Zhang Xiaogang

Galerie de France, Paris
Claudio Poleschi Arte Contemporanea, Lucca
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer with slightly darker greys throughout the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is extremely minor wear to the left hand corner tip. There is a minute media accretion to the rop right extreme edge toward the top right hand corner. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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In terms of iconic value, no other series of contemporary Chinese paintings possesses the power or importance of Zhang Xiaogang's signature 'Bloodline' series to which the present work belongs.  Intricately tied to China's processing of the Western painting tradition, as well as to the Chinese culture of collectivism and to the concept of 'family', the present work Portrait D marks the pinnacle of Zhang Xiaogang's mature style and attests to the enduring power of his imagery. Drawing on compositional conventions taken from early twentieth-century photographic portraiture, and pictorially imbued with the visual language of a fading socialist tradition, these nameless grisaille portraits have become nothing less than visual shorthand for the entire category known as "Chinese contemporary art." Indeed, Zhang Xiaogang's muted Bloodline Series seems to have captured the very essence of the historical drama of constructing a prosperous contemporary society from the embers of a revolution.

The iconicity of Xiaogang's 'Bloodline' series belies the complex evolutions of which they are the direct result. It is a story of an artist's transition at the end of a long decade of experimentation, but it is also a story of the beginnings of a Chinese presence on the international art world. In these works Xiaogang depicts an endless genealogy of imagined forebears and progenitors, each unnervingly similar and yet distinguished by minute differences. As the artist explained, "On the surface, the faces in these portraits appear as calm as still water, but underneath there is great emotional turbulence. Within this state of conflict the propagation of obscure and ambiguous destinies is carried on from generation to generation." (Zhang Xiaogang cited in: Edward Lucie-Smith, Umbilical Cord of History, Paris 2004, p.12)

Although painted at a time of fast-paced change and modernization in China, Zhang Xiaogang's 'Bloodline' series looks 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 disruption. During the course of the Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, countless family photographs and portraits were among the many historical documents destroyed. Zhang's paintings address the loss of such irreplaceable memories. By 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 seriousness of the attitudes that the nameless sitters project. These are not the informal, spontaneous shots of family life of today's generation, but rather the highly staged, formulaic groups of photographs in which the proletariat of yesterday conventionally sought to commit their dreams and aspirations to immortality in front of the lens. "I am seeking to create an effect of 'false photographs' –to re-embellish already embellished histories and lives." (ibid., p.11) By imposing faint lines, almost blood vessels, across the canvas the artist links each work in the series to one another as though they all form part of an extended forgotten family.