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Lot Essay
Naked Truth
Finished in 1994, the oil painting Bathroom (Lot 7) typifies the mutability of Zeng Fanzhi's style in the course of his energetic art career, while at the same time presenting a work of ultimate sincerity tapped from the artist's own persona, which he is at no pains to conceal. It is unreconstructed human nature freed from the physical confines of surreal characterization, and thus it expresses the most naked candour as between it and the audience.
Since the advent of modern art, major movements in various styles and with diverse contexts have arisen to span the hundred years or so since revolutionary ideas and media have formed a driving force in cultural evolution, but the value of outstanding artistic constancy still lies in a sincere attitude. Wu Dayu believes paintings should be leavened with sincerity, not merely larded with meretricious ostentation. In describing the rebellious nature of contemporary art, Bob Dylan put it quite aptly when he averred that, "To live outside the law you must be honest." Zeng Fanzhi's sincerity pervades his works with the agony that all flesh is heir to. When still in his salad days in Wuhan, his studio lacked a bathroom, so Zeng had to tramp each day to an adjacent hospital in order to relieve himself. There as a daily routine he witnessed illness and death on an epic scale. That bathroom space with its feeble, lifeless illumination, a-none-too clean environment captured in large brush strokes encapsulates its chaotic blur, and frames a vision of aloofness. In this subconscious-style reverie, the man in the painting and his emotional outrushing of humanity convey the truest existence of all.
The ashen-grey slab background slab with its large whorled brush strokes clashes with the edged contours of the body and objects, with the wiped texture blurring the boundaries. The person in the painting stands before the mirror, elaborated skin texture casts the nudity of his body into stark relief; his hands are both huge, rough brush strokes create a strong sense of directional flow, warping the body into crookedness. Although it uses only a simple red ochre outline form, the sketched lines resonate with, but are nonetheless distinct from the surrounding tableau with which the body collides and blends, electrifying its beholders with a sharp visual shock. Reminiscent of 20th century Austrian Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka's painting Bride of the Wind (Fig. 1) whose restlessly swirling strokes instil unease, each stroke here likewise thrills with a feeling of self and life, a sensation in which there wafts an extremely disquieting expressiveness of which emotion forms the focus - the artist's inner scream dragged into the viewer's eye and mind. Contemplating these two works in the dog days, after the pain has subsided is very stirring indeed.
The pathos of naked flesh as depicted on the canvas is portrayed without reservation, right through to the very soul. Continuing the1992-1993 Meat series, it employs a lexicon of expressionist and visual effects with intense scarlet painted figures, but the human form in Bathroom transcends the rough-textured, raw red face that seems to have been flayed - it is utterly devoid of any realist components - and betokens the re-visitation of a more primitive, bestial human nature. After undergoing levels of graduated aesthetic form conversion in successive stages, after induction, it attains an intrinsic spirituality. It progresses from a flesh-and-blood realism to an impressionist soul. The narrative these strokes relate is also by now detached from any particular object, and it presents yet another sort of realism to the mind's eye.
Chaos slithers throughout the crinkled, wiped strokes, but adroitly avoids the protagonist's face. Zeng grants no clear rendition of the eyes, yet the viewer can still perceive the person peering intently at himself with an unfocussed gaze, though the viewer cannot discern this protagonist from the front, but only peep at his reflection in the mirror, trying to divine his thoughts. The actual sink top and its mirror reflection are blurred until they bleed together, and the person's palm astride the mirror's right edge that blends into one image further heightens this transition from reality to illusion. As Western art developed, an artist's ability to faithfully reproduce a main image in its mirror reflection was a touchstone of artistic skill. In contemporary art, however, a mirror reflection usually displays objects from outside the main image, thus expressing a more profound symbolic meaning, Belgian artist Magritte's Not to be Reproduced (Fig. 2) defies the commonsensical image of a "back reflection," and seeks to advise viewers that all things are subjective, yet renders it even more difficult for the protagonist in the painting and even ourselves to objectively scrutinise the self.
