Wang Guangyi graduated from the Oil Paint- ing Department, Zhejiang Academy of Art (now China Academy of Art), and began his life as an artist in the 1980s, the post-classical era. He reconstructed Western canonic works with which the public was familiar. In 1989, Wang first inserted the image of "Mao Zedong" into a painting that made him the leading figure of Chinese Pop Art. The series on "Great Criticism" in the beginning of the1990s, juxtaposed political symbols of the Cultural Revolution with business logos in western mainstream culture, thereby ex- pressing the visual and cultural experience of Chinese socialism. Wang did not mean to discuss artistic issues, but rather to depict an epoch from a close shot. Chinese art critic Lu Peng stated that Wang's "Great Criticism" has become an important historical document as well as the keyword for Post Cold War im- ages.

Another art critic Huang Zhuan argued that Wang's pictures precisely convey many contemporary experiences of conflicts and ambivalences, "From nameless belief to furi- ous deconstruction, from the spirit of heroism to fashion tricks of modern consumerism ... Wang continually creates pieces of visual suspense, and breaking them before we could figure out the answers. As an energetic and powerful artist, Wang Guangyi is hard to grasp and understand in the context of Art History." Wang admits his concern for the public, public issues and the discovery of one's inner self, and he considers his art works as "the product of group intelligence", or "the product of a public language." In this work "V," the propagandizing image of the traditional young man during the Cul- tural Revolution is ingeniously combined and contrasted to this world-known brand of popular music channel. This painting reveals both signs of money and consumption and ironically relects consumer culture.