Lot 428: The Square

Yin Zhaoyang (b. 1970)
The Square
signed in Chinese and dated '2004' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
78 7/8 x 98½in. (200 x 250cm.)
Painted in 2004

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
Among the leading painters of his generation, Beijing-based Yin Zhaoyang follows the Chinese contemporary art tradition of grappling head-on with the dominant icons and symbols of his country's communist history. Artists of a slightly older generation, like Wang Guangyi or Zhang Xiaogang, were born and raised fully under the communist system and their critiques and insights into that period and its impact on the nation and on individual lives are in some sense fundamentally visceral and deeply personal. Yin was born in 1970, and, like fellow painter Li Songsong, his interest in these images is less from his personal experiences and more from an interest in the loaded symbols of personal and collective memory that haunt the nation. For Yin, this impulse is manifest in his on-going series of works focusing on the figures and monuments of the nation's communist past, including a series of images of Mao from different periods in the Chairman's life, paintings based on famous public monuments of revolutionary heroes, and his eerie images of Tian'anmen Square.

This monumental example from 2004 is simply titled Square . The plain title undermines its instantly recognizable status as Beijing's famous public square. Inevitably, for Westerners, the image raises associations with the Tian'anmen Square Incident in June of 1989. But for China, Tian'anmen is a much more complex symbol, the site of major state declarations, including the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, official parades and state sanctioned spectacles, as well as a much-beloved domestic tourist destination akin perhaps to the Statue of Liberty in New York. Yin's painting maintains these contradictory associations. Square is painted in rich reds and dark tones. The square is populated densely with figures and lights that seem to be gathering momentum under the main arch. The point of view is remote and cinematic, giving the scene a majestic air. At the same time, Yin deliberately obscures the finer details of the image; the portrait over the gate is implied but not clear, and it is uncertain as to whether the scene takes place in the past, present, or future. It could be an average evening on the square, a particular celebration, or something more ominous. This ambiguity gives the work a unique force, implying the ever-present potential for these symbols of the past to be re-ignited and appropriated for new social and political realities.