Jonathan Goodman Mao Yan at Pace Gallery March 6–April 4, 2015 he place of contemporary figurative painting in mainland China is, to the Western viewer, easy to regard as academic—often it is based Ton technical achievement and indebted to Western historical art. The training of painters in China’s art schools relies heavily on studies of the model, much in the manner of a nineteenth-century art academy. Unlike in America, where currently the conceptual is often valued at the expense of training and skill, the figurative movement in China reminds us that the occidental tradition of representation lives on—indeed, thrives—in the hands of young, ambitious artists. While there has been a patriotic return to ink art in China, the persistence of figurative art done in oils shows us that Chinese artists have built a legacy of their own by maintaining an interest in a medium that, to the Asian artist, must still seem fresh and relatively new, even after its existence in Chinese art for two or three generations. There is also a strong interest in figuration in the U.S., often to inform the artist’s audience of identity or political issues. In a similar way, representational art enables the Chinese artist to comment on social changes that have been happening since the 1970s, most especially the espousal of capitalism, which has brought to China wealth, but also the concomitant problems of materialism and an attachment to money alone. Mao Yan’s solo show at Pace Gallery in New York’s Chelsea district, his first in the U.S., focused on portraits and nudes and not the landscape or cityscape. Born in 1968 in Hunan province, Mao Yan studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1991. Since then, he has become among the best-known and most critically acclaimed traditional figurative painters on the mainland and has won several major national prizes in China. The Chinese sensibility takes a strong interest in these evocative portraits of both Westerners and Chinese, which emphasize the character of the sitter while maintaining accuracy of detail. Some of the women appear overweight, inviting comparisons to the figures of Lucien Freud; although the likeness between the two artists is not strong, both men are eager to render flesh, its heft among the most striking visual attributes of their subjects. At the same time, reading Mao Yan’s visual focus makes us understand that the artist is also given to studies of character, in which eyes and facial expressions are accentuated. In his essay for the catalogue, noted New York critic Donald Kuspit asserts that Mao Yan’s women “intensely stare at us, as though to confront, even intimidate us, accuse the gazing male of some guilty crime against them and 1 all women.” But this seems to be something of an exaggeration; the women 72 Vol. 14 No. 5 don’t appear overtly angry, and the intensity of their gaze may mean that they simply feel vulnerable without clothes, or that Mao Yan has chosen individuals whose energy and personality tend toward a vehement intensity. While open to the portrayal of character in his sitters, Mao Yan doesn’t especially address psychological insight in his output. Rather, he seems to be searching for a way of seeing. The paintings are not so much surveys of personality as they are expressions of content, and my reading is that the artist wishes to convey the sense of the person, his or her authority as an individual. Mao Yan remains aware that each of us carries our own specific energies, which must be addressed if the painting is to communicate the sitter’s integrity. Painting this way brings the personality of the sitter into high relief; the character of each person is communicated by Mao Yan’s intention to capture the essential nature of what he sees in them. He sticks to a palette of blacks, whites, and greys, limiting it to both intensify and offset the character of the person he paints. Left: Mao Yan, Leah with Glasses, 2014, oil on canvas. Right: Mao Yan, Leah, 2014, oil on canvas. Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate. © Mao Yan. Courtesy of Pace Gallery, New York. Mathieu Borysevicz’s excellent essay on Mao Yan, written for a show at Pace Beijing in 2013,2 places him within a mostly Western sphere of influence, citing the artist’s visit to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1990s, in which a small Rembrandt portrait made a major impression upon him, as well as proposing Edvard Munch, Francisco de Goya, and Albrecht Dürer as Western forebears whose creativity Mao Yan found sympathy with. Certainly, Mao Yan’s style and materials reflect a genuine familiarity with Western painting; in addition, the drama in his work feels essentially psychological in a Western sense. Indeed, one wonders to what extent a tie can be made between his well-articulated painterly insights into the representation of individuals—including a long, continuing relationship with Thomas Rochenwald, a German man who developed a friendship with Mao Yan in China and has been a subject of his paintings for years—and a Chinese understanding of character. On one level, Mao Yan’s paintings could be considered purely formal studies, works that demonstrate an interest in physiognomy and flesh; on another, they are portraits of specific people whose physical characteristics differ from person to person. They project little beyond an internalization of themselves and convey no real Vol. 14 No. 5 73 social awareness or issues that are reflective of Chinese society. In this sense, these pictures are distinct from the Cynical Realism and Political Pop that preceded him in the 1990s. There is nothing wrong with steering clear of social commentary. But doing so tends to isolate Mao Yan’s work from previous demonstrations of social description in the visual arts in mainland China. It might be said that art of his kind takes refuge in pure reportage—yet the introductory quote, presumably Mao Yan’s, in Borysevicz’s essay, reads: “I am not a realist painter.” If we take the artist at his word, then what kind of artist is he? Is there a metaphysical underpinning to his work? Are these portraits renditions of mental states? It is hard to say. But it is clear that the artist is suggesting that his art accounts for more than mere description, and the question remains whether his renderings can be read as something fundamentally different from the traditions he borrows. As a portrait painter, his inclination is very clearly defined. If the art is intended to encompass more than that, it must mean that the image is detailing something beyond mere representation; perhaps the image becomes a matter of spirituality, or a comment on character. Again, it is hard to say. Of course, there are excellent examples of portraiture in the history of Chinese art, most especially in the last two hundred years, but Mao Yan has made it clear that he wants distance between himself and the particular weight of that tradition. Left: Mao Yan, Portrait of Thomas on a Black Background No. 2, oil on canvas. Right: Mao Yan, Oval Portrait of Thomas No. 1, oil on canvas. Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate. © Mao Yan. Courtesy of Pace Gallery, New York. Perhaps it is more productive to place the work somewhere between the West and China. The choice to use Western materials is self-evident; the paint is handled in such a way as to bring up the memory of a painting style begun in Europe more than one hundred years ago. Thus, in addition to the immediate context of Chinese figurative art produced in the last forty years, beginning with the academic influences derived from Socialist Realism, there is also the recognition that Western influences come into play. This would explain the eccentric but deep focus, both formal and psychological, that Mao Yan brings to his faces and figures; it would also illuminate the fact that he balances his 74 Vol. 14 No. 5 context in order to paint something new, at least for Chinese portrait artists working today: the presentation of a self in portraits determined by, but greater than, the realism he uses. Graduating from Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1991, Mao Yan experienced the crushing of the democracy movement at that time. Likely this affected him, although we don’t know from his paintings’ content in what way that it did. Still, his denial of being a realist painter puts an emphasis on some other issue or theme. The realism conveyed in these paintings intimates a self-sufficiency and poise on Mao Yan’s part, which indicates a new version of self, adumbrated by the painter’s apparent wish to capture a new emotional reality in his art. The real question facing a Western appreciation of and judgment on Mao Yan’s achievement in figurative art is skewed by the different historical timing of such a genre in America and in mainland China. Of course, Western figurative art goes back hundreds of years, being most profoundly realized during the Renaissance. But in China, the figurative tradition in oils extends only a bit more than one hundred years. This suggests that China has some catching up to do, but, more important, it means that a Chinese artist working figuratively can be seen as a truly contemporary artist, while in the West, figurative art is based within a more or less historical continuum that includes many different kinds of art. So when Westerners look at such work from mainland China, or when Western critics write their appraisal of its achievements, the context in which the Chinese imagery is appreciated is as something familiar, even traditional, rather than progressive or radical.