Zeng fanzhi paintings by monet

Zeng emerged on the art scene in China during the early s thanks to his fleshy expressionist paintings. His work during the beginning of his career would lay down the foundation for the growth of his career, but it was Mask Series No. He is known for disapprovingly exploring the speedily shifting and fluctuating face of modern Chinese culture and society, as evidenced through his remarkable painting Tiananmen of Mao created in , referencing, of course, the world-famous Tiananmen Square 1.

Zeng fanzhi paintings by monet

The piece was created as a recreation or regeneration of The Last Supper that was initially created by Italian legend Leonardo Da Vinci , in which the last meal between Jesus and the 12 was depicted. With just a single painting, Zeng challenged both Westernization and Chinese practices concurrently, therefore successfully managing to present multifaceted interpretations of international relations today.

Rather than eat bread, the subjects of the painting consumed watermelon to evoke an era when the artist himself was broke and could only manage to feed himself with easily accessible fruits such as watermelons. The work alluded to the initial signs of western influence in the Chinese economy. This enormous painting broke auction records in , and became the highest-grossing work by a contemporary Asian artist.

In this, Zeng's second known self-portrait, the artist depicts himself against a golden-yellow background monochromatic wall and floor. On the wall behind him is faded Chinese writing. Several smashed watermelons lay strewn around him. The artist stands at the center of the frame, wearing Western clothing an unbuttoned trench coat, crumpled trousers, and a blue t-shirt as well as the red neckerchief signifying communist China, which appears in many of his other works.

His signature oversized hands are down by his side, and he gazes out calmly at the viewer. This work not only embodies self-exploration for Zeng, but also an exploration of Chinese national identity. By combining the red kerchief, a symbol of his upbringing within communist collectivism, with western attire, Fanzhi is representing not only his own hybrid identity, but also the increasingly globalized identity of the People's Republic of China.

The kerchief also alludes to childhood, as the Young Pioneers who wore those kerchiefs were between the ages of six and fourteen. When viewed in tandem with the faded Chinese calligraphy on the walls, much like that which would be found on the walls of any typical Chinese classroom, Chinese viewers of this work would be instantly transported back to their youth.

This calligraphy also reminds Chinese viewers of the tradition of literati portraiture, where scholars would accompany their own self-portraits with poetic ruminations on their philosophies, written in an ornate, calligraphic style. The smashed watermelons in the painting serve as a proxy for raw flesh, at the same time as their red hue symbolizes Chinese communism and its ruins.

The violence apparent in the torn, smashed watermelons contrasts sharply with the calm demeanor of the figure of the artist, creating the sense of tension between chaos and serenity, typical of nearly all of Zeng's artworks. Both feature the artists with a red scarf around their necks albeit with very different cultural significance , as well as distorted, over-sized hands.

Zeng's referencing of Beckmann, an artist who used self-portraiture to question the validity of his occupation, is fitting, as Zeng struggled for many years as an artist rejecting Socialist Realism in newly capitalist China. In this huge abstracted self-portrait, the viewer is confronted with a close-up shot of the artist's face from just below his lips to just above his eyebrows , rendered in swirling corkscrew-like brushstrokes.

With this painting, Zeng discomforts the viewer by rendering his face so large and close up, with the features moving in and out of visibility as the viewer moves towards and away from this towering canvas. The abstracted, ringlet-like "screen" through which the face is seen not unlike the abstracted effect Chuck Close applies to his portrait paintings serves a similar purpose to the masks in his previous work; he is indicating to the viewer that it is impossible to truly know someone, no matter how close you may be.

Zeng states that "I paint portraits of myself quite a bit, and even as my techniques have become more sophisticated, these portraits are my process of discovery and searching for my own identity. This landscape painting is composed along a diagonal axis, from top left to bottom right. Above this line is a thick cluster of leafless trees and bushes, while below the line is snowy ground.

Several erratic brushstrokes create a chaotic frenzy of lines superimposed above the natural setting. In creating this, and his other landscape works, Zeng employs a technique wherein he uses two brushes simultaneously: one to depict the figurative landscape, while the other "leav[es] traces of his subconscious thought processes. Even without including human figures, Zeng manages to represent loneliness and vulnerability in the work.

He explains, "As I paint, I create yet destroy. One of the brushes is creating while the others have nothing to do with me. His brushwork gave oil paints an irritating and maybe even agitating sense, as if something were being torn off and ripped. It embodies an impact that touches other senses, including that of sight and physicality.

The tension created in the paintings, through the use of dual brushes and brushstroke style, is meant to offer a critique of Chinese propaganda, which exaggerates the beauty of the country and suppresses any expression of discontent. The same poem by Mao Zedong also describes "the beautiful landscape clad in white snow in the rising sun", a scene which Zeng has astutely reproduced here, but overlaid with a screen of disorder and agitation.

This painting features the building in Tiananmen Square, painted in bright red, yellow, and orange, with an abstracted rendering of the face of Chairman Mao painted overtop. Mao's eyes and forehead are clearly visible against the blue sky, while the rest of his face from the nose down is more obscured by its superimposition over the building.

