Elder Brother, Lu Peng:
I hope you are well. I feel so warm after reading your words about Sanya. I believe what we have discussed, did and thought in Sanya will show their historic meaning and cultural value as time passes by. I totally agree with the way you support AAA's work and development by consigning our spontaneous paper works made in Sanya to an auction. Thanks for all you have done. Regards, and have a nice summer, Zhang Xiaogang June 15th, 2007.
Note: last work made with Wu Shanzhuan (maybe a tribute to Qi Baishi?). Works in brush and ink on xuan paper (70x140)
The artist himself calls the period between 1982 and 1985 his 'dark era' (mogui shiqi). It was a time when an individual'sfate was decided by someone else. In his case, Zhang Xiaogang was allocated a job at the Kunming Opera Troupe after graduating from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. His job there was to paint the stage scenery, but he was not a set designer. The period in which he could breathe the fresh air of nature had come to an end. Although he continued to go with friends to sketch at Guishan, he was confined to working as a set designer most of the time. Zhang felt that his inner being was stifled. His reading of Western books and his obsession with music aggravated the artist's depression, anxiety, loneliness and sadness. During this period he felt that his aims in life had been extinguished, and he needed to rediscover what he was going to do next. However, what on earth was a non-professional art worker capable of doing in an opera troupe? Instinctively, Zhang continued to paint, feeling at a loose end. He began drinking copiously and lived an irregular life tormented by ill health. He was eventually admitted to hospital because of alcohol-induced stomach bleeding. In his white hospital bed, Zhang recalled memories of illnesses, fear and death, his sensitivity to an imaginary supernatural world, formed during his early years when his mother was ill. Everything seemed to be connected to the tragic aspects of life. After his hospitalization in 1984, Zhang's sketches and oil paintings began to include images of the phantom world, while the more idyllic motifs of his earlier works disappeared. In his Phantom series (Youling xilie), Zhang expressed what he felt on the hospital bed and inside the ward, using surrealism. He wanted to portray his fear and anxiety about death. These paintings are imbedded with the characteristics of a diary of the soul.
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In 1985, Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Xuhui and several other artists teamed up and organized an exhibition titled New Figurative Images. When Zhang Long, a friend from Kunming studying at the Art Department of East China Normal University in Shanghai, saw paintings by Mao Xuhui, Pan Dehai and Zhang during a holiday in Kunming, he was 'deeply moved and thought that the paintings in Shanghai were weak, a bit too sweet and lifeless'. Zhang's friend, Mao Xuhui has left an interesting account of this in 'The New Figurative Images Exhibition and the Southwestern Art Research Group' (Ji Xinjuxiang huazhan he huajia Yiji Xinan Yishu Yanjiu Qunti):
[Zhang Long] proposed that we stage a show in Shanghai. He could help us arrange the exhibition venue, but we had to share the expenses. So our most urgent task was earning some money. To that end, we got involved with interior decoration companies and engaged in remodeling houses and drawing up plans. We put in a great deal of effort for a time, but made little money. Then a telegram came from Shanghai. As the exhibition venue had been arranged, we had to act quickly. We had to borrow money. Pan (Dehai) had 600 yuan, Mao (Xuhui) borrowed 300, and Zhang (Xiaogang) borrowed 200. The three of us packed our paintings into eight boxes and made two trips on a tricycle to the railroad station to arrange their shipment. Due to the urgency, we used an express service, which cost us 400 yuan. Both Pan and Mao asked their bosses for leave of absence before they went to Shanghai for the exhibition. Zhang was stranded in Kunming on business. We had to do everything related to the show in person, such as painting the advertising, printing invitations, advertising in newspapers, moving and hanging the paintings, and decorating the venue. At night we slept in the student dorm or classrooms at the Department of Fine Arts in the East China Normal University, and we had to evade the questions of campus guards on a daily basis. “
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Zhang's visit to Germany (1992) only lasted three months. Before heading back to China, he wrote a letter in August to artist Ye Yongqing and art critic Wang Lin. In it, he admitted that when face to face with Western art, he was not as moved as he had thought he would be:
I have seen many an exhibition at Documenta Kassel and at'Contemporary Chinese Art. Truth be told, the first impression was not that exciting. Like Westerners, we have to see things in their cultural contexts, so if you are a bit far away, you cannot sufficiently appreciate many of the art works.
The artist made a comparison between capitalist Germany and socialist China, and concluded that, in comparison, China has seen vast and rapid changes in the past ten years, like an upstart. As Deng Xiaoping had hoped, some of us became rich first. He noticed that in the West the once antagonistic and rebellious avant-garde art had proliferated and was omnipresent. He felt that the deepest impression he had after visiting the West was that there was too much art, too many art forms, and they were too liberated and consequently not so noticeable. The meaning and value of art itself had been tampered with and dismembered. That was a vivid contrast to what was happening in China.
