Lot Essay
For Wang, notions of beauty are built on calculated manipulations of form, color, composition, and perspective, and the highest aim of art would be to reveal the apparatus of this illusion. Works from the artist’s Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series are no exception. Instead of providing the familiar juxtaposition of heroic revolutionaries with luxury brand names, in the work presented here, Wang presents a different type of visual dichotomy. The composition is comprised primarily of Wang’s own rendering of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (Italian, 1475–1564) famous sketch Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (Fig. 1). The female figure, whose elegantly contorted physique graces the frescoed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in her final form, possesses the same monumentality of the figures depicted in Wang’s Great Criticism Series, and thus is just as vulnerable to having the illusion she creates shattered. In Wang’s rendering the Sibyl is partially obscured by randomly applied swatches of black industrial spray paint, over which straight and curved white dashed lines and random letters have been hand painted. It is as if her figure is being consumed by the black paint, but also remains exposed just enough so that her iconic figure is recognizable. While one may seek to make sense of the relationship between the two layers of this composition, their discord renders the overall image nonsensical and meaningless. The expectant viewer yearns to find a pattern or follow a path in the dashed lines—to find a relationship in and decode a message from the scattered letters, however is left grasping. Random letters and number series are a signature theme throughout Wang’s work originating in the Black Rationality Series and Red Rationality Series, as well as being prevalent in his later Great Criticism Series. While these 'symbols' wield great communicative power in the real world, here Wang utilizes them so they are intentionally devoid of meaning, disrupting viewers from having aesthetic expectations. The result is the creation of an enormous tension between what the viewer yearns to see versus what they rationally know is there. The contradiction between the Old World medium of oil on canvas, and the Industrial Age material of quick drying paint, however unintentionally, further develops this tension through the conflict between historical tradition and the rapid development of society at that time.
In his essay Tendencies in Chinese Pop, Gu Chengfeng writes that the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series, developed from Wang’s desire to engage in 'rational' elements using deconstruction as a starting point. Prior to the inception of the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series, Wang had displayed a portrait of Chairman Mao superimposed with a grid and letters entitled Mao Zedong AO in the seminal China Avant-Garde exhibition held at the China Art Gallery (now the National Art Museum of China) in 1989. Gu recalls that with Mao Zedong AO Wang sought to defy purely historical retrospection and to point instead at the present. Of this work, Wang says:
'I had wanted to provide a basic method for purging humanist enthusiasm through the creation of Mao Zedong…Mao Zedong touched on the question of politics. Though I was avoiding this question at the time, it really touched on it. But at the time I wanted to use an artistic method to resolve it; a neutral attitude is better, as a neutral attitude is more of an artistic method.'
The same could be said of Wang’s depiction of the Libyan Sibyl. Similar to the Cultural Revolution imagery pervasive in 1960-70’s China, Mao Zedong’s carefully controlled portrait in particular, Western brand names are ubiquitous in the visual language of our world today; the Libyan Sibyl holds an equally iconic and influential status in the history of Western art. In fact, in copying Michelangelo’s sketch in oil on canvas Wang has removed the Study for Libyan Sibyl from both its original medium and purpose, thus disassembling it’s intended meaning as well. Furthermore, the alterations he makes to this familiar composition function to break away from the established expectations viewers are used to being able to take away from classical, canonized works of art.
The origins of the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series can be found in Wang’s earlier famous Post-Classical Series. In the Masterpieces Series, Wang elaborates upon the practice of obscuring compositions borrowed from Western art, a method that he had earlier explored in works like Post-Classical: Holy Supper (Fig. 2) and Post-Classical: Gospel of Matthew (Fig. 3), both painted in 1986. Whereas in Post-Classical, Wang borrows compositions from iconic Western masterpieces though recreating them in a separate universe, in Masterpieces he continues to experiment with the concept of ready-made iconography adhering more closely to the original image, however still obscuring it in a different way. It is from these works as well as Mao Zedong AO that Wang developed the mature and distinctive style he is recognized for today.
This work from the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series represents an important turning point in the philosophy Wang chooses to present—not only is he breaking away from the iconography of Western imagery, he is subverting and reclaiming it as his own. Through covering these Old World masterpieces with something as commonplace in modern China as industrial paint, he underlines a departure from the Western dominance of the past in painting, lat
er pulling from Chinese sources that speak more closely to his own identity embracing his own experience in his art.
In his essay Tendencies in Chinese Pop, Gu Chengfeng writes that the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series, developed from Wang’s desire to engage in 'rational' elements using deconstruction as a starting point. Prior to the inception of the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series, Wang had displayed a portrait of Chairman Mao superimposed with a grid and letters entitled Mao Zedong AO in the seminal China Avant-Garde exhibition held at the China Art Gallery (now the National Art Museum of China) in 1989. Gu recalls that with Mao Zedong AO Wang sought to defy purely historical retrospection and to point instead at the present. Of this work, Wang says:
'I had wanted to provide a basic method for purging humanist enthusiasm through the creation of Mao Zedong…Mao Zedong touched on the question of politics. Though I was avoiding this question at the time, it really touched on it. But at the time I wanted to use an artistic method to resolve it; a neutral attitude is better, as a neutral attitude is more of an artistic method.'
The same could be said of Wang’s depiction of the Libyan Sibyl. Similar to the Cultural Revolution imagery pervasive in 1960-70’s China, Mao Zedong’s carefully controlled portrait in particular, Western brand names are ubiquitous in the visual language of our world today; the Libyan Sibyl holds an equally iconic and influential status in the history of Western art. In fact, in copying Michelangelo’s sketch in oil on canvas Wang has removed the Study for Libyan Sibyl from both its original medium and purpose, thus disassembling it’s intended meaning as well. Furthermore, the alterations he makes to this familiar composition function to break away from the established expectations viewers are used to being able to take away from classical, canonized works of art.
The origins of the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series can be found in Wang’s earlier famous Post-Classical Series. In the Masterpieces Series, Wang elaborates upon the practice of obscuring compositions borrowed from Western art, a method that he had earlier explored in works like Post-Classical: Holy Supper (Fig. 2) and Post-Classical: Gospel of Matthew (Fig. 3), both painted in 1986. Whereas in Post-Classical, Wang borrows compositions from iconic Western masterpieces though recreating them in a separate universe, in Masterpieces he continues to experiment with the concept of ready-made iconography adhering more closely to the original image, however still obscuring it in a different way. It is from these works as well as Mao Zedong AO that Wang developed the mature and distinctive style he is recognized for today.
This work from the Masterpieces Covered by Industrial Quick-Drying Paint Series represents an important turning point in the philosophy Wang chooses to present—not only is he breaking away from the iconography of Western imagery, he is subverting and reclaiming it as his own. Through covering these Old World masterpieces with something as commonplace in modern China as industrial paint, he underlines a departure from the Western dominance of the past in painting, lat
er pulling from Chinese sources that speak more closely to his own identity embracing his own experience in his art.