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Lot Essay
"Parents series has been different from red earth and private space at the very beginning. Parents goes beyond personal spirituality and individual existence and gets, instead, into the core of Chinese culture in its most primordial and primitive state. But it is very wearying, trying to use language to express this sensation. Parent, as a symbol, bears a number of meanings: it stands for rights, loneliness, autocracy. Dignity, brutality, dictatorship and the will, thus belongs to a territory of the "concrete," which essentially determines the fate of the Chinese ethnics; It defines burden and throes and tragedy, pushing us to experience its omnipresent, irresistible influence from the past to the present, hence forms the crux of our creative works - to capture it, to capture the thing that devours our mind for so many years, which otherwise would be a sin; It marks, lastly, history and contemporaneity. When dragged by sweeping chances, China would be more prepared to fathom the profundity of this symbol." - Mao Xuhui
In 1989 and after, Mao Xuhui diverted his artistic focus from the exposition of individual states of mind that characterized his earlier Guishan Series and Private Space Series to the exploration of community and history. Parents Series, which reveals the age-long societal cognition of the Chinese ethnics through an assortment of symbolic elements, is both a reflection and an introspection of the artist on the current condition of the Chinese society after he acquainted with, and was swayed by Western philosophical thoughts and modern artistic ideas in the 1980s. Following his exhaustive rumination about the nature of power in Parents Series, A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 (Lot 1048) painted in 1993, shows again an extension and intensification of the motif of Mao's art. The care that Mao took to accentuate the association between artwork and reality has been a groundbreaking endeavor that foreshadows his Daily Epic Series two years later. A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 is ipso facto a critical and significant piece, singular in its theme and form and the precursory role it plays in Mao's artistic crusade.
Like '92 Paternalism, A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 is a triptych filled with symbolic images; each panel has its own token, expressing a more complicated metaphorical signification than Mao's earlier works against a simplified shape. Armchair, the centerpiece of A Triptych of Parentalism, 93, has always been the most patent icon in Parents Series. In the patriarchal Chinese society, an armchair - with its upright back that seems imposing in height, and for the authority and class honor its supposed possessor has - is the symbol of sovereignty and power. Pictorially simplified, Mao's armchair is melded with the image of its owner, the sturdy and honed physique of which underscores the artist's anxiety, fear and even rage towards power. At this stage Mao has refrained from depicting the outward bearing of the "parent" and the "chair"; resting on the premise that a man and his chair signifies respectively "dominance" and "status", the compound of them is naturally a succinct expression in defining the role of a sovereign and its intrinsic nature. In the left and right panels we find a key and a sneaker painted in white, overlaid by red doornails and pentagrams. The reverberation between these imageries has unanimously heightens the visual and intellectual impact of the artist's symbolic elements. On the left the medley of a key and a door highlights the notion of menhu, a metaphor for social status. Doornails are initially part of a slab door, but as they assume more decorative function through time, the number of doornails is turned into a class signature. Door, the entrance of a structure, is always representative of social and economic standings, whereas the key denotes the leader of a household. These two symbols, the key and the doornails, account for such abstract notions as the interior and the exterior, as well as opening and closing. As a token of identity and authority, they resonate also with the armchair in the center. The right panel, on the other hand, shows a white sneaker, an apparently unremarkable and commonplace item to a modern eye but not so much to the Chinese mass two decades past. In the early 1990s when China was undergoing hectic reforms, a pair of sneaker was both a rarity and a valuable. Following the inflow of Western capitalistic ideas to the Chinese market, sneakers, especially branded ones, became the icon of consumption desire - a phenomenon having much to do with the notion of power, as when brand names had irrevocably controlled the collective minds of consumers. The pentagrams in the background bring to mind China's national flag, the Five-Star Red Flag, which evokes, as a political symbol, the power, system and ideology of the country. Juxtaposing the themes on man and nation, and on politics and communal consumption, the pentagrams stand as a stark contrast to the sneaker, implying the omnipresent existence of dominance and control as high up as in the national house, and as low down as in the people' s desire to consume. Coated in a spectrum of grayish black, the background of this work is muscly brushed and texturized, forming a richly layered breadth of space. The geometric shapes in red seem indicative of direction; they lead our gaze, starting from the vertical strip on the left to the horizontal line in the middle top, and then to the bevel on the right, all positioned at the edge of the frame that separates the work from the world outside. It is thus manifest that the artist, apart from pointing up the meanings of his pictorial symbols, has attended to the triptych composition and arrangement, binding tightly the theme and the form of art.
