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Lot Essay
After arriving from the more provincial Wuhan Z~to Beijing in 1993, Zeng was overwhelmed by the cosmopolitan capital and his apprehension over the alienation and psychological strain materialised as the central theme in his iconic Mask series. As Zeng moved beyond the Mask paintings, his focus shifted to humankind's relationship with landscape. Painted in 2005, After the long march Andy Warhol arrived in China features Andy Warhol dressed in a bright red jacket with a bicycle on an empty road. Zeng's inclusion of the red coat, like the red neckerchief depicted in his early Mask paintings, is a reminder of the subject's past, drastically different from the newly capitalist society pervaded by Western traditions and values. The bicycle stands as a symbol of China's socio-economic transformation. Perhaps it is in After the long march Andy Warhol arrived in China where we are able to view Zeng's nostalgia for the days when two wheels were the primary means of transport; an era when bicycles ruled the city streets of China. He abandons the 'masked' figures that directly confront his viewers, yet a sense of turmoil and uncertainty is created by the injection of an imaginative time frame, and the combining of the subject matter with abstract scenery made up of chaotic strokes.
Fa?ades: Zeng Fanzhi, Andy Warhol and China
Throughout his career, Zeng has returned to the image of Andy Warhol. Warhol's visage contained the enigma of his personality and career: an under-stated figure notable mainly for his shocking "fright" wig, whose career of choosing the most mundane subjects revolutionised the art world. In Zeng's hands, the artist takes Warhol's most immediately recognisable image and makes it his own through a web of ecstatic, fluid strokes. In many ways, Warhol's own self-image is the perfect corollary to Zeng's Mask series and his career in general. Where Zeng has sought to find thematic and technical expression for the suppressed angst and insecurity inherent to modern life, Warhol radically asserted that the surface of things - from celebrity to common consumer objects - was all we needed to know. Warhol's own self-representation was always deliberately aloof, cool, bordering on the intentionally vacuous and child-like. As such, the psychological aggravation is entirely Zeng's own, manifest in the rapid sinewy brush strokes that delineate Warhol's features and surge outwardly and across the surface of the canvas. It is as if, at last, Zeng cannot penetrate through the surface of things, or that it lies only on the surface.
Aptly so, Warhol was also fascinated by China. According to photographer Christopher Makos, who travelled with Warhol to China in the early 1980s, "Andy was enthralled by China. It was a perfect match. Here was the man who had painted the soup can over and over in multiples. And here we were in the nation of multiples, where everybody wore the same kind of suit." The streets of bicycles crowding the streets in China seen by Warhol and Zeng reinforce its exuberant impact evoking the mass-production of Chinese propaganda and its egalitarian aesthetics. Rather than having any great political intention, the bicycle for Warhol, as it must for Zeng too, symbolises mixing the uniformity of China's visual culture with the buoyant visual assault of Western consumerism.
Examining this work from this aesthetic framework, the work creates a new sensual impact by a multi-artistic appropriation. Warhol felt that -- the standardisation and repetition of imagery and message -- was effectively a revolution in Pop Art, akin to what he himself had been doing in his own Factory. Zeng then signals not only the enormous influence Warhol has had on contemporary art, but suggests the multiplicity of visions and voices that have brought us to a truly global contemporary art, reaffirming the ways in which the innovation and creativity of Asian artists have brought them to the forefront of the contemporary art world.
Repeating and Escaping the Cycles of History
If the Mask series is about the struggle against history and personal beliefs, and a discussion of the indifference of people in modern Chinese society under the capitalist economy, here it is about how 'history repeats itself, in a different form'. The work expresses the artist's anxiety and fear, beneath the layer of hope and confidence. The artist demonstrates great sensitivity towards the rapidly evolving society, historical events and the gradual changes in humanity. His works are able to transit from one era to another, along vast ocean of time.
Zeng's landscape paintings embody the collective desire of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to reflect with nature where one was able to find permanence within the natural world, retreating into mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The existential image of the lone figure in Bicycle standing in nature symbolises the sense of detachment and alienation triggered by the overwhelming rush to acquire and consume in modern day China. Despite the sense of movement in the grass depicted in the foreground, the man stands motionless and his static expression reveals no more than would a masked face. Bicycle is the distillation of relentless superficiality experienced by Zeng in the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary Chinese culture.
To Express with Obscurity: From Realistic Depiction to Liberal Expression
Zeng's landscape paintings embody the collective desire of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to reflect with nature where one was able to find permanence within the natural world, retreating into mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The existential image of the lone figure in Bicycle standing in nature symbolises the sense of detachment and alienation triggered by the overwhelming rush to acquire and consume in modern day China. Despite the sense of movement in the grass depicted in the foreground, the man stands motionless and his static expression reveals no more than would a masked face. Bicycle is the distillation of relentless superficiality experienced by Zeng in the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary Chinese culture.
Zeng's experimental work with the lines in Bicycle evokes the different strokes found in traditional Chinese calligraphy. In order to make this painting, Zeng painted with both hands, sometimes even holding two brushes in each hand. He explains this new style, 'This new technique, I create and yet I destroy. One of the brushes is creating while the other three have nothing to do with me. I like such creation which happens by chance.' Similar to Gerard Richter, he simultaneously creates and obscures his images, achieving a heightened sense of emotion and spontaneity. In Bicycle, the dense thicket of strokes replaced the artist's previous deliberate theatrical backgrounds, and the desolate metaphorical forest highlight the figure's vulnerability and fragility of his material existence.
