken branches of family trees which date back through dynasties are sacrosanct. On close inspection, we see thin veins of red pigment which link mother, father and child concretely and physically. These lines - the Bloodlines of the overarching series title - are the physical manifestation of the branches of the family tree, the intrinsic and sacred bond of family. The Cultural Revolution sought to dismantle this traditional order and hierarchy that had been in place since Confucious in 500BC and with the rise of Communism the family metaphor was increasingly applied to the nation. In this sense, Zhang's generic, anonymous family could be read as a metaphor for the whole nation under the leveling principles of the Cultural Revolution, in which biological bonds of family were replaced by bonds of political comradeship.

 

However, Zhang Xiaogang's work is much more personal than a simple political gloss infers and Big Family No. 1 is steeped in the family experiences of his own life. Each figure is depicted with a shimmering red patch, rather like the chance reflection of light in a photograph. However, in the context of Zhang Xiaogang's art we feel instinctively that they are troubling. The red bloodlines are the carriers of heritage but also - and more importantly - heredity. While on one level Big Family No. 1 is a metaphor for the destructive aspects of China's era of revolutionary struggle, it is also Zhang's potent personal metaphor for human biology and the power of individual genes to transmit disease from one generation to the next. This is particularly pertinent to the artist's personal family history. Firstly, in the mid 1980s, the artist came close to death from alcoholism; secondly, and more importantly, his mother suffered from schizophrenia. Her illness took its toll on her family and Zhang Xiaogang, as the youngest of four boys, suffered most the prejudice that mental illness fomented. In a society where ignorance breeds superstition, any deviation from the norm - be it alcoholism or mental illness - is attributed to the wrath of the heavens. As the artist learned to his cost, ostracision from society was the inevitable result of the stigma attached to congenital defect.

 

For Zhang Xiaogang, who has a young daughter himself, there is a tangible fear of the incipience of his mother's illness and the guilt attached to the thought of passing on the defect to the next generation. This fear is an ominous subtext to the painting, in which the potential for transmission besmirches the patches of light that touch the figures' faces, made all the more tragic by the hauntingly liquid innocence of the eyes.

 

Primarily the expression of one individual's experience, the enduring appeal of Zhang Xiaogang's body of work is that it dovetails with the broader psychological trauma of an entire generation. Like Honorée de Balzac's Comédie Humaine in the Nineteenth century, when seen in its totality the vast artistic project of the Bloodlines series paints a vivid picture of familial and societal relations at a pivotal moment in modern history. As one of the most ambitious paintings in the series, Big Family No. 1 is one of the best examples by one of the most influential painters in modern China.