Zhang Xiaogang

Private Collection, Asia
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 7 April, 2007, lot 158

Umbilical Cord of History: Paintings by Zhang Xiaogang, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, China, 2004, p. 43
Claudia Albertini, Avatars and Antiheroes: A Guide to Contemporary Chinese Artists, Kodansha International, Tokyo, Japan, 2008, p. 164
Victoria Lu ed., 100 Contemporary Chinese Artist Collection - Zhang Xiaogang, Modern Press, Beijing, China, 2009, p. 71

This work is generally in good condition. Consolidation is recommended for craquelures in two areas on the lower part to prevent paint loss. There are hairline craquelures scattered on the surface with the longest measuring about 3.2 cm on the lower center. There are also general abrasions and paint losses, with the largest paint loss measuring about 1.5 cm long. Please note that it was not examined under ultraviolet light and out of its frame.
"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."

Weight of History
Zhang Xiaogang’s Tiananmen No.1

It is hard to find themes of political figures or landscapes within Zhang Xiaogang’s paintings, which are largely devoted to the image of the individual self. The Tiananmen Square featured in Tiananmen series proves to be the only exception to the case. Tiananmen No.1 (Lot 838) from 1993, also the first of the series, is furthermore rare as it is the only piece from the three works to depict a yellow gate tower, while the remaining two are rendered in red. 1993 was a crucial year in Zhang’s artistic career as he had just returned from his research trip in  Germany and began to experiment with the different styles and subject matters in the portraits of his family and friends. through deploying a panoramic angle from the square to the gate tower, Tiananmen series from the same year would provide an alternative look into the artist and his generation’s intricate ties with the historical events that had happened in the capital city.

Tiananmen Square has always been regarded as the symbolic center of China’s political power. The large public square in front of the gate tower also becomes the perfect place for mass gatherings and movements. Indeed, every time when the square is populated, it would certainly forecast dramatic changes within the Chinese society. Ever since the fifteenth year under the ruling of Ming Dynasty’s Emperor Yongle (1417), Tiananmen Square has been used as the site for issuing edicts and important ceremonies. After the fall of the dynasty era, it was then used by the Chinese government as the center for inspecting the army. Later on, during the revolution period, Mao Zedong would even meet with the Red Guards from the gate tower, reaffirming the highest level of political power associated with the square. The distinctive geographic location is also favoured by political activists who organized numerous demonstrations in the area, with one being the national May Fourth Movement in 1919, when the public protested against the Beijyang government in agreeing to grant the rights of Shandong province from Germany to Japan. With the establishment of the New China era, Tiananmen Square continues to be closely linked with historical events such as the April Fifth Incident in 1976 and Tiananmen Incident in 1989. After the image of Mao Zedong, the many political symbols implied within have made Tiananmen Square to be a popular motif for Chinese artists working in the 1990’s.

The present work is the first work from the Tiananmen series in 1993. On view, contrary to the red gate tower presented in the second and third work (as seen in image 2 and 3), a yellow gate tower can be glimpsed from afar. The fabled Gate of Heavenly Peace (as the name literally translates) grows larger with each canvas, evoking the photographic device of zooming in on a target. A series of musical bars adorns the top of the canvas, seemingly cryptic notations which actually render the tune of a popular song. The monumental edifice is seen against a gray sky, and across a sea of chiaroscuro paving stones. The composition of the stones differs only in length from that of the trompe l’oeil frame which surrounds the image. Perhaps most significantly two parallel red lines travel the distance of the square, rushing toward convergence at the painting’s vanishing point. This marks the first occurrence of such lines, which would later become the basis for the moniker “Bloodlines” given by the curator Johnson Chang to Zhang Xiaogang’s Big Family series.

Zhang Xiaogang traveled a slightly different trajectory than other artists of his generation. He was an early bloomer, graduating from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1982 and achieving some renown instantly when Li Xianting wrote about his unorthodox graduation work in the influential Fine Arts Newspaper. During the so-called 1985 “New Wave,” when the academies were undergoing their most intense spout of innovation and change, Zhang Xiaogang was outside the core of the scene, a difficult four-year era that saw him hospitalized and withdrawn from large-scale creative work. When finally invited back to his alma mater as a teacher in 1986, he quickly set upon assembling the elements that have become central to his later famous work: the palette of grays, yellows, and reds, the room-corner perspective, the vaguely surrealist assemblages of heads, hands and books. In short, the late 1980’s were an extremely productive period for Zhang Xiaogang, capped by the event in 1989 which ended on Tiananmen Square.

The critic Karen Smith has written about a series of oil and watercolor works on paper that Zhang produced immediately after June 4th, pointing to their “aura of religiosity [that] was invoked almost as a prayer, for inner calm, an act of meditation”. These works demonstrate a rawness and solemnity that can only stem from the incident, juxtaposing iconic religious motifs from Christianity and Buddhism in a search for transcendence.

But life moved on, and even got better, for Zhang Xiaogang in the years immediately following. His art continued to move forward, his palette coming into closer relief and his formal vocabulary growing ever more succinct and direct. Personally speaking, he married Teng Lei, his fiancée of three years in 1992. Perhaps most influential on his later work, Zhang Xiaogang traveled in June of that year to visit her in Germany, where she was then studying. On this extended trip he was finally able to experience firsthand the works to which he had looked for inspiration through the 1980’s, but perhaps the real fruit of the journey for him was the chance to encounter work by Gerhard Richter. Zhang has noted that “I had no idea how to express the feeling [photographs] imparted to me within a painting until I saw the work of Gerhard Richter in Germany. Before going to Germany my favorite artist was Anselm Kiefer.” It was at this point that some of Zhang’s compositions began to feature a painted, frame-like border-an element central to the presentation of the present work.

Back in Sichuan and then Kunming after his return, Zhang Xiaogang began a period of thinking in which his Big Family series has its origin. During this pivotal moment in 1993, he painted first his red and yellow babies, and then the three paintings of Tiananmen. Zhang Xiaogang’s nascent, Richter-esque interest in photographic depiction, which would ground his work through most of the nineties, is nowhere so evident as in this painting, which carries with it a sense of distortion through a camera lens. It is as if the events of 1989 would reside, like the yellow monument at the back of this composition, forever on the horizon of memory, there to be zoomed in or out upon at the viewer’s will. In that sense the painting, and its unclear relation to the paper works that immediately followed June 4th, is an apt metaphor for transitions in Chinese art and society during the 1990s. Raw memory and reaction gives inevitably way to distant, stylized presentation, connected to the past only by tiny, fragile strands of red.