The China Project

197 Zhang XiAOgang: Shadows in the Soul Zhang Xiaogang: Shadows in the soul Leng Lin Over the past three decades, economic development and social change have had an enormous impact on Chinese artists. With the implementation of market reforms and an Open Door policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Chinese society experienced tremendous and rapid transformation at a number of levels. These changes had deep repercussions for the development of Chinese contemporary art, with many artists experiencing a shared sense of powerlessness and anxiety, intensified by the shifting nature of artistic identity in China. Having been valued as social critics during the 1980s, artists now faced the predicament of having to defend their right to exist. This altered perception of their role resulted in a need for artists to closely examine their inner selves, their personal histories and their relationship to their environment. Instead of seeking external change, artists focused on self-examination and self-realisation. This constituted a major shift away from commenting on the modernisation of China, and its impact on society, towards the exploration of issues of self and existence. It was in this context that Zhang Xiaogang matured as an artist. Born in Kunming, Yunnan Province in 1958, he graduated from high school in 1976, before being sent to a remote rural area as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. 1 He was accepted into the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1977 and graduated in 1982. During the 1980s, the government promoted the industrialisation of China to enable it to compete in the global market. China was eager to become part of the international world, and the restrictions and isolationist policies of the past began to be lifted. Artists were keen to learn from the West, studying the international art journals and books that began to enter the country in greater numbers. These artists adopted not only the formalist aesthetics of modern and contemporary art, but also Western philosophical concepts. During the 1980s, Zhang eagerly absorbed the styles and ideas of Western art. His paintings combine elements from religious mysticism with influences drawn from European Expressionism and Surrealism. In these works, the emphasis is on a spiritual understanding of nature and the self, rather than on the heroic realism favoured by painters during the Cultural Revolution. Works such as Eternal love 1988 exemplify Zhang’s focus on the transcendent and the spiritual in everyday life. At the time, Zhang was attempting to communicate his understanding of the hidden and non-material aspects of the world, and his art consequently became very private and introspective. This period in Zhang’s artistic life extended until 1993, when he had the opportunity to visit Europe for the first time. Standing in front of original masterpieces of Western art, which he had previously only admired through reproductions, Zhang realised there was an irreducible distance between his ability to convey his experiences as an artist, and these iconic works from another culture. He felt a deep sense of his own being and culture, and of existing problems in his life and environment as a Chinese artist. He recalls: What we have been doing with painting seems to be more like reciting school lessons from memory. That means we did not experience life in its most realistic form. Our lives were not artistic, while the West is artistic. For instance, when you wanted to paint [a] landscape, you would immediately read up on the Russian landscape artists, and then went on to devour works of the European landscape artists. And the same memorising method would be applied to portraits. This conceptual transformation and realisation occurred in 1993. 2 Amnesia and memory: Boy with closed eyes (detail) 2006 Oil on canvas / 200 x 260cm / Collection: The artist