nyt, may 22, 2006 A Mao Portrait on the Block Causes a Stir in Chat Rooms By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI, May 21 In a decision that is stirring wide debate in Chinese Internet chat rooms, a Chinese-American collector plans to sell a renowned official portrait of Mao at auction in Beijing on June 3. Some argue that the 1950 portrait, the model for a big painting of Mao in Tiananmen Square, should go to a national museum. The owner has not been identified. The state-controlled Huachen Auction Company in Beijing has said the auction is open to anyone, and that the buyer would be allowed to take the painting outside the country. The auction house estimates that it will sell for at least $120,000. The work is by Zhang Zhenshi, one of 30 artists commissioned to paint Mao's portrait in 1950 on the first anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The 36-by-27-inch image of a somber-looking Mao wearing his trademark gray suit was later copied for the larger work in Tiananmen Square, which is regularly retouched or updated by a variety of artists. The auction comes at a sensitive time, near the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. It also falls in the 40th anniversary year of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao encouraged students to join Red Guard units and rebel against teachers and intellectuals. Many people died in the purges that followed and estimated millions were forced into manual labor in a decade of upheaval that ended only with Mao's death in 1976. The market for recent Chinese art is booming: in late March a small oil painting by one of China's best-known artists, Zhang Xiaogang, sold for just under $1 million, nearly three times its estimate, at Sotheby's in New York, at a Chinese-dominated sale of contemporary Asian art that totaled $13.2 million. And auctions here of traditional and avant-garde artists, including Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun and Xu Bing, are bringing huge prices, often more than $150,000 for a single work. But portraits of Mao are still a sensitive political issue in China. Although many political leaders have talked about Mao's excesses, the imitation of the original portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, and long lines of people still show up every day, often waiting hours, to view Mao's preserved body at the Mao mausoleum just off the square. Several of China's best-known artists have followed Warhol's lead and incorporated Mao's portrait into their works to make social and political statements, and some of the more radical portrayals have been banned from exhibition here. Government officials in Beijing recently ordered several works removed from art shows because they crossed the line of what was deemed permissible. Among them was a painting by Gao Qiang that featured a sickly looking Mao swimming in a blood-red Yangtze River. Mao's likeness is believed to be one of the most widely reproduced images in the world, and some artists here say the official portrait by Zhang, who died in 1992, is China's "Mona Lisa." How a Chinese-American acquired it is unclear. "I strongly oppose the auction of Chairman Mao's portrait because it is neither a mere piece of artistic work nor a commercial activity," one person wrote on the Internet, according to The People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper. "Mao Zedong is the spirit of our great nation." Another wrote: "How dare they do such a thing! If they sold Mao's portrait today, they will sold the Tiananmen Rostrum the other day." People's Daily said that Sina.com. a popular Web portal here, has had more than 18,000 posts in recent days opposing the auction of the portrait. Huachen spokesmen say Mao's portrait will be available for viewing by potential buyers from May 31 to June 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/arts/design/22mao.html
with kind regards,
Matthias Arnold (Art-Eastasia list)
http://www.chinaresource.org http://www.fluktor.de
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