p. 7 Introduction p. 11 Chapter One Zhang Xiaogang’s Formative Years 1958 – 1982 p. 45 Chapter two A Distinctive Voice 1982 – 1989 p. 113 Chapter Three Return to the Human World 1990 – 1999 p. 178 Chapter Four Mutual Infiltrations 2000 – 2009 p. 234 Chapter Five The Space of Unravelling 2010 – 2013 p. 278 Artist’s Letters p. 289 Chronology p. 296 References p. 300 Index FORMATIVE YEARS 1958 – 1982

Chapter One Zhang Xiaogang’s Formative Years 1958 – 1982

In James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon, Hugh Conway looks out over the bal- cony of the lamasery to the breathtaking landscape below and contemplates the perfect isolation of the magical valley of Shangri-La to which he had attained dominion. “In the midst of the still-encompassing dream, he felt himself master of Shangri-La. These were his beloved things, all around him, the things of that inner mind in which he lived increasingly, away from the fret of the world.” 1 And yet in the end some lingering passion for the world draws him back to it.

The Chinese province of Yunnan became, in the nostalgic rememberings of Zhang Xiaogang, a kind of Shangri-La. The province abuts Burma, Laos, and Viet Nam at its southern border and, like Sichuan, which lies directly above it, the northern- most extension of Yunnan shares a border to the west with Tibet. Guizhou lies to the east in the direction of Hunan and nearly a thousand miles beyond that, to the north and east, are , , the Pacific coast, and the Yellow and Yangtze River Valleys which are the historic center of . The rugged moun- tainous terrain and the multitude of ethnicities in Yunnan and Sichuan made them foreign to the mainstream of Chinese people. The Mongol armies annexed the area in the thirteenth century, but it remained an exotic place until the Qing court forced millions of Han Chinese to settle there in the seventeenth century. 2 The major cities of Yunnan, like , Dali, and Lijiang, were notoriously inaccessible. Many areas lacked paved roads through most of the twentieth cen- tury. The first railroad connection to Kunming was built by the French in 1910, connecting the city with Hanoi to the south. But it wasn’t until 1966 that Yunnan was linked to the Chinese domestic rail system.3 Diqing, primarily inhabited by Tibetans, lies just to the north of Lijiang and was among the most isolated towns in China. When James Hilton’s novel became known in China, people saw so much resemblance between Diqing and Hilton’s ‘Shangri-la’ that in 2001 the people of Diqing officially renamed their city after the novel.

Zhang Xiaogang was born on 22 February 1958,4 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. He still keeps Yunnan in a part of his imagination, as a bucolic, harmoni- ous world, tucked away in deep mountains like the beautiful valley of Shangri-La where time stands still. He returns every year to Yunnan and Sichuan for a kind of rejuvenation. Zhang spent the first five years of his life in Kunming. His parents were government officials. FORMATIVE YEARS 1958 – 1982 16

frequently changed, they always managed to provide for the family. Until 1949 both parents had served in the army ; his father began as a foot soldier and eventually rose to regiment political supervisor. Then Zhang’s parents became government bureaucrats. His father moved up from a position with the econom- ics department of the Yunnan Provincial Government to ‘Economics Committee Chief of the Southwest District’, based in . Zhang’s mother served as a secretary at the Prosecutor General’s office there. 5 The move to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, occurred in 1963, when Zhang was five, and he spent most of his childhood there. Then in 1973, at the age of fourteen, Zhang moved with his parents back to Kunming.

Shy and withdrawn as a child, Zhang remembers his loneliness. But this may also relate to the particular dysfunction in his family. ‘From as early as I can remem- ber,’ he told an interviewer, ‘I felt our family was not normal.’ 6 His parents never invited guests to their home, nor was he allowed to visit his friends’ homes. ‘I was very young when I became aware of my mother’s illness. She would be fine for days and then change, one minute crying inconsolably, the next laughing hysterically. She attacked people verbally on the street and would go out and get herself lost for days. But then she would be normal again. Although she was always so very nice to me, as a child, I found it terrifying.’ 7

Zhang Xiaogang singled out three defining memories of his childhood. 8 The first one intimates much about his relationship with his mother. She put a piece of white paper and a crayon on their dining table for him when he was about three years old, he recalls. It was a nurturing gesture and at the same time an expecta- tion. He remembers wanting to draw a soldier with an angry expression on that paper but no matter how hard he tried the soldier’s expression came out sad, not angry. That sadness pervaded Zhang Xiaogang’s early life and stayed with him until 1989 when historical events forced him out of himself and he marshaled the inner resources to transcend his past and mature as an artist into the authority that has characterized his work ever since.

In the second of the three memories, Zhang Xiaogang still vividly recalls his feelings about walking home from school by himself at around the age of six. The walk home frightened him. But more frightening still was the long, dimly lit hallway in the communal apartment. The hallway seemed endless as he passed by the doors of other families in the old Soviet style apartment block to the rooms at the end of the hall in which his family lived. His parents had been assigned two adjacent rooms at the far end of the building, sharing a communal toilet and kitchen with their neighbors.9 Like most families, they had a small stove inside their rooms ; the outer room served as the family kitchen, dining room, family room, and as a bedroom for Zhang Xiaogang and his three brothers. But of the four children only Zhang Xiaogang was permitted in his parents’ bedroom. The details of these rooms still resonate in his work. The artist’s memory of the small space of the apartment and of that dark hallway inspired the claustropho - bia of his of 1990–91 and later the closed, airless spaces of his Green Wall series. FIG 1.0 My Father, 2012 The third emblematic memory concerns the artist’s relationship with his father. oil on canvas, 140 · 220 cm At the age of eight or nine, Zhang Xiaogang stole from his father’s wallet, wanting to impress his friends. He took a twenty-cent bill from the wad of cash inside the billfold which his father kept in the bedroom. The boy didn’t expect that such a small amount would be missed. His father noticed, but said nothing. When Zhang Xiaogang tried to steal for the second time, his father caught him with his FIG 4.02 FIG 4.03 My Daughter No. 2, 2000 Bloodline - Big Family No. 10, 2000 oil on canvas, 40 · 50 cm oil on canvas, 200 · 300 cm RETURN TO THE HUMAN WORLD 1990 – 1999 124

Much of Zhang Xiaogang’s work in 1993 was devoted to preparation for an exhi- bition consisting of four thematic sections : ‘friends, public buildings, private life and family’, to be held at the end of the year in the Sichuan Museum of Art in Chengdu. In The Old Wood Box (for the ‘private life’ section) the book crate sits on the brick tiled floor, positioned in the room like the Gate to the Forbidden City overlooking the paved square in the Tian’anmen paintings, which he painted at around the same time. The wood box (filled with the personal affects of the artist’s past) and the images of Tian’anmen (redolent with emotional ties to Zhang’s Chinese identity) return again to Zhang’s exploration of private and public history in the construction of his own psyche. FIG 3.21 Red Baby, 1993 The expressionist handling of the ground In The Old Wood Box and in the four oil on canvas, 144.5 · 155 cm paintings of Tian’anmen perseveres from the two paintings of The Birth of the Republic and from Bloodline – Big Family, Mother and Son No. 1. This textured, gestural brushwork continues to refer to the strong emotional baggage of the artist’s past in the time of the Cultural Revolution. Zhang pushed it to the edges as a painted frame in these and in the other paintings of 1993, and abandoned it altogether in the paintings of 1994 and after. By contrast with The Birth of the Republic paintings, the work of 1993 announces a new, more sparse and detached style of as Zhang Xiaogang struggles to make sense of things, to deal with the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, and of his own troubled family history. ‘For me,’ he explained, ‘the Cultural Revolution is a psychological state, not a historical fact. It has a very strict connection with my childhood, and I think there are many things linking the psychology of the Chinese people today with the psychology of the Chinese people back then.’

The compositional activity in Red Baby [FIG 3.21], also painted in 1993, looks back to The Birth of the Republic paintings, although the style is more restrained overall, as are the other paintings of 1993, and like them it has a framing edge of expressionist brushwork. ‘On the television set you can see my mother’s photo, a familiar image of Tian’anmen, and also a throbbing heart. This box represents my past.’ Red Baby is isolated on top of a crate full of memories. It’s the same wooden crate that held Zhang’s belongings in The Birth of the Republic paintings and in the Private Notes of 1991 ; ‘our generation : no matter where we go, we always carry with us a heavy baggage that is filled with values altered over time and dreams cruelly broken numerous times,’ he explained in a letter to Mao.

A patch of light hits the baby’s chest, in Red Baby, and a fine red blood vessel con- nects him, by the navel, to all the items in the picture – each of which represents something deeply imbedded in the artist’s character. The baby lies upside down on the box all by itself. It is exposed, with no mother to contain it. The images around it express rage (the knife), nostalgia (the picture of his mother FIG 3.22 as a youth, distanced through the television), his heart, Tian’anmen Square Bloodline – Big Family No. 1 , 1993 oil on canvas, 100 · 130 cm (symbolizing his deep roots in China), the pointing finger of fate, and a personal notebook. At the top of the canvas Zhang wrote the score of a popular song of that moment, breaking down the boundaries of past and present time as in the space of memory.

In the latter half of the year and contemporary with Red Baby, Zhang Xiaogang embarked on a series of multi-figure compositions which he called Bloodline – Big Family. The first of them, Bloodline – Big Family No. 1 [FIG 3.22], resembles the portraits of 1993 stylistically, but in the second, Bloodline – Big Family No. 2 [ FIG 1.4 ], a significant shift in style becomes clear. Although Zhang retroactively titled the earlier Bloodline – Big Family, Mother and Son No. 1, the first Big Family painting FIG 5.32 FIG 5.33 In-Out No. 5, 2006 In-Out No. 7, 2006 oil on canvas, 150 · 200 cm oil on canvas, 150 · 200 cm 281 LETTERS 1981 – 1986

16 December 1981 trollable love that seemed to repeat what Jane Eyre has said : Zhang Xiaogang to Mao Xuhui “I’ve discovered God!” I think that as long as there is magma bubbling within the strata, there can be found a volcanic out- Big Mao: [1] let. Isn’t it true that the power of art gains its immortality from such outpourings? Greetings! But school leaders never have been able to treat me like an Time sure flies ; almost a month has gone by since I received artist. Some professors do not even have any kind of imagina- your letter. You must be disappointed that I did not reply your tive brain. They criticized me for being “too bizarre,” “not letter right away. Ever since October there have been a series beautiful,” “emotionless,” “a mimic without looking like the of setbacks that dampened my spirits and disrupted my creative original.”I offered no rebuttal and refused to engage them, but passion. Once again I’m experiencing an upsurge of emotion – a that was interpreted as being arrogant. Fortunately I was not raging tide in the midst of complexity. My confidence and will born to paint for them. I create art for myself and generate power are often undergoing the greatest of challenges. Fortu- joy from this creation. The criticism could only make me further nately there is that dry, refreshing wind from my time on the realize where my true value is and spur me forward. plain, with its permeating purity and tone, which is always knocking at the door of my heart. It urges me on, regardless of I’d like to tell you about something. In the beginning of Sep- pain and frustration ; it prevents me from suffocating in the tember the editor of Art magazine came to my school and took frigid waters of melancholy, or sinking down to the point of a look at some of my work ; it seems that he is very interested. mediocrity. This is why I did not waste away. This time-consum- Just now I received a telegram requesting that I mail a photo ing struggle was one of the reasons that I didn’t respond to [of my work]. I found out that they intend to publish some of your letter sooner. I am sure you understand this. my paintings in their January issue along with an introductory article. It seems like I was the last person to know about this. ... It took me a while to catch my breath. Of course, from the prac- tical side, I’m really hoping this will have a positive effect I think this is just life. Adversity helps people understand and help me land a nice job on graduation. themselves. In heart-to-heart collisions, I came to cherish “sincerity.” My only complaint might be that God endowed us with After reading your letter again I am still excited by your talents without the equivalent amount of wealth. Often we are passions, and I am glad for your achievement beyond painting. allowed a glimpse of the wealth before it vanishes. Following I don’t think that we have been in enough touch with the real closely behind are great torments and insatiable desires. world ; with respect to this I am really willing to become a laborer, an honest laborer. I admire those wood workers who Gold-seekers generate their confidence from their tools : appear to be repeating the same monotonous and dull actions. the pickaxes and sleeping tents. The most exciting thing they do is use a saw, but I am sure they get a kick out of knifing through a large piece of wood like What has been lost cannot be retrieved. Not worth mentioning butter. Sometimes I cannot help asking myself : on an endless a ny more. road, can I both possess and maintain the kind of mental spirit of perseverance? I hope God will grant to me the strength of Art creation, however, is always worth mentioning. I have perseverance and purity of concentration. already begun the ninth oil piece of this series, and it’s titled “Flock of sheep wander afar.” So far, so good. There was a period Alright, picking up the pen I become endlessly longwinded. during which I departed from my true feelings and lost my touch. I really hope to be able to receive letters from you often. Also, I almost threw away my paint brushes. That’s why I went to I can only mail a few photos ; there aren’t enough of those wood- Nanjing for a few days off. In seeing the Yangtze flow non- cut prints. I’d like to wait until the paintings are all done stop, and watching the boats brave strong waves as the pullers and then take photos of them and mail them along with the wood- chanted from the depths of their hearts, I regained confidence cut prints. Let me know what you think and forgive me for not in my inner-strength. showing you all my current works

To me, Art is God and is a form of religion. When facing the Gang vague luminousness of a sacred presence within our souls, 16 December 1981 I have nothing to hide or brag about. Even if I could only catch a glimpse of Kuafu [2] when he runs away from us, I would have enough of the sunlight to chase after. There are three Kuafus in art : van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne, whom I admire the most. But if there is no sun, or no God, then there would have been no Kuafu or the thousands of fearless pilgrims. We 1. Mao Xuhui (b.1956) is referred to as ‘old cannot simply chant the empty words of “pursuit, temper- Mao’ or ‘big Mao’ in these letters. He ament, beauty” while letting our souls dry out like water- was an active artist in the 1985 New Art less wells. Without the light of life or the ultimate almighty Movement and co-founded with Zhang worthy of worshipping, then our thirsty throats would have Xiaogang the ‘Southwest Art Research burned into ashes. It does not matter how strong your body Group’. Zhang Xiaogang’s closest friend, is. This is why I keep thinking that we all should have a Mao now resides in Kunming and teaches great sun of our own. It is precisely those red rays that studio at Yunnan University. lead Kuafu on, urging him to run nonstop until he and the sun 2. Kuafu is a mythical Titan-like figure in become one. Chinese folk legends. Unwilling to let the sun set, he chases the sun to the end of When I line up the oil paintings that I think are done well, I’m the horizon. He almost catches the sun sometimes surprised to see a wall full of paintings ; and I won- before perishing from the thirst induced der, “Where did this strength come from ?” Before I went to the by the sun’s intense heat. This legend prairie, I would often feel obstructed by odd little things and is best preserved in the fourth century would grow disheartened, even to the point of doubting myself. text Shanhaijing (The Classic of Mountains Thanks to the Prairie! And Thanks to the arid winds! They pro- and Seas). Trans. Anne Birrell, New York : duced from the midst of their warm currents a great and uncon- Penguin Classics, 1999. CHRONOLOGY 1958 – 1981 296 297 CHRONOLOGY 1984 – 2009

Painting Big Family for São Paulo Biennial, staff room of In Mao Xuhui’s studio, 1984 education department Sichuan AFA, 1994

Toddler years in Kunming, 1963

With high school classmate, 1975 100 days old, 1958

Elementary school graduation picture, 1970 Borrowing Mao Xuhui’s studio in Setting up the solo exhibition ‘Shadows in the Soul’ at the Kunming, summer 1993 Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, 2009

1958 1969 1978 1981 He sends five works on paper and one of them is The Ghost Between Black and White. After leaving Zhang Xiaogang is born in the Women and Children’s School resumes and Zhang Xiaogang returns to The Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing In December, Li Xianting and Xia Hang, then execu- purchased in June 1983 for 35 pounds sterling. This the hospital, Zhang Xiaogang paints ‘The Ghost Hospital in Kunming, Yunnan on 22 February 1958. Tongshun Elementary School as a fifth grader. admits Zhang Xiaogang into the Class of 1977 and tive editors of the magazine Meishu [Art], come to is the first time he sells a painting, other than a comic Series’ and writes several articles, including His father Zhang Jing is from Guangdong and his In 1970, he starts junior high school at Chengdu in 1978 he enrolls in the Department of Painting. the Sichuan Academy to solicit contributions and strip that he and Ye Yongqing painted when they ‘Confessions of Ghosts’. ‘On loan’ from the Kunming mother Qiu Ailan is a Yunnan local. He has two older No. 5 Middle School. impressed by ‘The Prairie Series’ they decide to were in college and sold for about one hundred yuan. Song and Dance Troupe he teaches a training class brothers : Zhang Silin (b.1953) and Zhang Xiaoxi 1979 publish an article on them. With this endorsement, In November he and Mao Xuhui spent twenty days at the Jinning Science and Fine Art Association. In (b. 1956). The family lives in Kunming where Zhang 1973 With Deng Xiaoping’s new ‘Reform and Open Policy’, the college re-examined the work and passed it. together sketching in the village of Guishan, near August, the Yunnan Branch of the China Artists’ Xiaogang’s father works for the Yunnan Provincial The accusations against Zhang Xiaogang’s parents Zhang Xiaogang begins to have access to Western Zhang Xiaogang created a total of nine Prairie Series Mount Gui in Yunnan. Association includes his 1984 oil painting Evening Party Committee until 1963. are deemed unjustified and dismissed, the South­west art in the school library. He already knows Soviet art, oil paintings for his graduation project (three on Breeze in ‘The Celebration Exhibition for the Bureau is closed, and the family moves back to which had influenced the Chinese schools since the canvas, the others on paper) ; he painted Cloud in 1983 35th Anniversary of the Founding of PRC.’ From 1963 Kunming. Zhang Xiaogang transfers to Kunming 1950s, but now he becomes strongly interested in the Sky, Mother and Son, Sheep Going Away, Dialogue Starts exploring modern art theory, philosophy October to December, Zhang Xiaogang works in an Zhang Xiaopeng, Zhang Xiaogang’s third and young- No. 26 Middle School, where he finishes junior high Western modern art, especially the work of Van Gogh between Two Mothers, Coming Storm, Tibetan Women at and literature from the West in greater depth. He is art-decoration company at Shenzhen University est brother is born in 1963. The family relocates to school, and in 1974 begins high school at Kunming and Gauguin. Rest, Mother and Son 2, The Promenade of Tibetan Women, particularly interested in Existentialist philosophy, but he is fired and returns to Kunming. 63 Gulou Beisan St. in Chengdu, Sichuan because his No. 23 Middle School. Photos of this period already and The Roof. Theater of the Absurd, and Surrealism. He also has father is moved to a position in the economic plan- show a teenager with a rebellious artistic persona. 1980 great admiration for the works of the 17th century 1985 ning office of the Southwest Bureau based in Chengdu. In the fall, he travels with his college classmates to 1982 Spanish artist El Greco. In the meantime, Zhang Together with Mao Xuhui and Pan Dehai from His mother is assigned a job with the Sichuan 1975 Dunhuang in Gansu Province to paint from nature In January, Zhang graduates from the Sichuan Xiaogang is awarded ‘The Best Costume Design Kunming, and Hou Wenyi and Zhang Long from Province Procuratorate (the agency for investigation Zhang Xiaogang begins to study sketching and and sees the magnificent Buddhist paintings, Academy of Fine Arts with a bachelor’s degree and his in Theater in Kumning’ by the Kunming Culture Shanghai, Zhang Xiaogang organizes self-funded and prosecution). Zhang Xiaogang attends Southwest watercolor privately with Lin Ling, a famous painter spanning a thousand years from as early as the fourth ‘Prairie Series’ is published in Meishu [Art] magazine Bureau for his work on the program ‘Yunzhuo exhibitions in June in Shanghai and Nanjing, titling Bureau Kindergarten and then in 1965–6 the and print maker in Yunnan. Lin also introduces him century, on the walls of the famous system of 492 in an article by Xia Hang. But his professors did not Traditional Song and Dance’. He is hired as the art his group Neo-Realism. It is one of the first self Chengdu Tongshun Elementary School. School is to the history of both ancient and modern Western art. cave temples. recommend him for a job in the art profession and designer for a TV show called ‘A Girl Named Ming’, funded shows in the revolutionary ‘85 Movement’. suspended when the Cultural Revolution begins in he is forced to move back to his parents’ house in working with the crew in Yunnan Province. In April, Zhang’s his 1984 oil painting, The Daughter of the 1966 and the four boys stay at home. 1976 1981 Kunming and take work in a privately owned glass A Dialogue Between Two Mothers, a 1981 painting Mountain, is included in ‘Marching Chinese After graduating from high school in June, Zhang is From May to late July, Zhang Xiaogang spends and mirror factory as a construction worker. Then in from his Prairie Series, is included in ‘Fine Art Youngsters : National Youth Art Exhibition’ at 1968 sent down through the Youth Re-education Program nearly two months experiencing the local life in March, through a friend, he found a position in the and Photograph Exhibition About Life in Yunnan’, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. In After the factional fights end, Zhang Xiaogang’s to No. 5 Squad, Suoxi Brigade, Erjie Commune, in the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan. Kunming Song and Dance Troupe as a stage designer. an exhibition organized by the Cultural Palace for September, Zhang is temporarily transferred to the father is sent to the May 7 Cadre School to be ‘re- Jinning County, Yunnan Province. He participates In September he returns to college and paints his He is invited to participate in the exhibition ‘Oil Nationalities in Yunnan. He briefly considers taking Department of Art Education at the Sichuan Academy educated’ by poor peasants and remains there until in daily labors like all the others, but he is also graduation project, The Prairie Series, in oil on card- Painting from Sichuan’ held by the Sichuan Branch a job in a culture center in Xinjiang but decides to of Fine Arts and then officially appointed there in 1972. He is only allowed to reunite with his family lucky enough to be selected into the Art Classes for board. Influenced by Van Gogh and Jean-François of the China Artists’ Association. He is also invited remain in Kunming. 1986). In November, the Department of Art at the once a year during the Spring Festival. Meanwhile, Peasants. It is there he meets Mao Xuhui, who is the Millet, his style departs radically from the prevalent to participate in the ‘Dialogues between Countries, University of Florida includes his oil on-board paint- Zhang Xiaogang’s mother is ‘re-educated’ at class instructor. Mao becomes a close, lifelong friend, Rustic Realism. As a result, the works don’t pass the BBC World Painting Contest’ which opens in 1984 ing, Sani Girl, in the exhibition ‘Chinese Visions – Chengdu University and can go home once a week. co-founding Yunnan Neo-Realism with Zhang the college review. November at the Royal Commonwealth Society in He is hospitalized due to excessive drinking. In the Works By Three Young Artists from Mainland China’. Xiaogang in 1985. London, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the BBC. hospital he completes the album of drawings, SAMPLE SPREADS

THREE-QUARTER-BOUND HARDBACK PLC, PRINTED ON A MIX OF UNCOATED AND COATED PAPERS

290 · 250 mm 3 7 11 ⁄ 8 · 9 ⁄ 8 inches 304 pp 260 col & 20 b&w illus.

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PUBLISHED March 2015 FIG 4.60 FIG 4.61 16 Green Wall Landscape and Television, 2008 16 Green Wall Landscape and Television, 2008 oil on canvas, 300 · 800 cm oil on canvas, 300 · 800 cm

Phaidon Press Limited MUTUAL INFILTRATIONS 2000 – 2009 4 Regent’s Wharf he had gone to work right out of art school in 1982. Life got better and better for him and his work flourished too. In 2007 and 2008, Zhang worked in several continuing idioms – the Landscapes, the Description series, Amnesia and Memory paintings, and several portraits of the type that had evolved out of the Big Family paintings. The In-Out paintings largely disappeared after 2006 – there were none All Saints Street in 2007, two in 2008. The Description compositions, which he titled with num- bers in 2005, acquired dates in their titles in 2006 – as in Description of the day of May 27, 2008. London N1 9PA Meanwhile, Zhang turned his attention to another new group of paintings in FIG 4.54 2008 called The Green Wall in which he opened the door to his childhood mem- Zhang Xiaogang, Green Wall Wooden Bench, 2008 ories as never before. In his March 11, 2008 diary entry, Zhang Xiaogang wrote oil on canvas 150 · 200 cm about his now fourteen year old daughter: “My daughter is growing daily. Her tightly guarded childhood memories are demolished by each day of encroaching adulthood. The reality and that which she understands as memory have parted and gone off in opposite directions and forced her to develop an entirely new perception of herself.”31 Zhang was describing a concern about himself at that moment. Phaidon Press Inc.

“As you see, there are green walls in most of the works,” Zhang Xiaogang pointed out. “In the past, the green wall was everywhere, not only in the public, but in private houses and dorms. It was commonly seen. (It could still be seen even in 65 Bleecker Street my childhood, I was born in 1958). The green wall series makes the separation of public and private unclear, like the green wall you can see everywhere in the past.”32 Leng Lin explained that “in the 1960s and 70s in China, a common yet distinctive practice was to paint the bottom portion of the wall green. This was done in private spaces such as homes and in public environments like hospitals, New York, NY 10012 schools, and government offices. In the spirit of collectivism, the differentiation between private and public did not exist.”

Zhang Xiaogang’s Green Wall series, engages the epistemological complication of the boundaries between subjectivity and perception, introspection and public discourse, history and memory, self and other. Green Wall - Dining Room (2008) [FIG 4.53], for example, portrays the drab, ascetic interior of ordinary life in the Cultural Revolution, accented with just the floral glass shade and bulb hanging © 2014 Phaidon Press Limited from a cord, an electric mosquito repellent, and the tiny covered tea cup on the table. In effacing the boundary between private and public, Zhang analytically parsed the space of the remembered past rather than evoking the uncanny as he had in eliding the real and the imagined in the psychologically revelatory works of 1989-1990.33 Here Zhang Xiaogang works in images like a psychoanalyst, examining the threads of his memory. FIG 4.56 Zhang Xiaogang, Green Wall: Wooden Bench (2008) [FIG 4.54] shows a melancholy interior with Green Wall The Room with Flashlight , 2008 a slatted wooden bench, a radio trailing a long cord that is plugged into an oil on canvas 150 · 200 cm www.phaidon.com extension, a small leather case (painted in a rich brown) on one end of the seat, and a clock hanging on the wall. The clock points forever to three o’clock; as in a painting by de Chirico, it reminds us of frozen moments in the passage of time. Halfway up the wall is the pervasive green paint – the “official” paint of commu- nist China. The same green wall appears in Green Wall - Military Uniform, Green Wall - Room with Flashlight, Green Wall - Two Single Beds, and Green Wall - Boy with Television [FIGS 4.55-4.59]. The institutional green of these interior walls were in waiting rooms, behind the family couch, in the private space of the bed- room but also on the exterior walls of government buildings and compounds all over China. Looking at the green wall one could be inside or outside, in a public

FIG 5.28 FIG 5.29 The Book of Amnesia , 2012 Big Woman and Little Man, 2012 oil on canvas, 130 · 162 cm oil on canvas, 140 · 220 cm