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View Zhang Xiaogang Artist Exhibitions and Paintings

Zhang Xiaogang’s paintings engage with the notion of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism. Basing his work around the concept of ‘family’ –immediate, extended, and societal – Zhang’s portraits depict an endless genealogy of imagined forebears and progenitors, each unnervingly similar and distinguished by minute difference.

Zhang Xiaogang is very much a product of the Chinese art academy system, and out of this heritage he has developed an iconography and identified a special sensibility that in many ways define this era. Because Zhang's footing is within the academy system, therefore the system may also claim credit for his success. So it follows that Zhang should be looked upon as a paradigmatic success model of the Chinese art world.

Bloodline and Amnesia and Memory, the two series that have made Zhang's reputation in the 1990s, focus on portraiture, a subject underlined by concerns around the visual portrayal of the Chinese figure, especially as it involves the adaptation of western classical painting technique to local needs.Often painted in black and white, Zhang’s portraits translate the language of photography into paint. Drawing from the generic quality of formal photo studio poses and greyscale palette, Zhang’s figures are nameless and timeless: a series of individual histories represented within the strict confines of formula. The occasional splotches of colour which interrupt his images create aberrant demarcations, reminiscent of birth marks, aged film, social stigma, or a lingering sense of the sitter’s self assertion.

Incorporating the aesthetic of traditional Chinese charcoal drawing, Zhang’s style wavers between the exaggeration of animation and stoic flatness. Muted and compliant, Zhang’s extended family convey individual identity through their unalterable physical features: too big heads, tiny hands, long noses, and subtle alterations in hairstyle give clues to intimate characteristics and stifled emotions. These dream-like distortions give a complex psychological dimension to Zhang’s work, heightening the tension of regulated claustrophobia, and initiating suggestive narrative readings.

Conclusions:

Zhang Xiaogang's art has become a canon of contemporary Chinese oil painting, and its merits depend very much on the fact that he has found new solutions to harnessing western classical academic technique (a standard in Chinese academies) to turn it into an indigenous artistic language.

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If you want any information about Zhang Xiaogang or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_xiaogang.htm

About the Author

View Zhang Xiaogang paintings, biography, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and resource of Zhang Xiaogang artist. View art online at The Saatchi Gallery - London contemporary art gallery. Zhang Xiaogang

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Wood Gifts and Collection of Art Lacquered Miniature Painting in Art Shop Online

If you admire an work of art box with thin and smooth drawing on the black background plentifully decorated with gold shading know: before you - a Palekh lacquered miniature. It is based on a long local history of icon painting. Icon painting craft has arisen in the early thirties in village Palekh of the Ivanovo area.

In spite of the fact that the church demanded to fulfill precisely every element of icon, Palekh artists did it in their own manner of writing faces, figures, elements of landscape, buildings, carriages and so on. On the icons you could see some domestic details such as furniture, clothes, arms, horse harness. Some of them have been kept in today's Palekh miniature art painting somewhat changed creatively.

Palekh painting wasn't born accidentally. It was a result of century-old traditions in new historical conditions based on the knowledge of icon-painting handicraft of many generations. Their methods were rich and varied. From the very beginning Palekh artists had been studying and keeping old Russian art traditions. Therefore at an icon and a product executed in the spirit of palekh miniature have much common. After the 1917 Revolution, when the icon business went into the deepest of declines, Palekh masters tried their hands at decorating art wood tableware, kitchen utensils, toys, dishes, porcelain and glass. As it turned out, the most interesting way was the painting of paper-mache boxes that became the black-lacquered miniature.

The varnish miniature is executed by tempera paint on a papier-mache. Colour of palekh painting is based on a combination of three colours - red, yellow and green. The Palekh miniatures usually represent characters from real life, literary works, fairy tales, bylinas, and songs. They are painted with local bright paints over the black background and are known for their delicate and smooth design, abundance of golden shading, and accurate silhouettes of flattened figures, which often cover the surface of the lids and sides of the articles completely. Poetic magic of the Palekh characters, decorativeness of landscapes and architecture, and elongated proportions of the figures go back to the icon-painting traditions. The miniatures are usually set off with a complicated pattern made with gold dissolved in aqua regia.

Palekh lacquered miniatures are painted on articles - caskets and boxes, brooches and hairpins for ties, a panel and ashtrays and great number of other little things made of papier-mache.
The process of making Palekh articles is the following: The first operation in the making of these gems of folk art is the cutting out of the cardboard. The strips of cardboard are covered with flour paste, placed on circular or rectangular moulds and pressed. After that the material is given a coating of warm linseed oil. The carefully checked pieces are handed to the joiners. Then the undercoat is applied to the article with a steel palette knife. The outside of Palekh articles is painted with black lacquer. The inside is painted with red lacquer. The final operation before painting: about seven coats of transparent oil varnish is applied to the outside and inside of the article. Every coat applied is dried in the furnace for 9 hours at 90°C.

The articles are now ready to be handed to the artists. The work of the artist begins with preparation of the paint. In Palekh the paints are mixed with egg emulsion. The yolk, separated from the white, is returned to the shell where a mixture of water and vinegar is added. Then the emulsion is stirred with a special brush. Before painting the article, the artist draws on the design. Then the composition is outlined in white lead with a very fine squirrel brush and the colours are then applied in strict succession. The work of the miniature painter requires not only creative inspiration, but also extreme care and precision which is why Palekh painters frequently make use of a magnifying glass. When the painting is over, the artist begins the gold work. The gold must be polished to give it the necessary shine. After having signed the article the artist coats it by transparent oil varnish and polish by hand.

The village of Palekh is situated in 65 km to the east from Ivanovo town on the bank of the Paleshka-river, which flows among the hills covered by leaf-bearing forests. In the 15th century it was a part of the Vladimir Susdal lands and was one of the first ancient centers of the icon art. In the 17th and 18th centuries Palekh's craftsmen rose to become the most famous in all of icon art. They developed a unique style identifiably distinguished by the fine line tempera drawing saturated with gold of their own. These art works were valued for the depth of the images, the subtlety of color placement, their intricate and minute attention to detail as much as for their fairy-tale-like ornamental design. Palekh artists are universally regarded as the most highly trained of the Russian miniature painters. The discipline and masterful technique of the ancient art of icon painting is readily seen in works of the various artists.

Luxurious art presents of wood tableware and Palekh, Mstyora lacquered miniatures you can look at online Art Store site. It is amazing that what started out as a true folk tradition over hundreds years ago is still thriving and remains basically true to it's roots, albeit on a more organized scale.

About the Author

Will Nilson, Art News Department of online Art shop, 2007.Online art gift shop suggest art gift ideas for your friends and home interior design! Here you can view unique art collections of lacquered miniatures of Palekh and Mstiora and art wood tableware and buy any liked wood gift of art.