Lot 674: TANG ZHIGANG

TANG ZHIGANG B. 1959 HORSE signed in Pinyin and dated 96, framed gouache on paper 59 by 80 cm.; 23 1/4 by 31 1/2 in.

Meeting in Painting: Tang Zhigang, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, 2004, p. 34

Born in 1959 to an army family in the most southwestern province of China, Yunnan, Tang Zhigang's vast oeuvre reveals a truly unique development and maturation as an artist. Tang's paintings are indicative of his experience as a youth during the Cultural Revolution, as a soldier in the People's Liberation Army, which he joined in 1976, as well as a citizen or 'non-soldier' upon his subsequent departure from the army. While his more recent 'children in meeting' paintings are very well-received in the art world, they are the culmination of an artist's personal journey into his past and childhood memories. The past plays an inextricable role in the understanding of Tang's work: as a child, he loved to paint, and when he joined the PLA, he chose to participate extensively the propaganda department, until his resignation in 1996. Tang received his artistic training from the department of oil painting at the People's Liberation Art Institute, graduating in 1989. At that time, art had a purely utilitarian purpose: the proliferation of Communist ideals and principles. Tang's long career as an artist has seen many reinventions of his style, especially surrounding the period of his resignation from the PLA, a time of transition for the artist to finally reexamine the various influences, whether political or personal, on his art and formulate his own voice. Sotheby's is pleased to be offering two works from this period in Tang's early career, Horse (Lot 674) and Horses (Lot 675), in the autumn theme sale.

Unseen in his later works, the deeply personal iconography of the horse, as well as the quite apparent sexual references made in these paintings, allude to a distinctly strange collection of memories in Tang's mind, a collection of memories which will eventually allow him to conceive his famous 'meeting' paintings. In 1965, while his father was fighting in a war, Tang lived with his mother at a labor farm in Kunyang, where she was a prison warden. He recounts: 'in the 1970s, we had a daily broadcast, "the main task of pupils is to study at school, accompanied by the development of other interests," there were so many problems at the school...children at the labor farm spend most of the time at home to "develop other interests" such as fishing, catching shrimps...the most interesting thing was to watch cows or horses mate.' The innocent curiosity of a child is revisited in these gouache on paper works; simple, yet loaded with visual references to the sexual energy inherent in both humans and animals. Despite the overtly erotic imagery, these works maintain a naïveté and sense of wonder which permeates beyond simple notions of sexuality. Tang, himself, once said: 'One of the features of Kunyang town was the popular use of carts, a major means of transportation at that time. One could easily detect the smell of horses in the city. Carts from the farm were quite different from those in the city. Our horses, which were of good breed, were much stronger and bigger. They like to expose their sexual organ. I would use a catapult to strike it with a bamboo strip. They would then withdraw it immediately.' In this recollection, the horse becomes the champion, the symbol of masculinity and the vital element which allows contact between the country and the city.

The notion of 'seeing' as a child or 'child's play' continues to be a prominent theme in Tang's oeuvre today. Ironically, despite leaving the army, his works continue to address subjects which are inherently derived from the strictly Chinese experience of military life. These two important works mark the beginning of Tang's departure from pure depiction of the lives of soldiers to the truly compelling subject of personal memory and history. Acting as a precursor to his iconic 'children in meeting' paintings, Horse and Horses demonstrate the task and trial that one must undertake to revive those precious, often forgotten instances of childhood. However, the intrinsic power of Tang's work stems from much deeper and farther than just his individual experience, it originates from a collective memory which exists the minds of many Chinese people of his generation. The ability to use personal memory as a template for collective memory allows Tang's paintings to strike a distinctly 'Chinese' chord.