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Fang Lijun / China b.1963 / 980810 1998 / Oil on canvas / 250 x 360cm / The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 2000 with funds from The Myer Foundation, a project of the Sidney Myer Centenary Celebration 1899-1999, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Fang Lijun
Fang Lijun980810 1998
Not Currently on Display
This painting of a yawning, shaven-headed man appearing behind an inexplicably jubilant crowd is emblematic of the style dubbed Cynical Realism by critics, which parodies state-sanctioned Socialist Realism to depict ‘the absurd, the mundane and the meaningless events of everyday life’.
Scattered across the picture surface are brightly coloured roses, chrysanthemums and oleander blossoms that sail out of the sky, detached from their roots, while also recalling Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–57), an experiment in free expression that was quickly quashed. In a society he considers full of political, social and cultural contradiction, Fang is disparaging of idealism.
His characters are self-portraits, multiplied to the point of anonymity by diminishing differences in age, status and gender. The title of the work, 980810, provides its completion date — a vague and inconsequential reference that deliberately points to the mundane and repetitive.
Born in 1963 in Handan, Hebei Province, Fang Lijun’s childhood was shaped by a China dominated by the Cultural Revolution (1966–77). The experience of growing up during those years made had a lasting impact on Fang Lijun; the paintings for which he has become so well-known draw directly on his experiences of this decade.
Fang Lijun is one of the foremost artists that propelled a particular style of painting called ‘Cynical Realism’ into the forefront of Chinese contemporary painting of the 1990s. Cynical Realism celebrates the very detail of mundane daily existence that is often overlooked and bypassed by any kind of idealised orthodox state art.