Wang Guangyi - China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Catalogue Essay

    Great Criticism: Warhol is Wang Guangyi’s tongue-in-cheek homage to one of his most significant artistic influences. Andy Warhol is the only artist whose name is featured in Wang’s internationally acclaimed Great Criticism series to date. Warhol’s influence on Wang is evident in the series’ extensive use of silkscreen techniques, vibrant colors, and Pop imagery. Thematically, Great Criticism also pays tribute to the themes of art’s commodification and mass production that Warhol pioneered. Over three decades ago, Warhol’s fascination with China was the genesis of his iconic Mao paintings. Today, a Warholian fantasy comes full circle as a billion Chinese consumers fuel their material obsessions through the fruits of mass industrial production, and a superstar Chinese artist paints Warhol’s name alongside luxury brand names that are the subject of a bestselling series. Chang Tsong-zung says of the Great Criticism series: “The dislocation of two iconic images/signs creates "a humorous and absurd effect that carries with it a biting satire of both of the ideology of the Mao era and the blind craze for Western consumer products prevalent in today''''s China, coupled with a frank delight in the silly glamour of Cultural Revolution and pop marketing images." (T.-Z. Chang, Post-1989, Hong Kong, 2001, p. xxi) In the context of the Great Criticism works, Wang pays double tribute to his muse by illustrating “Warhol” as pop art within pop art. He did not, however, necessarily see the effect of such artistic exchange as either democratic or equalizing. Asked “what is Chinese?” during the Mahjong exhibition, he responds: “Of course, differences of environment and cultural background result in artists coming to completely different views of the world. My view is that artistic expression arises from the uniting of an artist with the macro-concept of a nation. The term global mainstream is basically pure invention.” (G. Wang, quoted in Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, Ostfildern, 2005, p. 52).

501

Great Criticism – Warhol

2002
Oil and acrylic on canvas.
15 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (40 x 50.2 cm).
Signed and dated “2002 Wang Guang Yi [in Chinese and English]” on the overlap.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £54,000

China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection

The Farber Collection
13 October 2007, 7pm
London