The bathroom mirror is not only pregnant with surreal tints, its expanse also extends beyond the mirror frame to fill nearly half of the canvas, forcing the figure in the painting to confront himself, to face the fear lurking in his heart, the ugly aspects of human nature. If you can calmly face the unbearable weight on the spirit, and are able to shake off the shackles imposed by social values, you attain freedom. Just as portrayed in a society pervaded by crude mainstream culture, people are hemmed in by layers of utilitarian reality, but no very great similarity exists between the imagery in this painting and that of the widely-recognised Mask series, also by Zeng. The impeccably attractive appearance of the protagonists in the Mask series represents camouflaging masks concealing their humanity, imprisoning them inescapably, but the wide open brushstrokes coalesce in the mirror, where freedom and dynamism flow everywhere, strung out directly in front of the viewer's eyes. Viewed overall, though the Bathroom canvas is rendered but skin deep, yet another space exists within the mirror, and that is absolute naked truth.
Francis Bacon once said: "Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence - a reconcentration." When he was drawing Blood on the Floor (Fig. 3), he merely placed a pool of blood on a plain flat floor space which, although not as complex a composition as his portrait with face distorted, is the more direct, and thus transports the image into the imagination. In the Bathroom, Zeng Fanzhi also ensures that the audience is struck by the arrangement of the upper body, which is overspread by a red splotch from which a trickling blood texture oozes. Bursting with visual punch, this red ochre and grey patch forms the largest field of red on the canvas. This patch of red pricks the mind more than any of the warped lines or eddying strokes. The delicate throes of pain thereby transmitted admit of our entry into the figure's spiritual realm, thus coining a unique artistic value that echoes Kant's dictum that, while suffering is beauty, yet if we are scarred thereby, then how beautiful can we really be?
The artistic merit of Bathroom is intrinsic to its significance to its era, and its uniqueness, with its distorted figurative depictions of the realism of naked flesh: 'corporeality' directly infusing the senses. Ever afterwards, the figure depicted in this painting by Zeng Fanzhi will never again be allowed to forget that he is a depraved individual. Repugnant, satirical idiom aside, this work also seeks to entice the audience into perceiving the expression of oppressed human nature beyond the realm of aesthetics, a strand of humanity still surviving after environmental oppression: this may well be the only true beauty extent in society today.
Finished in 1994, the oil painting Bathroom (Lot 7) typifies the mutability of Zeng Fanzhi's style in the course of his energetic art career, while at the same time presenting a work of ultimate sincerity tapped from the artist's own persona, which he is at no pains to conceal. It is unreconstructed human nature freed from the physical confines of surreal characterization, and thus it expresses the most naked candour as between it and the audience.
Since the advent of modern art, major movements in various styles and with diverse contexts have arisen to span the hundred years or so since revolutionary ideas and media have formed a driving force in cultural evolution, but the value of outstanding artistic constancy still lies in a sincere attitude. Wu Dayu believes paintings should be leavened with sincerity, not merely larded with meretricious ostentation. In describing the rebellious nature of contemporary art, Bob Dylan put it quite aptly when he averred that, "To live outside the law you must be honest." Zeng Fanzhi's sincerity pervades his works with the agony that all flesh is heir to. When still in his salad days in Wuhan, his studio lacked a bathroom, so Zeng had to tramp each day to an adjacent hospital in order to relieve himself. There as a daily routine he witnessed illness and death on an epic scale. That bathroom space with its feeble, lifeless illumination, a-none-too clean environment captured in large brush strokes encapsulates its chaotic blur, and frames a vision of aloofness. In this subconscious-style reverie, the man in the painting and his emotional outrushing of humanity convey the truest existence of all.
The ashen-grey slab background slab with its large whorled brush strokes clashes with the edged contours of the body and objects, with the wiped texture blurring the boundaries. The person in the painting stands before the mirror, elaborated skin texture casts the nudity of his body into stark relief; his hands are both huge, rough brush strokes create a strong sense of directional flow, warping the body into crookedness. Although it uses only a simple red ochre outline form, the sketched lines resonate with, but are nonetheless distinct from the surrounding tableau with which the body collides and blends, electrifying its beholders with a sharp visual shock. Reminiscent of 20th century Austrian Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka's painting Bride of the Wind (Fig. 1) whose restlessly swirling strokes instil unease, each stroke here likewise thrills with a feeling of self and life, a sensation in which there wafts an extremely disquieting expressiveness of which emotion forms the focus - the artist's inner scream dragged into the viewer's eye and mind. Contemplating these two works in the dog days, after the pain has subsided is very stirring indeed.