The diverse cultural appeal of Zeng's art stems from his honesty, fragility and beauty in portraying his raw emotions and in expressing his thoughts upon a universally-shared trait; our recurrent human desire to appear other than as we are. As such, with Bicycle, Zeng once again demonstrates his extraordinary insight into the shifting dynamics of his social environment, as well as the emotional and psychological strain it places on individual lives. The artist's anomalous artworks consistently challenge the conceptual line between Western and Eastern art through the blending of Western artistic inspiration and aesthetics of Eastern traditions and culture.
Fa?ades: Zeng Fanzhi, Andy Warhol and China
Throughout his career, Zeng has returned to the image of Andy Warhol. Warhol's visage contained the enigma of his personality and career: an under-stated figure notable mainly for his shocking "fright" wig, whose career of choosing the most mundane subjects revolutionised the art world. In Zeng's hands, the artist takes Warhol's most immediately recognisable image and makes it his own through a web of ecstatic, fluid strokes. In many ways, Warhol's own self-image is the perfect corollary to Zeng's Mask series and his career in general. Where Zeng has sought to find thematic and technical expression for the suppressed angst and insecurity inherent to modern life, Warhol radically asserted that the surface of things - from celebrity to common consumer objects - was all we needed to know. Warhol's own self-representation was always deliberately aloof, cool, bordering on the intentionally vacuous and child-like. As such, the psychological aggravation is entirely Zeng's own, manifest in the rapid sinewy brush strokes that delineate Warhol's features and surge outwardly and across the surface of the canvas. It is as if, at last, Zeng cannot penetrate through the surface of things, or that it lies only on the surface.
Aptly so, Warhol was also fascinated by China. According to photographer Christopher Makos, who travelled with Warhol to China in the early 1980s, "Andy was enthralled by China. It was a perfect match. Here was the man who had painted the soup can over and over in multiples. And here we were in the nation of multiples, where everybody wore the same kind of suit." The streets of bicycles crowding the streets in China seen by Warhol and Zeng reinforce its exuberant impact evoking the mass-production of Chinese propaganda and its egalitarian aesthetics. Rather than having any great political intention, the bicycle for Warhol, as it must for Zeng too, symbolises mixing the uniformity of China's visual culture with the buoyant visual assault of Western consumerism.
Examining this work from this aesthetic framework, the work creates a new sensual impact by a multi-artistic appropriation. Warhol felt that -- the standardisation and repetition of imagery and message -- was effectively a revolution in Pop Art, akin to what he himself had been doing in his own Factory. Zeng then signals not only the enormous influence Warhol has had on contemporary art, but suggests the multiplicity of visions and voices that have brought us to a truly global contemporary art, reaffirming the ways in which the innovation and creativity of Asian artists have brought them to the forefront of the contemporary art world.
Repeating and Escaping the Cycles of History
If the Mask series is about the struggle against history and personal beliefs, and a discussion of the indifference of people in modern Chinese society under the capitalist economy, here it is about how 'history repeats itself, in a different form'. The work expresses the artist's anxiety and fear, beneath the layer of hope and confidence. The artist demonstrates great sensitivity towards the rapidly evolving society, historical events and the gradual changes in humanity. His works are able to transit from one era to another, along vast ocean of time.
Zeng's landscape paintings embody the collective desire of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to reflect with nature where one was able to find permanence within the natural world, retreating into mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The existential image of the lone figure in Bicycle standing in nature symbolises the sense of detachment and alienation triggered by the overwhelming rush to acquire and consume in modern day China. Despite the sense of movement in the grass depicted in the foreground, the man stands motionless and his static expression reveals no more than would a masked face. Bicycle is the distillation of relentless superficiality experienced by Zeng in the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary Chinese culture.
To Express with Obscurity: From Realistic Depiction to Liberal Expression
Zeng's landscape paintings embody the collective desire of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to reflect with nature where one was able to find permanence within the natural world, retreating into mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The existential image of the lone figure in Bicycle standing in nature symbolises the sense of detachment and alienation triggered by the overwhelming rush to acquire and consume in modern day China. Despite the sense of movement in the grass depicted in the foreground, the man stands motionless and his static expression reveals no more than would a masked face. Bicycle is the distillation of relentless superficiality experienced by Zeng in the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary Chinese culture.
Zeng's experimental work with the lines in Bicycle evokes the different strokes found in traditional Chinese calligraphy. In order to make this painting, Zeng painted with both hands, sometimes even holding two brushes in each hand. He explains this new style, 'This new technique, I create and yet I destroy. One of the brushes is creating while the other three have nothing to do with me. I like such creation which happens by chance.' Similar to Gerard Richter, he simultaneously creates and obscures his images, achieving a heightened sense of emotion and spontaneity. In Bicycle, the dense thicket of strokes replaced the artist's previous deliberate theatrical backgrounds, and the desolate metaphorical forest highlight the figure's vulnerability and fragility of his material existence.
The diverse cultural appeal of Zeng's art stems from his honesty, fragility and beauty in portraying his raw emotions and in expressing his thoughts upon a universally-shared trait; our recurrent human desire to appear other than as we are. As such, with Bicycle, Zeng once again demonstrates his extraordinary insight into the shifting dynamics of his social environment, as well as the emotional and psychological strain it places on individual lives. The artist's anomalous artworks consistently challenge the conceptual line between Western and Eastern art through the blending of Western artistic inspiration and aesthetics of Eastern traditions and culture.