In Parents Series, the artist examines the shackles and coercion that existed in his culture from time immemorial; in A Triptych of Parentalism, 93, he looks further into the generic concept of power, affording his symbols, such as the armchair, key, doornails, sneaker and pentagrams, significations so far reaching that they reveal the political, social, cultural and diurnal conditions of China in a tacit manner. Though implicit, these symbols are literally what we see almost every day in life, so also is the absolute and formidable power "parents" have, which, being our reality, is far from a history beyond reach. "Parents," too, are no longer a figure deified in the ancestral hall; our growing, burning desire for material articles designate that these inanimate objects are to manipulate us in the end. It is with all these tenors that A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 distinctly reveals the predetermined reciprocity between controlling and being controlled.
In 1989 and after, Mao Xuhui diverted his artistic focus from the exposition of individual states of mind that characterized his earlier Guishan Series and Private Space Series to the exploration of community and history. Parents Series, which reveals the age-long societal cognition of the Chinese ethnics through an assortment of symbolic elements, is both a reflection and an introspection of the artist on the current condition of the Chinese society after he acquainted with, and was swayed by Western philosophical thoughts and modern artistic ideas in the 1980s. Following his exhaustive rumination about the nature of power in Parents Series, A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 (Lot 1048) painted in 1993, shows again an extension and intensification of the motif of Mao's art. The care that Mao took to accentuate the association between artwork and reality has been a groundbreaking endeavor that foreshadows his Daily Epic Series two years later. A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 is ipso facto a critical and significant piece, singular in its theme and form and the precursory role it plays in Mao's artistic crusade.
Like '92 Paternalism, A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 is a triptych filled with symbolic images; each panel has its own token, expressing a more complicated metaphorical signification than Mao's earlier works against a simplified shape. Armchair, the centerpiece of A Triptych of Parentalism, 93, has always been the most patent icon in Parents Series. In the patriarchal Chinese society, an armchair - with its upright back that seems imposing in height, and for the authority and class honor its supposed possessor has - is the symbol of sovereignty and power. Pictorially simplified, Mao's armchair is melded with the image of its owner, the sturdy and honed physique of which underscores the artist's anxiety, fear and even rage towards power. At this stage Mao has refrained from depicting the outward bearing of the "parent" and the "chair"; resting on the premise that a man and his chair signifies respectively "dominance" and "status", the compound of them is naturally a succinct expression in defining the role of a sovereign and its intrinsic nature. In the left and right panels we find a key and a sneaker painted in white, overlaid by red doornails and pentagrams. The reverberation between these imageries has unanimously heightens the visual and intellectual impact of the artist's symbolic elements. On the left the medley of a key and a door highlights the notion of menhu, a metaphor for social status. Doornails are initially part of a slab door, but as they assume more decorative function through time, the number of doornails is turned into a class signature. Door, the entrance of a structure, is always representative of social and economic standings, whereas the key denotes the leader of a household. These two symbols, the key and the doornails, account for such abstract notions as the interior and the exterior, as well as opening and closing. As a token of identity and authority, they resonate also with the armchair in the center. The right panel, on the other hand, shows a white sneaker, an apparently unremarkable and commonplace item to a modern eye but not so much to the Chinese mass two decades past. In the early 1990s when China was undergoing hectic reforms, a pair of sneaker was both a rarity and a valuable. Following the inflow of Western capitalistic ideas to the Chinese market, sneakers, especially branded ones, became the icon of consumption desire - a phenomenon having much to do with the notion of power, as when brand names had irrevocably controlled the collective minds of consumers. The pentagrams in the background bring to mind China's national flag, the Five-Star Red Flag, which evokes, as a political symbol, the power, system and ideology of the country. Juxtaposing the themes on man and nation, and on politics and communal consumption, the pentagrams stand as a stark contrast to the sneaker, implying the omnipresent existence of dominance and control as high up as in the national house, and as low down as in the people' s desire to consume. Coated in a spectrum of grayish black, the background of this work is muscly brushed and texturized, forming a richly layered breadth of space. The geometric shapes in red seem indicative of direction; they lead our gaze, starting from the vertical strip on the left to the horizontal line in the middle top, and then to the bevel on the right, all positioned at the edge of the frame that separates the work from the world outside. It is thus manifest that the artist, apart from pointing up the meanings of his pictorial symbols, has attended to the triptych composition and arrangement, binding tightly the theme and the form of art.
In Parents Series, the artist examines the shackles and coercion that existed in his culture from time immemorial; in A Triptych of Parentalism, 93, he looks further into the generic concept of power, affording his symbols, such as the armchair, key, doornails, sneaker and pentagrams, significations so far reaching that they reveal the political, social, cultural and diurnal conditions of China in a tacit manner. Though implicit, these symbols are literally what we see almost every day in life, so also is the absolute and formidable power "parents" have, which, being our reality, is far from a history beyond reach. "Parents," too, are no longer a figure deified in the ancestral hall; our growing, burning desire for material articles designate that these inanimate objects are to manipulate us in the end. It is with all these tenors that A Triptych of Parentalism, 93 distinctly reveals the predetermined reciprocity between controlling and being controlled.