Zhang Xiaogang: a Dialogue Between Past and Contemporary, Public and Private

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Zhang Xiaogang A Dialogue Between Past and Contemporary, Public and Private Zhang Xiaogang, one of the most renowned contemporary artists in China, whose painting was sold for US$2.11 million at Sotheby’s New York spring auction in 2007 (Chiang) and is considered the most expensive artist in China. This essay is going to discuss on his emergence and development, analysis his art works in different periods of his development in terms of style, content and historical context with a view to exploring his success. Early Period of Zhang Xiaogang Zhang Xiaogang was educated in Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts from 1977 to 1982 (Peng, Zhu and Kao 430). During the 1980s, which is the period of Zhang’s early artist life, the Chinese government promoted industrialization of China so as to enable China to compete among global economies. The isolationism policies of the past lifted. Artists were keen to learn from the West. Zhang’s early works exemplified a reflection toward this trend. At the early 1980s, Zhang was “heavily influenced by Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, as well as Jean Francois Millet and other French Landscape painters.” (Fitzgibbons 243) That influence reflects in his early abstract landscape paintings, such as, Cloud 1981 and Before the Rain 1981. Zhang Xiaogang, Before the Rain, oil on paper, 1981, 78.5cm X 110cm, The Artist Collection In the middle of 1980s, Zhang went through a period of depression, when he had binge drinking and had health crisis. According to Zhang Xiaogang about this period, “I didn't feel any hope. I wanted to find someone with the same feelings as me. I felt society didn't understand me or my kind of people. I couldn't find my location in society. So in this period I was sad and depressed." His hopelessness and desperation was reflected in his works of that period, where those works focused on

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