Art News

Trend In Chinese Portraits

 

ue Minjun does it; so does Fang Lijun, Zhang Huan, Ai Weiwei and Ma Liuming. Geng Jianyi and Wu Shanzhuan used to do it, and Liu Jin and Chi Peng are just starting out, but they’ve also embraced the trend. 

What all these Chinese artists are doing is portraying themselves -- in print, film and in a multiplicity of colors on canvas. They paint, photograph and videotape themselves in order to create new works of art that are unquestionably loyal to one thing: their own image. 

In a nation once dominated by an ideology of selflessness and yet wedded to the Cult of Mao, there is now, in art galleries at least, the Cult of Me. 

No precise statistics exist on how often Chinese artists use their own images to create art, but many art curators, collectors and gallery owners say the numbers are skyrocketing. 

A growing legion of artists here seems to be showing off, saying, "Look at me," and creating their own cult-like images. Just take a tour through some of this country’s major art galleries and exhibition halls and you’ll see it happening everywhere. 

Qiu Zhijie has a slashing red character painted across his photographed image; Qing Ga and Huang Yan paint maps and traditional scenes on their faces and backs; Cang Xin seems to have a knack for photographing himself licking the ground and a variety of objects, in all manner of places. And Chi Peng -- that 1980s boy -- seems to be streaking naked (observed from the backside only) through the big cities, chased by blurry red planes that are apparently intent on monitoring his whereabouts. 

Does this put-me-in-the-image art mean anything? Some art historians and observers say it's a gimmick -- a simple means of branding an art form; and an easy solution to searching for a subject. 

But others say that something more is going one here, that after decades of group think, socialist ideology and having their individual spirit repressed, young people in China are eager and determined to explore their own desires, interests and psyches -- and many are doing that through contemporary art. 

“Contemporary art is really concerned with talking about ourselves, our lives, our spiritual sense,” says Weng Ling, the director of the Shanghai Gallery of Art and a graduate of the art history department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. “During the Cultural Revolution everything was about politics and the national leaders. But after the 80s, the art students started to think about real life -- and the artists started to think about their own feelings and happiness -- questions of who we are.” 

And don’t expect it to go away anytime soon. In an age when contemporary artists are searching for their own unique look, or perhaps their own brand to market to collectors, curators and the media, what better way to distinguish yourself than by portraying yourself on the big canvas or in photographs? 

You can hear people in the galleries commenting on these works. "That’s the artist -- that’s him,” gallery visitors say when recognizing the artist standing by one of his works.