Fang Lijun (; born 1963) is a Chinese artist based in
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
. He was born into a wealthy family with a high social status. In the 1990s, there was a cultural movement
[Lü, Peng. "21-New Art and Artists." A History of Art in 20th-Century China. Milano: Charta, 2010.]
nowiki>] in China referred to as
Cynical Realism of which Fang Lijun was a member. Living in China during this critical time
shaped his worldview in terms of his views on art, human values and morality.
Biography
Fang Lijun attended Children Cultural Place school.
During his time at school, he met Li Xianting (who would later be a famous critic) and was introduced to watercolors, oil paints and ink.
Fang Lijun decided to leave high school to pursue his artistic dream. He made a decision to go to Hebei Light Industry Technology school to study ceramics for three years. However, Fang Lijun did not want to stop his studies there. Instead of having an intellectual job in the ceramics department, he prepared himself to take the entrance exam to enroll at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He was fascinated by the medium of oil painting and chose it for his final graduation project.
At the beginning of 1992, Fang Lijun moved to Yuanmingyuan village in north-west Beijing.
Due to the economy and other difficult cultural issues, painters wanted to create a utopia where they could freely paint and express themselves. That was when Yuanmingyuan village drew artists' attention. At the time, painters like Fang Lijun had to face many obstacles and challenges, particular financial issues. In order to be able to paint, they needed to have funds to buy materials. However, there was no certainty that they would receive any funding, so it was extremely difficult for painters to be able to follow what they love. Fang Lijun and other artists like him had to paint for a living due to the economic pressure.
Style
Fang Lijun made a large number of works featuring the subject "bald heads".
Under the influence of his family and friends, his art expresses the freedom, the integrity in two different settings: traditional and modern era, and the will of making a change.
He explained in an interview that he wished to send a message about the lives of painters through bald-head figures. The bald headed traditional Chinese men are viewed as dumb or stupid.
Through these figures, he is sending a message about morality and how people define what is normal based on physical appearance, rather than internal moral character. Fang Lijun values the individual stories of each person. He is asking the society to look at painters as normal people, as people who are making a change, rather than as eccentric outcasts.
In his paintings, he also uses elements of water and flower a lot. Water plays a big role in Fang Lijun's paintings. In an interview, he explained that water is helping him convey a message about his feeling and his voice about the truth and what is going in Chinese society.
His famous work with water is a man being drowned in water. Part of the reason for this painting relates to his childhood experience when he was almost drowned.
The second and most important part in relation to this painting is that he is expressing his feelings about the Chinese society. When the man is drowning in the water, it represents painters like Fang Lijun.
He feels like he does not have a voice, that he is powerless in this societal structure and that he cannot even make his own decision or speak the truth. Also, his hope is to freely go and move in the water metaphorically. He is hoping to be able to speak for himself, for other artists and to inspire everyone.
He is one of the artists who is standing in the middle line between traditional and modern practice. For example, he still follows the process of the carving of wood with the negative image, coats it with ink and then impresses the image on the paper.
Because art projects require different color immersion, Fang uses different plates and a set order of printing on different adjoined scrolls. Each scroll represents one individual against the mass which leads to "personal probity" in facing adversity.
Cynical Realism
The earliest exhibition about the Cynical Realism was by Fang Lijun and Liu Wei.
"Wanshi"-Cynical Realism'. The figures in Cynical Realism's paintings were cynical, distorted and accidental. In each of these painting, there is a sense of "self - mockery and ridiculous snippets of the surrounding circumstances".
Different metaphysical questions and searches were discarded by this Cynical Realism. Fang Lijun said: "The bastard can be duped a hundred times but he still falls for the same old trick. We'd rather be called losers, bores, basket cases, scoundrels, or airheads, than ever be cheated again".
Fang Lijun is famous with his "illustrative style and bald-headed" figures.
[Lu, Peng, and Bruce G. Doar. "11-The Reborn Modern." A Pocket History of 20th- century Chinese Art. Milano: Charta, 2010. 482-85. Print.] In these paintings, bald headed young men are in different motions: yawning, smiling, swimming, etc. Some of the figures are described as confusion or considered "dumbfounded by modern society".
His figures represent the loss in direction of youths in China after 1989. Further more, some critics view these figures as inward looking monks which challenge the idea of orthodoxy. He has repeated painting stereotypical bald headed Chinese men with a "stupid" smiles.
There was a shift in his painting before the 1990s and after the 1990s. Before, the relationship between the figures was easy to predict. The background was clearer with different details to help the "picture-reader" understand the paintings. However, after the 1990s, there was a big shift in the way he portrayed these figures.
The relationship is hard to interpret when there usually was a big figure in the front and other small figures in the back. The background was not the main focus of the painting, but it still played a role. This shift leads to a new way of interpreting painting and allows everybody to read and challenge the idea of "representation" . For some people this shift is considered a self-mockery and dealt with at a distance.
1991.6.1. painting
It is a woodblock print which consists of five fabric scrolls (490.9 cm x 606.2 cm in total approximately
This painting is a composition of a bald headed crowd with sky and clouds in a gray scale. The most important detail in this picture is the large head with an anonymous finger pointing to the sky. This figure is turning so only his left face is shown. He is looking at his finger with a very distinct smirk on his fac
His right side is frozen and only some upper teeth are shown. Within a crowd, there are all bald heads facing upward to look to the sky or where the finger is pointing. Some of them have strong emotion by the facial expressions, some are reaching their hands and some look confused. The crowd is painted in a much denser level.