When he was discussing his disappointment at the absence of great artists, such as Beuys and Kiefer, and their works at Documenta Kassel, he also described the luxurious and aristocratic atmosphere that now pervaded contemporary Western art, noting the visits to exhibitions of international VIPs and royalty. This was somewhat different from the perception Chinese artists had of the state of Western art. At the same time, the work K18 by the group of Chinese avant-garde artists represented at the exhibition, Lti Shengzhong, Wang Luyan, Ni Haifeng and Li Shan, had an 'underground character that seemed like a decorative curlicue (peichen) at a capitalist event'. (From the letter to Wang Lin and Ye Yongqing dated 24 August 1992)
In October that year, Zhang returned to China. Now he had a new ideological background and personal experiences to tap into. He had a new assured understanding of the once mysterious Western art and of the vitality generated by domestic commercial trends. Earlier, when troubled by depression and a pure sense of inner conflict he had completed works titled The Black Trilogy (Heise sanbuqu) and the series Hand-written Note (Shouji xilie), which did not fit well with the Chinese domestic scene at the time. Is the gloomy channel between life and death really only a bigoted illusion or some psychological need that is hard to shake off? What on earth is the relationship between reality and illusion? For modernists, the soul is of absolute importance, but can the soul itself become an object of renewed examination? The artist himself had employed the term 'spiritual realism' (xinling xianshi zhuyi) but by the latter half of 1992, he started using another simpler term, 'contemporary art' (dangdai yishu). He had found the exploration of essentialism to be a bottomless abyss, despite the fact that he retained his obsession with sentimentalism and moroseness. He then wrote: 'The approach to entering a contemporary artistic state is characterized by distinct individualistic art styles (the right approach to the language of art); at the same time, one must also transcend the mannerism complex (new images, new style, new manner, and other 'imagistic principles”).
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After a period of extended meditation and experiments, Zhang now seemed to be moving away from his obsession with the bottomless abyss. In that year, he painted several works that became a crucial turning point in his career: Yellow Portrait (Huangse xiaoxiang), Red Portrait (Hongse xiaoxiang), Bloodline: Mother and Son (Xueyuan: Mu zi), and Red Baby (Hongse nanying). Yellow Portrait and Red Portrait feature his friends Ye Yongqing and Mao Xuhui. We may regard these two paintings as an experimental attempt to get rid of excessive expressionist language. Bloodline: Mother and Son and Red Baby, as well as these two works belong in content to the same group treating the themes of bloodlines, life, growing pains and imaginable death. Zhang retained the original core and motifs of his art, and even his earlier surrealistic psychological characteristics, the accidental light and the combination of objects devoid of natural logic. The artist steadfastly maintained what he considered to be the most important aspect of art and, at the same time, opened up the linguistic expression of his art. By the end of 1993, Zhang was moving rapidly along what was regarded as a typical iconological path, and with the appearance of the piece Bloodline: A Big Family (Xueyuan: Da jiating) in 1994, the 'shackles' of expressionism had been completely removed. How does the artist explain the change in his artistic language?
The elements that constitute my recent art works stem from some old photos from a private collection, and from charcoal drawings that were once seen everywhere in the streets, in addition to what history and reality have instilled in our complicated minds. I cannot say clearly which string in the depths of my soul was pulled by these carefully restored old photos. They made me think and I loved them. Maybe because at that time these old pictures not only provided me wirh the joy of reminiscence but they also presented a simple, direct but somewhat illusory visual language, which validated my intention to discard attempts at enigmatic mannerism and bloated romanticism. At the same time, such iconological languages like old pictures and charcoal sketches embody things that I am familiar with but indifferent to, among which are the aesthetic requirements that ordinary Chinese have long been accustomed to, such as the emphasis on collectivism at the expense of individualism, modesty, neutrality and a lyrical aesthetic. (From Personal Account, 1995)
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Even though the artist discovered Cynical Realism, Political Pop and the subsequent Gaudy Art, he decided against involvement with any of them. Although he was still lonely, many critics were skeptical of the ambiguous, plain characters in his works. They suspected that the artist had decided to work as though preparing pictures for a calendar and had become ensnared by philistinism; in the process he had lost his sharp edge and his willingness to engage in the battle between 'modem' and 'contemporary' art.
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In 2006, Zhang began an experiment in exploring visual resources in the history of socialism. Now, he is no longer interested in existential questions regarding life and death, nor the relentless pursuit of essentialism. With inner solace, as well as energy, he can plumb these historical cultural resources, when his memory is again assailed by images of history, whether they are photographs of the way we once lived or labored simply in the days of socialist reconstruction, because these images are no longer clear, just like our memory, which is also limited. The artist says that we ought to observe history and reality at a distance. At the same time, we build an imaginary kingdom in which our soul can temporarily seek solace. To be able to read and appreciate Zhang's work still requires knowledge of history. The artist chose photographs produced with crude equipment, scenes from the socialist period of China's history. What is different is that in these scenes, the turmoil and discordant sounds have disappeared, rendering the scenes differently to memory. In his art works, socialism appears bleak and crowded places are devoid of revolutionary spirit. Zhang has utterly and completely transformed our recollection of socialism. He wants to say: 'In fact, what is seen in the paintings is only a legacy of history and the once buoyant scenes of socialist construction in full-swing are only a hazy memory. When we reassess history, why are we unable to read the past from the perspective of today?' The artist retains typical symbols of history-red flags, loudspeakers and other historical props. By re-portraying historical scenes, he hopes to trigger people's recall and reinterpretation of history and historical issues. The artist is not trying to provide rational political answers but is simply trying to retain his long years of contemplation about life, history and the spirituality of human beings in his own work, in order to provide a source of solace in his inner world. In the illusory kingdom of hypothetical images that the artist has created, we can still make sense of the history of a lonely soul, and its melancholy.
Artists in Art History. Lü Peng.