The pathos of naked flesh as depicted on the canvas is portrayed without reservation, right through to the very soul. Continuing the1992-1993 Meat series, it employs a lexicon of expressionist and visual effects with intense scarlet painted figures, but the human form in Bathroom transcends the rough-textured, raw red face that seems to have been flayed - it is utterly devoid of any realist components - and betokens the re-visitation of a more primitive, bestial human nature. After undergoing levels of graduated aesthetic form conversion in successive stages, after induction, it attains an intrinsic spirituality. It progresses from a flesh-and-blood realism to an impressionist soul. The narrative these strokes relate is also by now detached from any particular object, and it presents yet another sort of realism to the mind's eye.
Chaos slithers throughout the crinkled, wiped strokes, but adroitly avoids the protagonist's face. Zeng grants no clear rendition of the eyes, yet the viewer can still perceive the person peering intently at himself with an unfocussed gaze, though the viewer cannot discern this protagonist from the front, but only peep at his reflection in the mirror, trying to divine his thoughts. The actual sink top and its mirror reflection are blurred until they bleed together, and the person's palm astride the mirror's right edge that blends into one image further heightens this transition from reality to illusion. As Western art developed, an artist's ability to faithfully reproduce a main image in its mirror reflection was a touchstone of artistic skill. In contemporary art, however, a mirror reflection usually displays objects from outside the main image, thus expressing a more profound symbolic meaning, Belgian artist Magritte's Not to be Reproduced (Fig. 2) defies the commonsensical image of a "back reflection," and seeks to advise viewers that all things are subjective, yet renders it even more difficult for the protagonist in the painting and even ourselves to objectively scrutinise the self.
The bathroom mirror is not only pregnant with surreal tints, its expanse also extends beyond the mirror frame to fill nearly half of the canvas, forcing the figure in the painting to confront himself, to face the fear lurking in his heart, the ugly aspects of human nature. If you can calmly face the unbearable weight on the spirit, and are able to shake off the shackles imposed by social values, you attain freedom. Just as portrayed in a society pervaded by crude mainstream culture, people are hemmed in by layers of utilitarian reality, but no very great similarity exists between the imagery in this painting and that of the widely-recognised Mask series, also by Zeng. The impeccably attractive appearance of the protagonists in the Mask series represents camouflaging masks concealing their humanity, imprisoning them inescapably, but the wide open brushstrokes coalesce in the mirror, where freedom and dynamism flow everywhere, strung out directly in front of the viewer's eyes. Viewed overall, though the Bathroom canvas is rendered but skin deep, yet another space exists within the mirror, and that is absolute naked truth.
Francis Bacon once said: "Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence - a reconcentration." When he was drawing Blood on the Floor (Fig. 3), he merely placed a pool of blood on a plain flat floor space which, although not as complex a composition as his portrait with face distorted, is the more direct, and thus transports the image into the imagination. In the Bathroom, Zeng Fanzhi also ensures that the audience is struck by the arrangement of the upper body, which is overspread by a red splotch from which a trickling blood texture oozes. Bursting with visual punch, this red ochre and grey patch forms the largest field of red on the canvas. This patch of red pricks the mind more than any of the warped lines or eddying strokes. The delicate throes of pain thereby transmitted admit of our entry into the figure's spiritual realm, thus coining a unique artistic value that echoes Kant's dictum that, while suffering is beauty, yet if we are scarred thereby, then how beautiful can we really be?
The artistic merit of Bathroom is intrinsic to its significance to its era, and its uniqueness, with its distorted figurative depictions of the realism of naked flesh: 'corporeality' directly infusing the senses. Ever afterwards, the figure depicted in this painting by Zeng Fanzhi will never again be allowed to forget that he is a depraved individual. Repugnant, satirical idiom aside, this work also seeks to entice the audience into perceiving the expression of oppressed human nature beyond the realm of aesthetics, a strand of humanity still surviving after environmental oppression: this may well be the only true beauty extent in society today.