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拍品專文
Wang Guangyi's painting belong to the category of Chinese contemporary art termed Political Pop and uniquely combine the ideological power of the Communist propaganda of the Cultural Revolution with the seductive allure of Western advertising, resulting in a flat style reminiscent of American Pop. With his dramatically outlined figures set against flat planes of colour, he references a style that is specific to Chinese government posters of the late 1960s and early '70s, while Wang's images, emblazoned with the logos of international consumer brands find a new meaning within the realm of his paintings.
In Great Criticism Series: Tiffany (Lot 487), the title suggest the widely popular luxury jewellery brand of contemporary life. However, the soldiers' gallant and chiselled facial feature express a stoic resistance to the imposition of the commercial brands. In this painting the juxtaposition of the world's most recognizable Tiffany & Co. logo with recognizable scenes from propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution, created a complex conceptual tableau wherein both the past and present, communism and capitalism, co-mingle, showing at once this ironic turn of events, as well as the peculiar visual compatibility of these two antithetical systems. Through these sets of visual and conceptual oppositions, coupled with Wang's own seductive use of colour, form and composition, Wang presents a complex and ambiguous work, one that casts a critical eye on China's seemingly heedless embrace of consumerism, while also inserting the unique visual culture and historical experience of China's 20th century into the great discourses of contemporary art. Together these threads create a conflicted philosophical opposition: what was for Wang a crude turn away from Marxist materialism to simply materialism itself. Such contrasts allow Wang to simultaneously explore the opposing ideologies of Socialism and Capitalism. He regarded the Great Criticism series as "post-pop work solving the problem of the commodity economy." Thus, his works capture the commodity and commercial movement of the time, poking fun at the new values of this supposedly liberalized world. It also implies the ways in which the idealism and heroisms of the Cultural Revolution proved to be untenable and hollow, but perhaps not any less so than the consumerism that has replaced it. By delving into such profound questions of our times and yet with such a clear set of visual strategies, Wang's Great Criticism became an important historical, political, and ideological source for critics and an indispensable new politically-charged artistic language in Chinese contemporary art.
In Great Criticism Series: Tiffany (Lot 487), the title suggest the widely popular luxury jewellery brand of contemporary life. However, the soldiers' gallant and chiselled facial feature express a stoic resistance to the imposition of the commercial brands. In this painting the juxtaposition of the world's most recognizable Tiffany & Co. logo with recognizable scenes from propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution, created a complex conceptual tableau wherein both the past and present, communism and capitalism, co-mingle, showing at once this ironic turn of events, as well as the peculiar visual compatibility of these two antithetical systems. Through these sets of visual and conceptual oppositions, coupled with Wang's own seductive use of colour, form and composition, Wang presents a complex and ambiguous work, one that casts a critical eye on China's seemingly heedless embrace of consumerism, while also inserting the unique visual culture and historical experience of China's 20th century into the great discourses of contemporary art. Together these threads create a conflicted philosophical opposition: what was for Wang a crude turn away from Marxist materialism to simply materialism itself. Such contrasts allow Wang to simultaneously explore the opposing ideologies of Socialism and Capitalism. He regarded the Great Criticism series as "post-pop work solving the problem of the commodity economy." Thus, his works capture the commodity and commercial movement of the time, poking fun at the new values of this supposedly liberalized world. It also implies the ways in which the idealism and heroisms of the Cultural Revolution proved to be untenable and hollow, but perhaps not any less so than the consumerism that has replaced it. By delving into such profound questions of our times and yet with such a clear set of visual strategies, Wang's Great Criticism became an important historical, political, and ideological source for critics and an indispensable new politically-charged artistic language in Chinese contemporary art.