DSL Collection

"Due to the sheer size of this long-range party scene it is hard to detect anything at first glance. With each new glance one will find an elderly gentleman with grey hair and beard appearing in various moments of leisure among the figures crowding the highly detailed sequence of scenes, a format resembling classical Chinese hand scroll figure painting.
These two observations - resemblance to classical painting and the prominence of name-giving Lao Li - lead straight into what this image is all about. Lao Li, meaning ?Old Li?, is a respectful address for Li Xianting, an eminent art critic called The godfather of avant-garde art in the 1980s and 1990s. The arrangement of scenes and personnel are a close copy of the 10th century hand scroll Night Revels of Han Xizai by Gu Hongzhong. There is a story behind the painting which goes Gu was sent to Han?s house by the Emperor to spy whether Han does plot an insurgency. Han was a high court official who out of disappointment of not being able to conduct political reforms withdrew into private life and covered his thinking through a lascivious lifestyle. As officials in imperial China were always regarded as intellectuals and Li Xianting was a leading intellectual in an important phase of modern China?s avant-garde art, Wang Qingsong has a definitive statement to make with this highly self-referential, digitally re-mastered photomontage: by combining a classical format with a state-of-the-art method of image creation, by copying a famous painting of the past and by substituting one well known intellectual of old with a contemporary one, the photo makes a clear point about the place and role of the intellectual in China past and present. Another subtly humorous act of self-reference lies in the fact that stylistically the image belongs to the short lived Gaudy Art movement of the mid-1990s that got his name by Li Xianting.
Wang later applied the same method of re-staging to classical occidental works e.g. in his photographs China Mansion and Romantique of 2003 where he incorporated motifs of paintings by Ingres, Massacio, Velasquez, Botticelli, Raphael, Matisse, Courbet, Monet, Gauguin and many others."
Christof Buettner


"What has been haunting in my mind is the position and destiny Chinese intellectuals experience in our history. In such an era that lacks ideals, people have cast doubt on the heroes and ideals of the past.
I wanted to catch some scenes that describe such loss of hopes replaced with hoarding desire for money and power To compare the past and present, I appropriated the old and known masterpiece "Night Revel of Han Xizai" which was the best piece of Chinese traditional figure painting. This old art piece reflected the then social life in the torrents of transformation, and depicted the life of a worried intellectual and high official in Post-Tang Dynasty, Han Xizai. He was powerless to fulfill his ideals of reconstructing the country. To "cleanse" himself, he chose to evade and "indulge in" comfort. After several centuries, even though the Chinese dynasties have changed frequently, the status of intellectuals in society has remained the same. With some thoughts on this question, I created "Night Revel of Lao Li". It is a portrait of contemporary Chinese reality in this new century, portraying the situation of contemporary Chinese people, and of intellectuals in particular."
Wang Kingsong