Lot 19: - Zhang Hongtu , b. 1943 Shitao - Van Gogh #7 oil on canvas

signed and dated 2004 in Chinese; signed in Pinyin, titled in English and dated 2004 on the reverse oil on canvas

72 by 32 1/4 in. 183 by 82 cm.

Stanford University, Cantor Arts Center; Wellesley College, Davis Museum and Cultural Center; Indianapolis Museum of Art, On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West, January 2005-September 2006, fig. 97, illustrated in color

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, China Onward, Denmark, 2007, p. 397, illustrated in color
Lin & Keng Gallery, Zhang Hongtu - The Art of Straddling Boundaries, Taipei/Beijing, 2007, p. 143, illustrated in color

Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu (b. 1943) has lived and worked in New York City since the early 1980s when he came to study at the Art Students League from 1982-1986. Before coming to America, Zhang was educated in China at Beijing's Central Academy of Arts and Crafts (B.A., 1969), giving him a deep understanding of traditional Chinese aesthetics and modes of production. As a result of his bi-national experience, Zhang's work always rides the line between Chinese and Western; instead of being one or the other, it is always both. Humor also plays a vital role in the artist's entire oeuvre and often plays on both Chinese and Western notions of laughter and play. For example, the artist's Pop Quaker Oats Cans (Lot 123) from the late 1980s are actual oatmeal canisters upon which Zhang has used paint to turn the easily recognizable Quaker into Chairman Mao through the addition of a green cap with red star and a matching military uniform. Like Andy Warhol and fellow Chinese artist Wang Guangyi, Zhang conflates consumerism, pop culture and politics into these playful early works. In Stone Mao (Lot 122) from 1992, Zhang carves the outline of Chairman Mao's bust into a nearly-square piece of stone. The work pokes fun at the ubiquitous image of Mao as the Great Leader, a portrait that those in the West recognize immediately, even without the actual face being depicted. By carving it into stone, Zhang creates a faux fossil; Mao is forever etched in history and in our minds. In an important body of work begun in 1998, Zhang has aimed at repainting famous Chinese landscape paintings of mountains and water in the style of famous Western painters such as van Gogh and Monet. The titles of the works seem to be collaborative in nature, listing both the original Chinese painter and the Western artist to whom Zhang pays homage. Here, Shitao-van Gogh #7 (Lot 19, 2004) and Dong Qichang-Cezanne #6 (Lot 20, 1999-2000) exhibit the ways in which Zhang reinterprets traditional Chinese landscape painting through the filter of Impressionism. Finally, Zhang again turns to humor in addressing traditional Chinese culture in his work Chinese Zodiac Figures in the Tang Dynasty (Lot 21) from 2003, a set of 12 ceramic figurines representing the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac system. However, instead of being simple animals, here we find the heads of a tiger here and a horse there atop the glazed ceramic body of Chairman Mao. Again, Zhang combines Chinese history and humor to come up with a laugh-inducing homage to the symbols and traditions of his native home. -Eric Shiner