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拍品专文
Moving to Beijing in 1993, having already completed an extraordinary body of work with his Meat and Hospital series paintings, Zeng Fanzhi would soon embark on his Mask paintings, a series which would rapidly become one of the most iconic of the Chinese avant-garde movement.
Working with the influential, Hong Kong-based dealer, Manfred Schoeni in the 1990s, Zeng produced a total of 32 paintings for the seminal 8+8-1: 15 Chinese Contemporary Artists exhibition and catalogue, of which the present lot is one of the finest examples. Each of the canvases depicts a different single figure, each dressed in a plain white shirt and red scarf, performing a variety of expressions, moods, and attitudes for the viewer, each of them articulated by the literal mask that hides their 'true' features. Taken as a whole, the series invokes the viewer's feelings of childhood nostalgia, as if reviewing their former school photographs, the figure's poses suggestive of exaggerated personalities in their formative stages.
The red scarf is particularly meaningful for Zeng. It appears in a famous self-portrait of Max Beckman's in 1917, an artist who greatly influenced Zeng in his formative years. At the same time, the red scarf signified membership to the elite group of Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and, for Zeng, references deep-seated feelings of being an outsider. It was the badge of membership in a society governed by rigid conformity. Zeng was not granted a red neckerchief as a child; an action which has clearly resounded upon his adult psyche as a large number of his subjects throughout the Mask series bear this symbol of belonging. In Mask Series No. 26, we have the image of a preternaturally composed schoolboy, posing engagingly with the viewer, his hand raised to his cheek, drawing heightened attention to his raw and ravaged flesh. As such, the painting is an especially poignant example of the series, redolent of Zeng's long unfulfilled desire to no longer feel as an outsider among his peers.
Working with the influential, Hong Kong-based dealer, Manfred Schoeni in the 1990s, Zeng produced a total of 32 paintings for the seminal 8+8-1: 15 Chinese Contemporary Artists exhibition and catalogue, of which the present lot is one of the finest examples. Each of the canvases depicts a different single figure, each dressed in a plain white shirt and red scarf, performing a variety of expressions, moods, and attitudes for the viewer, each of them articulated by the literal mask that hides their 'true' features. Taken as a whole, the series invokes the viewer's feelings of childhood nostalgia, as if reviewing their former school photographs, the figure's poses suggestive of exaggerated personalities in their formative stages.
The red scarf is particularly meaningful for Zeng. It appears in a famous self-portrait of Max Beckman's in 1917, an artist who greatly influenced Zeng in his formative years. At the same time, the red scarf signified membership to the elite group of Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and, for Zeng, references deep-seated feelings of being an outsider. It was the badge of membership in a society governed by rigid conformity. Zeng was not granted a red neckerchief as a child; an action which has clearly resounded upon his adult psyche as a large number of his subjects throughout the Mask series bear this symbol of belonging. In Mask Series No. 26, we have the image of a preternaturally composed schoolboy, posing engagingly with the viewer, his hand raised to his cheek, drawing heightened attention to his raw and ravaged flesh. As such, the painting is an especially poignant example of the series, redolent of Zeng's long unfulfilled desire to no longer feel as an outsider among his peers.