1991.6.1. Painting
It is a woodblock print which consists of five fabric scrolls (490.9 cm x 606.2 cm in total approximately) . This painting is a compositions of bald headed crowd with sky and clouds in a gray scale. The most important detail in this picture is the large head with an anonymous finger pointing to the sky. This figure is turning so only his left face is shown. He is looking at his finger with a very distinct smirk on his face . His right side is frozen and only some upper teeth are shown. Within a crowd, there are all bald head and facing upward to look to the sky or where the finger is pointing. Some of them have strong emotion by the facial expressions, some are reaching their hands and some look confused. The crowd is painted in a much denser level.
This painting reveals confusion and lost. The crowd does not know where to go and where to look at. The gray scale of this painting reflects the uncertainty as well as the strong emotion of people during this era. There is a sense of loss in direction which represents for the youths and artists in China who are uncertain about the future. Fang Lijan painted the crowd with non distinctive figures to reveal his feeling during that time. The definitions of self-identity and nation-identity are lost. The figures' faces are distorted from suffering through searching or finding for something that is nowhere to be found. Some other critics view the large figure as Christ-like image because Fang Lijan is influenced by Western culture and style
Read more about this topic: Fang Lijun
Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
—Marc Chagall (1889–1985)