LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS
WANG GUANGYI
Background
Wang Guangyi is the leading protagonist of the post-1989 Political Pop movement
- one of the major artistic movements to have developed in the aftermath
of the events of 1989 - Tiananmen Square and the closure of the China/Avant
Garde exhibition at the China National Gallery. It is characterised by the
combination of propaganda images, Pop Art and commercial advertising. Wang
Guangyi’s “Great Criticism” series combines the propaganda
posters of the Cultural Revolution with the brand names of famous western
consumer products. Idealised peasants and workers yield pens instead of
hammers or shovels and appear to extol the virtues of Coca Cola, Nokia or
Swatch. Wang Guangyi calls the ironic effect produced by the juxtaposition
of icons, cultural or other, from different eras “anatomic structuralism”.
This anatomic structuralism destroys the original intent of each image resulting
in an absurdity.
Great Castigation series Coca Cola (1993)
Shift away from the Socialist Realism towards the cynicism embodied in painting
styles like political pop and cynical realism such as Wang Guangyi great
Castigation Series Coca Cola 1993, a mocking style using Communist Posters
overlaid with Western advertising slogans and text.
asiasociety.org
kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu
References
Jose, Nicholas, Next Wave Art, Art Asia Pacific Supplement to art and Australia
June 1993, p11
Wang Guangyi’s Mass Criticism series combines Cultural Revolution
images of revolutionary communism with the marketing icons of international
capitalism. This is both ironical and critical, a sense of history being
rewritten, or fractured.
Lydia Lee A Third Space Wang Guangi ( Coca Cola )
Art Asia Pacific Issue 24 1999. p31
Wang Guangyi The Great Criticism Tang 1992
Art Asia Pacific Supplement to Art and Australia June 1993 p13