The recognizable images in this painting namely Mao's face and the building at Tiananmen Square serve as symbols of China's troubled recent past. Specifically, the site is remembered as the location of the famous June 4th massacre, where student-led popular demonstrations, which received strong support from the general public, were met with a forcible military response from the government, who sent in assault rifles and tanks, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties.

The artist's use of wild, erratic brushstrokes much like those used in his earlier works further emphasizes the psychological turmoil prevalent over the past few decades with the figure of Mao looming as "a lingering ghost presiding over popular consciousness. Zeng opted to faithfully recreate the paintings, and then overlay them with his own signature style of erratic, frenzied brushstrokes, which symbolize anxiety, angst, and inner turmoil - a fitting tribute to an artist with a troubled psyche.

Zeng explains his reasons for focusing specifically on Van Gogh's self-portraiture, stating "To me, Van Gogh might have been reflecting on himself by constantly turning to self-portraits, making this genre an important area in his oeuvre. The self-portrait served as a window for him to express himself, and he referred to it constantly in his correspondences with other artists.

I aim to study him via the same window. He considers this to be an important process he needs to go through during every significant period of his life or career, through which he can engage in a process of "internal inspection". He explains, "After each experience of self-observation and reflection, my past is seemingly emptied and I am reborn.

I even placed it on the wall near my bed so that I could look at it every day. The dynamics of the twisting pines and the unique compositional structure were inspirational [ I can sense the courage with which he insisted on his own way. However harshly he was criticized, I know he was a man of perseverance. He showed no hesitation in any stroke of his paintings.

I cannot explain why. But as soon as I finish the works, he becomes a legend in my heart. That an artist really dares to enter into that confrontation again, and look at Vincent's work afresh, and That is for us of course, really interesting and really inspiring," It is also somewhat poetic that an Asian artist is the one to reimagine these works, as over one hundred years ago, Van Gogh was strongly influenced by the Japanese art of his time".

His parents worked at a printing house, and he says that they encouraged him to take up painting "to keep me out of trouble, off the street. At the time, the most important thing was whether we could make ends meet and feed ourselves. I think before my 20s the most important thing to me was whether I could feed myself. He travelled all around China when he was young, often to see art exhibitions.

In , at the age of 16, he travelled alone by boat to Shanghai to visit an exhibition titled Years in France , a survey of iconic paintings from every stage of French art history. Zeng says of the exhibition, "Almost every Chinese artist, including myself, thought of this show as required viewing and we rushed to Shanghai in a frenzy to study Western painting in person.

I was amazed by what I saw". He recounts that the exhibition "sent shockwaves through the avant-garde artist community in China. This moment woke virtually every young Chinese artist out of their slumber. We were shocked, we were inspired, but above all, we were instantly aware of how far behind we were. The Rauschenberg exhibition made manifest those impulses in my work which previously had been obscure and charted a course for my future.

Zeng dropped out of high school when he was 16 to work in a printing factory like his parents. In his spare time he took formal painting lessons, and decided he wanted to attend university for painting. He failed the university entrance exams five years in a row before finally succeeding. He says, "I was lucky that my parents did not pressure me or discourage me; they were very supportive and each year my exam marks got a little better until finally I got in.

Zeng attended the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts from to , where he studied oil painting and developed a strong interest in German Expressionism. He says of his time at the Academy, "The biggest received experience was in using line, color and form to express my response to a topic, form or emotion. I learned to utilize my emotion to produce a deep reflection upon a subject rather than making a painting that merely illustrated something.

I felt that I learned nothing, but I was able to unlearn all the technical skills of my Socialist Realist training. We'd be asked to draw nude models, and I'd make some abstract drawing instead. I wanted to renounce all that I knew about art making and become someone who didn't know at all how to paint, which is why I started making abstract art.

Around , I began to feel emotionally connected to the abstract paintings, and looking back at figure drawing and portraiture, I suddenly found a direction. While studying at the Academy, many of his teachers immediately recognized and applauded his rebellion against the prescribed genre of Communist-approved Socialist Realism. He recalls, "The head of the library at my school said if I wanted to see better art books, I should go to the library in Zhejiang Province.

I took a leave and traveled three days and nights by train to Shanghai, and then another three hours to Hangzhou. By his third year of art school, Zeng had completed 45 works, all of which rejected Socialist Realism. His teacher, Pi Daojian, encouraged him to mount a solo show. Pi later recalled that Zeng "painted what he saw. Early life [ edit ].

Art school [ edit ]. Artistic progression [ edit ]. We n:2 [ edit ]. Tiananmen [ edit ]. Art market [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ]. Exhibitions [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Financial Times. Retrieved 22 July Retrieved 29 July Acquavella Galleries. Archived from the original on 30 December Retrieved 25 April Vanity Fair. Retrieved 3 May ShanghART Gallery.

The New York Times. ISSN South China Morning Post. Retrieved 30 July China Daily.