The China Project

149 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection GUO Jian The contrast between a glistening surface facade and underlying violence is a thread that runs through Guo Jian’s series, ‘The day before I went away’. This large-scale, vibrant painting (with the same title as the series) draws on the visual and political languages of Chinese popular culture — such as socialist propaganda and model operas — while satirising their inherent ideology and positive symbolism. Guo Jian’s canvases are generally populated with an eclectic collection of characters and items. Recurring figures include soldiers, dancing girls, government officials and military paraphernalia. Despite their theatricality and air of hyperreality, many of Guo Jian’s works are influenced by his actual experiences as a youth during the Cultural Revolution, and later as a soldier. The heightened colour and flat surface of this painting owe much to Social Realism and propaganda art. Guo Jian’s childhood coincided with the period of the Cultural Revolution, and he recalls early exposure to its predominant art forms. In addition to the ubiquitous representations of Mao Zedong, he mentions the heroic, epic movie versions of the eight ‘model operas’. 1 Filmed in lurid technicolour, these operas occupy a strange space between propaganda, Hollywood musical and traditional Chinese opera. Influenced by revolutionary fervour, Guo Jian later joined the army (his first assignment was as a military artist, collaborating on a work to celebrate China’s 1979 war with Vietnam). His series ‘The day before I went away’ draws on these experiences, and is based around soldiers and female entertainers, often showing a group of uniformed soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) surrounding a beautiful young woman. The day before I went away 2008 is focused on three main figures. A glamorous, uniformed singer holds a glittering microphone, her elaborate coiffure and glistening red fingernails echoing the fixed, almost painful smiles of the soldiers. Their face-splitting grins are heightened by the immaculate white teeth showing between their stretched red lips. Sharing the foreground with the singer is a soldier who wears the same smile as his comrades, but is set apart from the others by the weight of a stone plaque resting around his neck and hanging down his back. With another soldier, he is practising Qigong , an ancient form of martial art — this third figure holds a long stick with which he appears to be taking cruel delight in shattering the stone resting heavily against his colleague’s back. Looming over this scene is the ominous bulk of a green army tank, recalling the violently repressed protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, in which Guo Jian took part as a student demonstrator. While Guo Jian’s characters smile broadly, there is an evident sense of hysteria, an element of violence and hypocrisy deliberately undermining the bright surfaces and air of resolute happiness. endnote 1 The eight officially sanctioned model operas ( Yang Ban Xi ) were instituted by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, a member of the later disgraced Gang of Four. The operas, performed onstage or on screen, showed proletarian characters fighting heroically against an oppressive, traditionalist society. The day before I went away (from ‘The day before I went away’ series) 2008 Oil on canvas / 152 x 213cm / Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund