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Bloodline Series - Big Family
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1998 Oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm Signed lower right ZHANG Xiaogang in Chinese and English, dated 1998 |
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Estimate
26,000,000 - 40,000,000 6,341,000 - 9,756,000 866,700 - 1,333,300
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Sold Price
38,560,000 9,861,893 1,271,348
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In 1994, Zhang Xiaogang's series "Bloodline: Big Family" made its appearance in the "22nd Sao Paulo Biennial". It is a series which presents the spiritual bloodline and historical family in the eyes of the artist. It is the very series which shows for the first time in the history of fine arts the "Chinese face, Chinese family and Chinese history" as commented by the poet Ouyang Jianghe that brought Zhang Xiaogang and Chinese contemporary art as a whole an abundance of honors and applause. Since then Zhang won general acknowledgement for several of his exhibitions. And the "Bloodline: Big Family" of 1998 is the representative of its kind.
As to the origin of the works, Zhang Xiaogang explained in his Self Narrative in 1995 "Recently, I get direct inspirations for my works from personally kept photos or charcoal drawings which can be seen anywhere on the streets of China, as well as the complex mental state which history and reality has given us. l can't really say which part of the carefully decorated old photograph touched a nerve deep inside my soul. However, they let endless thoughts spring out of me, and make it impossible to get it off my hands. Perhaps these old photos do more than just satisfy people's certain retrospection. The simple, candid, dreamy vision and linguistic methods it bears are so profound that it somehow proves my hatred for the incomprehensible Formalism and exaggerated Romanticism. To me, old photos and charcoal drawings are quite familiar like a schematic language, and at the same time, they are presenting things that I did not find valuable then. Among them was a unique aesthetic appreciation which ordinary Chinese people had been pursuing for a long time, such as aesthetic characteristics which suppress individuality and emphosize commonness, and that are implicit and neutral but illed with poetic meaning at the same time."
In the eyes of Lu Peng, "Zhang Xiaogang was born in a family of revolutionary cadre, a kind of family familiar to those in the 50s. And it is the custom of such families to keep old photos about revolution and construction in early days. Different from the earlier and older pictures of Chinese-style long robe, these pictures, from the 40s to early 70s, carry a direct emotional and historical relatedness with parents and their children and with the living Chinese as a whole. They even witnessed the historic moments shoulder by shoulder." (Zhang Xiaogang, Artside Gallery, P.34) Uniform gestures and standardized expression are the features of the old time, as generally considered, however, Zhang Xiaogang, far less satisfied with this, has greater expectations, that is, to exhibit various blood lines, social or cultural.
The "big family" concept of Zhang Xiaogang relects a common characteristic of the time and wins name and fame for his series works in the international artistic world. However, Zhang Xiaogang once mocked himself saying it was the same successful big family painter that went bankrupt with his own family. Thus the artist concludes: "bloodline is unbreakable while family is vulnerable". After divorcing, he moved from Sichuan to Beijing and it was his affection and compassion for his daughter that gave birth to the series "Amnesia and Memory" following "Big Family". Just as his second wife said, "I think, his daughter is just a part of him. He also said himself that his daughter was a rib from his body. I often say to him his daughter is himself. They are not two persons but one."
The sensitiveness and ability of profound observation grants the artist the gift to connect his personal life closely with the time and society, which raises him to the heights of art. Now, Zhang Xiaogang is a universally acknowledged successful artist, an artist whose success is far beyond failure. Wang Lin, art critic and a professor in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts said: "I wish to see more achievements and bigger success with him and am expecting him to get a sound footing in the world history of fine arts. The history of our joint efforts will become part of the history of world art."
However, the sensational success seems still unable to eliminate the feeling of loneliness deeply rooted within him. He said: "I can never expect to make any sunny and happy paintings. My paintings are all cloudy and melancholic. Maybe it is because of my experience for the relationship between my family and I always displays the negative side or dark back of life, never the positive face".
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