Wang Guangyi

signed in Chinese and English and dated 95.8.18, framed

Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne

This work is generally in good condition. There are spots of discolouration on the left side of the yellow background. Please note that it was not examined under ultraviolet light.
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VISA with Yellow Background
Wang Guangyi

In 1995, during the period of his Great Criticism series, Wang Guangyi inaugurated a new pictorial schemata: the Visa series which composed of six works, Wang shifts his vision towards international politics, psychology, and sociology. VISA with Yellow Background (Lot 736) is precisely one of these six. Despite the iconic stature, this is the first piece that is available from the Visa series. The current lot thus presents an extremely precious opportunity for collectors.

As a representative of Rationalism during the ’85 New Wave Movement, Wang Guangyi had a fair share of utopian ideals. Within the Northern Art Group that he formed with Shu Qun and other artists, Wang was a primary conceptualizer. In his own painting practice of the 80’s he also attempted to “express a beauty of high-minded ideals, encompassing the eternal equilibrium of humanism and a healthy positivity.”¹ Wang’s broad reading of philosophy further shaped his artistic outlook. In the 80’s he believed that true art was metaphysical, possessing a Nietzschean sense of tragedy as well as a profound religious spirit. His representative work from1985, Frozen Northern Wastelands, is formally distilled and orderly. Its heavy and dense gray palette and blob-like figures, also express a chilling solemnity.

In 1986, Wang Guangyi was relocated to Zhuhai, a place somewhat distanced from the modernist currents of the inland. He began to read books on classical art profusely, which reignited his previous interest in Leonardo, Ingres, Poussin, and others from his university days. Gombrich’s notion of schema and correction and theory of cultural continuity also inspired Wang, who in 1986 embarked on the Post-Classical series, which took classical art and canonical texts as the objects of its analysis. He used the vocabulary he created in Wastelands —figures in a frozen stasis, a grayish palette, and compositional equilibrium—to “correct” the classical prototypes in art history. Distilling and purifying classical idioms, he brought these familiar pictures to a more solemn and loftier spiritual state.

In 1987, motivated by his interest in rational analysis and schema-correction, Wang Guangyi created the Red Rationalism and Black Rationalism series. The former can be seen as the continuation of the Post-Classical series. By the time he began his Great Criticism series in the 90’s, he was no longer refining his style as he was in the previous decade, but rather created images by employing the pastiche method of Pop Art directly. Great Criticism responded to Chinese society’s veering towards a new consumerism, and Wang Guangyi created his idiosyncratic symbolic system through a personal interpretation of Pop visual style.

At the center of VISA with Yellow Background, Wang has painted the face of a man. According to his recollections, this figure originated in a newspaper of the time. It had nothing special, but for this reason it had a general significance. In Wang’s rendition, the man has vague facial features and a blank expression. The eye-catching phrases “PASSPORT” and “VISAS” appear on his head and chest. His birth place, name, and gender are casually given in English. Then there are a number of misleading and confusing arrows. The text is emphasised with red labels. All this makes Visa a faithful continuation of the analytical rigour of Wang Guangyi’s work from the 80’s. Having developed a personal artistic language, Wang at this time was no longer preoccupied with stylistic experimentation. As the curator Wang Zhuan writes, “These works (i.e. the VISA series) demonstrate several consistent characteristics of the artist’s work: directness of symbolism, courage, and witty treatment of tensions of the material.”2

Describing the inspiration behind the VISA series, Wang said, “… VISA originated in the images of nations from the visas given out by various consulates. In a sense, ‘visa ’ places everyone in the shadow of the question of national authority. Because of this, everyone is under investigation. Among the various documents accompanying people from life to death in contemporary civilization, the visa is perhaps the most ideologically-charged… A person’s emotions, faith, national identity, and other subtle questions are all manifested in the visa.”³ From the above, Wang’s satiric intent in the series becomes very clear. Though an individual, a person’s identity and existence are yet represented and concealed by textual data and documents. In the VISA series Wang Guangyi presents a critique of general relevance: everyone is in the shadow of the question of national authority, and this cultural experience has a sustained influence on the mentality of a society. The formation of the series has a very concrete background. After the 45th Venice Biennale of 1993, Chinese artists gained access to the stage of global contemporary art. While the majority of them were busy establishing their cultural identity with Chinese symbols and at the same time attempting to insert themselves into the system of power in global contemporary art, Wang Guangyi began to investigate “ideological systems” within “international politics.” He has described his work of this period as “turning internal issues into external issues.” Compared to the earlier Great Criticism series, here Wang has greater conceptual openness. If Great Criticism was primarily constructed from the symbols of Red China, then in Visa Wang has pushed beyond the narrow confines of “China issues” into “world issues.” He is still telling stories of nationhood and politics, but now the stories have general anthropological significance.

Interestingly, although Wang Guangyi had been participating actively in international exhibitions of various levels and kinds since the mid-90’s, works like Visa were not exhibited within China until very late. This is perhaps because of the sensitivity of their themes and other factors of China’s situation. This forms a striking contrast to the wide recognition Wang was enjoying outside China. In a conversation with Uli Sigg, he mentioned that he met Sigg precisely because of an experience with visas in 1995. Sigg visited Wang in his studio afterwards and bought two of his works, one from Great Criticism and the other a figural work from Visa. Two decades later, we can appreciate, as Sigg did, the internal connections among works from different phases of Wang’s career. His representative works from that time have passed from private collections into public institutions, and the time when only Westerners paid attention to Wang’s art is long past, but all this also demonstrates the acknowledgment and recognition he receives from the general public today.

1 Wang Guangyi, What kind of Painting Does Our Era Need?, Jiangsu Huakan, 1986: 4

2 Wang Zhuan, Visual Politics: Another Wang Guangyi, Lingnan Art Printing House, 2008

3 Wang Guangyi, On Expunging Zealous Humanism, Jiangsu Huakan, 1990