This painting reveals confusion and lost. The crowd does not know where to go and where to look. The gray scale of this painting reflects the uncertainty as well as the strong emotion of people during this era. There is a sense of loss in direction which represents the youths and artists in China who are uncertain about the future. Fang Lijan painted the crowd with non distinctive figures to reveal his feeling during that time. The definitions of self-identity and nation-identity are lost. The figures' faces are distorted from suffering through searching for something that is nowhere to be found. Some other critics view the large figure as a Christ-like image because Fang Lijun is influenced by Western culture and styl
Other paintings
The Working Class Must Exercise Leadership in Everything, 1970: This painting has similar figures to the 1991.6.
There is a crowd with a large figure of Chairman Mao. However, instead of having a gray scale, this painting is painted in bright colors to represent a new hope that leads to empowerment and happiness. In this painting, Chairman Mao is considered a bright leader who will bring joy and peace to the country. People in the crowd have a happy and confident look under the direction or plan of Chairman Mao. The Chairman is drawn bigger than the other figures. The artist intentionally puts more focused details on the Chairman character to emphasise his role as a big brother or father that is pointing or leading people to a better place.
30th Mary: This painting is still under the Cynical Realists and bald head figure
In this painting, the background and the children are painted in bright colour
. Besides, figures are located in the spiral pattern in which children are flying back to heaven. There are two different critical approaches to this picture. One approach is that this painting reveals a new hope for the young generation that can change the future of China. People have hopes on the youths that they can restructure or remodel the society so that everybody can have a voice and everybody lives in freedom. The other approach describes death as a relief from this life. Because life is too stressful or too complicated, death becomes the best solution to escape from this world to go to a more peaceful place such as heaven.
"China/Avant-Garde" exhibition
This exhibition took place in February 1989. It was first denied access by the government. Some of the artists decided to move the artist's villages to begin to make a "department art".
The target audience of the artists was not the public but other artists/painters among their circle of friends. Fang Lijun's works were shown during this exhibition.
Due to the different economic and political times, there was a lot of attention that was being drawn from this exhibition among the artists. The intention was to motivate the movement of the society to reinforce a new structure of China. When the corruption happened, people started getting lost in direction of where to go or how to change the country. The China/Avant-garde called people together to make a bigger change, to fire up different movements that happened right after this exhibition
New Generation exhibition
This New Generation exhibition was held to draw people's attention to the Cynical Realism. This took place in July 1991 in the National History Museum in Beijing.
There were many new major painters such as Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Song Yonghong, who participated and helped with this event. This exhibition is known as a starter for the trend of realistic painting. In this event, Fang Lijun and other new painters introduced new ideas on society, painting and art critique. His paintings in this exhibition mostly focused on the national identity, cultural change and other related issues through stereotypical bald head men, family style and people's faces.
Reception in Europe
In October 2002, when
Rolf Lauter became director of the
Kunsthalle Mannheim
The Kunsthalle Mannheim is a museum of modern and contemporary art, built in 1907, established in 1909 and located in Mannheim, Germany. Since then it has housed the city's art collections as well as temporary exhibitions – and up to 1927 those ...
, he met Alexander Ochs, an art dealer from Berlin, and asked him about showing young artists from Asia, especially China, with his support in the museum. In 2003, Lauter presented loans from Fang Lijun,
Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun (; born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolour ...
and Yang Shaobin in his second re-presenting of the collection in a temporary exhibition on the subject of "SelfSpace" with 19th century portrait sculptures by
Maillol and
Rodin, light boxes by
Jeff Wall and works by
Alex Katz
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints.
Early life and career
Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...
. Especially the work "
SARS
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''seve ...
" (later named "Untitled") by Fang Lijun, a large-format woodcut, attracted attention. Lauter wrote in his introductory text: "Opposed to the pictures by Katz is a work composed of seven printed scroll paintings in the size 400 x 854 cm by the Chinese artist Fang Lijun. In addition to a rising tendency towards "de-individualisation" of people, his work labeled "SARS" also addresses the "glowing" danger of the virus for the crowds in China" Unfortunately, Lauter‘s purchase request was not fulfilled in Mannheim at the time. Today versions of the work are in the collections of the
MoMA and the
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
Paris.
Exhibitions
*1996: Human Images in an Uncertain Age, The Japan Foundation Asia Center, Toky
*1999: d'APERTutto, 48th
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
,
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
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*2001: Asian Fine Art,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
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*2002: Between
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
and Dali, Woodcuts and Paintings 1989-2002, Ludwig Forum Fur InternationaleKunst Aache
*2003: Die Neue Kunsthalle II: natürlich – körperlich – sinnlich / The New Kunsthalle II: natural - physical - sensual, Kunsthalle Mannheim November 24, 2003 – March 7, 2004. Booklet:
Rolf Lauter.
*2004: Leben Ist Jetzt, Alexander Ochs Galleries
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
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*2005: National Galerie/China Art Museum,
Beijing, China
*2006: Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, German
* 2016: Chinese Whispers,
Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Bern, Switzerlan
He has shown work internationally in exhibitions including ''The Next Ones'' at Alexander Och
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
, ''New Work, New Acquisitions'' at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
br>
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
and ''Alors, la Chine?'' at the
Pompidou Centre
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
br>
in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
.
References
External links
Fang Lijun at 88MoCCA - the Museum of Chinese contemporary art on the webFang Lijun at Thomas Erben Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fang, Lijun
1963 births
Living people
20th-century Chinese painters
21st-century Chinese painters
Painters from Hebei
People from Handan