Post-Classical+–+Return+of+the+Great+Sorrow--Wang+Guangyi

**Title**: Post-Classical – Return of the Great Sorrow **Medium**: Oil on Canvas **Country**: China **Date**: 1986 **Size**: 59” x 8’6” (150 x 250 cm)
 * Artist**: Wang Guangyi
 * Current Location **: Private Collection

//Post-Classical: Return of the Great Sorrow// image source???

Wang Guangyi (b. ??) is a Chinese painter and sculptor who is recognized as the principal propagator of the [|Political Pop] movement. He founded the Northern Artists Group, a rational collective of painters who were interested in changing the ideals of the post-Cultural Revolution culture (Andrews, 1995, p.221). His famous works stretch from Western influenced oil paintings (e.g. //Post-Classical// series) to deconstructions of the friction between Marxism and consumerism (e.g. [|//Great Criticism//]series). This entry discuss one his early works from the mid 1980s titled //Post-Classical: Return of the Great Sorrow.//
 * Introduction **

In //Post-Classical: Return of the Great Sorrow//, Wang Guangyi uses a subdued palette. Blue dominates the image, ranging from the sky’s Carolina (?) to the sea’s Ultramarine. A stretch of white illuminates the horizon and colors the platform in the foreground.
 * Descriptive Analysis **

The composition consists of two pairs of figures: a standing cloaked pair embracing a kneeling cloaked pair (not clear). The kneeling figures face away from us. The only details that indicate their positions are their hands and feet; otherwise, they are abstract. Guangyi has reduced them to elegant, round shapes. They are all modeled from a light source on the viewer’s left, although the left couple is casting a shadow suggesting the opposite. In that way, they are a matching set, and mirror each other. --the figures are described accurately.

The sky and the sea in the background create two rectangles that enhance the mirroring effect in the foreground. The top is much brighter and colored as a gradient, while the bottom is a solid anchor. The steps that flank the figures in the foreground interrupt the shape of the sea. The sky has a touch of white streaks, implying clouds; in similar fashion, the sea has a hint of rolling waves.

Painted in the mid-1980s the //Post-Classical// series by Wang Guangyi conjured up the spirit of philosophy texts that had been introduced to China in the 1980s such as those of Heidegger, Hegel, Sartre, and Wittgenstein (Poborsa, p.57). These new texts formed the philosophical basis for the [|Rational Painting] faction influenced the Northern Artists Group, illustrating them as brooding and serious. They believed their far-removed Northern culture would outclass Western nations and the rest of China, consequently trivializing the East versus West dialogue. Guangyi and the fundamentals he chalked up aimed to “reintroduce rationalism back into the nation’s consciousness” and continue the modernization that was halted from the 1940s to the 1970s (Hung, p.51).
 * Formal and Contextual Analysis **

Guangyi concerned himself with new responsibilities: preserving Humanism; becoming a cultural critic; investigating the connections between art and society (Hung, p.51). The //Post-Classical// series is the result of the artist exploring these new duties. The resulting images “maintained tension between abstract and hollow humanist passions and a cold rational attitude critical of realism” (Wang, p.169).

The //Post-Classical// series was a metamorphosis in Guangyi’s career. It redesigned the way he worked. His influences drew on mythology, religion, and the individual- a major shift from classical art.

//Post-Classical: Gospel of Matthew//

The //Post-Classical// series is influenced by Western painting (then why don't you talk about this above?). Wang Guangyi had catalogues of the master works, and wanted to tweak them (Hung, p.169). This series is very baroque, in my eyes, because of its rejection of realism; it could be like Guangyi's simulacrum of that period, if only it irrefutably mimicked it.
 * Personal Interpretations **

My perception of Chinese art was based on presuppositions: negative space, depictions of daily life or nature, and calligraphy. The contemporary Guangyi, however, exposes a newfound intimacy, and the cold palette renders the painting in a familiar language. The form looks Western. Generally speaking, it seems to me that Chinese artists have a difficult time creating art for art’s sake. There always seems to be an underlying political message. The //Post-Classical// series is an anomaly, in that regard.

**References**

Printed Sources
 * Wu Hung and Penny Lang, //Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents// (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010).
 * James Poborsa//, The Political Pop Art of Wang Guangyi: Metonymic for an Alternative Modernity// (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2009).

Online Sources
 * Art Speak contributors, "Northern Artists Group," //Art Speak China//, http://www.artspeakchina.org/mediawiki/index.php/Northern_Artists_Group_%E5%8C%97%E6%96%B9%E8%89%BA%E6%9C%AF%E7%BE%A4%E4%BD%93 (accessed December 20, 2010).
 * "Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990," //China 1980s//, http://www.china1980s.org/en/interview_detail.aspx?interview_id=88 (accessed December 20, 2010)//.//