The China Project

81 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection FANG Lijun As a school student, Fang Lijun endured the calamitous events of the Cultural Revolution and later witnessed the social upheaval resulting from the Tiananmen Square protests. In these events Fang would find his own rebellious, artistic expression: ‘We would rather be described as painters of loss, ennui, and crisis, or as rogues, or as the bewildered, but we will never again be deceived’. 1 Fang’s superb draughtsmanship and signature style make him a forerunner and key representative of the cynical realism movement. Li Xianting, the art historian, critic, writer and curator, coined the term Cynical Realism to describe the ‘philosophical mix of emotional ennui and rogue humour that pervaded Chinese society in the first half of the 1990s’. 2 The annihilation of all personal distinction in Fang’s laconic subjects is a deliberate visual ploy. His bald figures appear without purpose or direction, their leering smiles and slouched posture give the impression of hoodlums, jokers, people who feel alone or misunderstood. For Fang, the figure of the lout epitomises his own personal struggle against order and authority, and illustrates the broader cultural and social mores of the post-Mao communist era. Pencil drawing no.1 1988 is a precursor to Fang’s colourful, large-scale canvases of the 1990s; it contextualises a sense of emptiness and roguish behaviour evident in his art. In the work, a group of eight shaven-headed boys confront the viewer, smirking defiantly as they sit within an oppressive walled enclosure. The boys appear as if part of a gang whose outlook extends beyond the status quo — a characteristic of cynical realist art. This work is part of a series of four that Fang produced as a student at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing. While his peers were influenced by the difficult, Western philosophical texts popular at the time, Fang secretly yearned for a sense of personal freedom in his work, unrestrained by ideology and traditional practice. The idea that an individual expression could be explored in the realist technique preoccupied Fang. He struggled with romantic notions of academic study and the reality of the strict and repetitive teaching methods of the traditional regime, and felt increasingly confused, bored and dejected, but this series of drawings was a breakthrough. The gleaming, hairless heads of the young rascals in Pencil drawing no.1 was inspired by two things: a friend’s photograph of farmers working in Taihang Mountain, east of Hebei Province, and his own shaven head. These features were to become a signature in Fang Lijun’s work. endnotes 1 Li Xianting, ‘Fang Lijun and Cynical Realism’, in Fang Lijun: Human Images in an Uncertain Age [exhibition catalogue], The Japan Foundation Asia Center, Tokyo, 1996, p.84. 2 Li Xianting, p.83. Pencil drawing no.1 1988 Pencil / 53.5 x 77.9cm / Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2007