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Lot Essay
As a social activity, "meetings" began to take on a unique and "stopgap" dimension in post-Liberation China. Meetings are a bland routine, a sound made by a broken record, and a tool for political propaganda. Attendees of the meetings are invariably deep in thought, spacing out, or feigning engagement to pull through the dull formalities. Artist Tang Zhigang switched gears in 1998 with his theme topics: he began depicting scenarios of children attending meetings, instead of his usual motifs about military life, and meetings between adults. Though imaginary, these depictions offer a poignant view at the inmost workings of attendees: through his paintings, Tang offers a satire on the absurdity of man's social behavior.
In Children in Meeting Series (Lot 575), six children tend to the matters at hand in all seriousness. The looks, the posturing, and the carefully arranged teacups are analogous to the dynamics of power play among adults. To Tang, children in this piece embody multilevel, symbolic meanings. While they "signify all-or-nothing of a specific stage in human development," they also insinuate that politics are just child's play, that "it's just a game between children." Most of the time of meetings between adults is spent on "shooting oneself in the foot" and red tape. Tang translates these redundant details into symbols of accusations laced with humor. More satiric clues can also be found in how Tang constructs the scene of the meeting.
In another piece, Children in Meeting Series (Lot 574), Tang highlights the ho-hum of the meeting by accentuating the bland decor in the auditorium: the red-carpeted stage and the dull-gray curtains flanking the stage delimit the meeting space. The two children are positioned in this well-planned setting, lending a dramatic flair to the composition. Similar to stage props, these "practiced" arrangements seem to remind users that having a meeting is no different from staging a play, a recurring drama in adult reality.
In the series, Tang suggests behavioural similarities between adults and children: adults, in fact, are extending - and heightening - the various bad habits and flaws picked up during childhood. Tang used to teach art classes for children in the military, and to him, adults in meetings are no different from his inquisitive young pupils in the drawing class; nevertheless, the adults attempt to package the juvenile delinquent in them with institutionalization and superficiality, and they work to actualize their lust for power and social status.
In Children in Meeting Series (Lot 575), six children tend to the matters at hand in all seriousness. The looks, the posturing, and the carefully arranged teacups are analogous to the dynamics of power play among adults. To Tang, children in this piece embody multilevel, symbolic meanings. While they "signify all-or-nothing of a specific stage in human development," they also insinuate that politics are just child's play, that "it's just a game between children." Most of the time of meetings between adults is spent on "shooting oneself in the foot" and red tape. Tang translates these redundant details into symbols of accusations laced with humor. More satiric clues can also be found in how Tang constructs the scene of the meeting.
In another piece, Children in Meeting Series (Lot 574), Tang highlights the ho-hum of the meeting by accentuating the bland decor in the auditorium: the red-carpeted stage and the dull-gray curtains flanking the stage delimit the meeting space. The two children are positioned in this well-planned setting, lending a dramatic flair to the composition. Similar to stage props, these "practiced" arrangements seem to remind users that having a meeting is no different from staging a play, a recurring drama in adult reality.
In the series, Tang suggests behavioural similarities between adults and children: adults, in fact, are extending - and heightening - the various bad habits and flaws picked up during childhood. Tang used to teach art classes for children in the military, and to him, adults in meetings are no different from his inquisitive young pupils in the drawing class; nevertheless, the adults attempt to package the juvenile delinquent in them with institutionalization and superficiality, and they work to actualize their lust for power and social status.