Fang Lijun

In October 2002, when Rolf Lauter became director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, he met Alexander Ochs, an art dealer from Berlin, and asked him about showing young artists from Asia, especially China, with his support in the museum. In 2003, Lauter presented loans from Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun and Yang Shaobin in his second re-presenting of the collection in a temporary exhibition on the subject of "SelfSpace" with 19th century portrait sculptures by Maillol and Rodin, light boxes by Jeff Wall and works by Alex Katz. Especially the work "SARS" (later named "Untitled") by Fang Lijun, a large-format woodcut, attracted attention. Lauter wrote in his introductory text: "Opposed to the pictures by Katz is a work composed of seven printed scroll paintings in the size 400 x 854 cm by the Chinese artist Fang Lijun. In addition to a rising tendency towards "de-individualisation" of people, his work labeled "SARS" also addresses the "glowing" danger of the virus for the crowds in China" Unfortunately, Lauter‘s purchase request was not fulfilled in Mannheim at the time. Today versions of the work are in the collections of the MoMA and the Centre Pompidou Paris.

At the beginning of 1992, Fang Lijun moved to Yuanmingyuan village in north-west Beijing. Due to the economy and other difficult cultural issues, painters wanted to create a utopia where they could freely paint and express themselves. That was when Yuanmingyuan village drew artists' attention. At the time, painters like Fang Lijun had to face many obstacles and challenges, particular financial issues. In order to be able to paint, they needed to have funds to buy materials. However, there was no certainty that they would receive any funding, so it was extremely difficult for painters to be able to follow what they love. Fang Lijun and other artists like him had to paint for a living due to the economic pressure.

The Working Class Must Exercise Leadership in Everything, 1970: This painting has similar figures to the 1991.6.1 [6]. There is a crowd with a large figure of Chairman Mao. However, instead of having a gray scale, this painting is painted in bright colors to represent a new hope that leads to empowerment and happiness. In this painting, Chairman Mao is considered a bright leader who will bring joy and peace to the country. People in the crowd have a happy and confident look under the direction or plan of Chairman Mao. The Chairman is drawn bigger than the other figures. The artist intentionally puts more focused details on the Chairman character to emphasise his role as a big brother or father that is pointing or leading people to a better place.

This New Generation exhibition was held to draw people's attention to the Cynical Realism. This took place in July 1991 in the National History Museum in Beijing. There were many new major painters such as Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Song Yonghong, who participated and helped with this event. This exhibition is known as a starter for the trend of realistic painting. In this event, Fang Lijun and other new painters introduced new ideas on society, painting and art critique. His paintings in this exhibition mostly focused on the national identity, cultural change and other related issues through stereotypical bald head men, family style and people's faces.

Fang Lijun is famous with his "illustrative style and bald-headed" figures. In these paintings, bald headed young men are in different motions: yawning, smiling, swimming, etc. Some of the figures are described as confusion or considered "dumbfounded by modern society". His figures represent the loss in direction of youths in China after 1989. Further more, some critics view these figures as inward looking monks which challenge the idea of orthodoxy. He has repeated painting stereotypical bald headed Chinese men with a "stupid" smiles. There was a shift in his painting before the 1990s and after the 1990s. Before, the relationship between the figures was easy to predict. The background was clearer with different details to help the "picture-reader" understand the paintings. However, after the 1990s, there was a big shift in the way he portrayed these figures. The relationship is hard to interpret when there usually was a big figure in the front and other small figures in the back. The background was not the main focus of the painting, but it still played a role. This shift leads to a new way of interpreting painting and allows everybody to read and challenge the idea of "representation" . For some people this shift is considered a self-mockery and dealt with at a distance.

This exhibition took place in February 1989. It was first denied access by the government. Some of the artists decided to move the artist's villages to begin to make a "department art". The target audience of the artists was not the public but other artists/painters among their circle of friends. Fang Lijun's works were shown during this exhibition. Due to the different economic and political times, there was a lot of attention that was being drawn from this exhibition among the artists. The intention was to motivate the movement of the society to reinforce a new structure of China. When the corruption happened, people started getting lost in direction of where to go or how to change the country. The China/Avant-garde called people together to make a bigger change, to fire up different movements that happened right after this exhibition

Fang Lijun (Chinese: 方力钧 ; born 1963) is an artist based in Beijing [2]. He was born into a wealthy family with a high social status. In the 1990s, there was a cultural movement in China referred to as Cynical Realism of which Fang Lijun was a member. Living in China during this critical time shaped his worldview in terms of his views on art, human values and morality.

30th Mary: This painting is still under the Cynical Realists and bald head figures [7]. In this painting, the background and the children are painted in bright colours [8] . Besides, figures are located in the spiral pattern in which children are flying back to heaven. There are two different critical approaches to this picture. One approach is that this painting reveals a new hope for the young generation that can change the future of China. People have hopes on the youths that they can restructure or remodel the society so that everybody can have a voice and everybody lives in freedom. The other approach describes death as a relief from this life. Because life is too stressful or too complicated, death becomes the best solution to escape from this world to go to a more peaceful place such as heaven.