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

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Exhibited

    Manchester, Chinese Arts Center, Representing the People, 1998-1999

  • Literature

    S. Champion and K. Smith, Representing the People, Manchester, 1998-1999, p. 129 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Wang Jinsong belongs to the representatives of a new kind of realism who have come to the fore since 1989 in Beijing. But his type of realism is strange and unreal: figures of different origins meet in open and indeterminate rooms, faceless stereotyped figures and dolls interchange with realistic colored faces which also seem impersonal. Their individuality seems “lent” and they seem to function under the orders of an anonymous director. “I love the theatre,” said Wang Jinsong. “On the stage people do what they are told.” He finds his chracters on walks through the city streets, on advertising boardings, in window displays, in the artificial world of the media and in the clichés of traditional culture. The artist too is part of this world and can only find through the deliberately taken stance of the outside something approaching an individual style.

    J. Noth, China Avant-Garde: Counter-Currents in Art and Culture, Oxford, 1994, p. 157

533

Modern Crowds

1996
Oil on canvas in eight parts.
90 1/4 x 3 1/4 in (229.2 x 797.6 cm) overall.
Signed and dated “Wang Jinsong 1996” lower right.

Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for £192,000

China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection

The Farber Collection
13 October 2007, 7pm
London