Details
WANG QINGSONG (CHINA, B. 1966)
Romantique
signed and dated in Chinese, signed, numbered, and dated '4/10. Wang Qingsong. 2003.' (lower right)
chromogenic print
120 x 650 cm. (47½ x 256 in.)
Executed in 2003

Please note this lot is the property of a private consignor.
Provenance
Courtyard Gallery, Beijing, China
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Literature
The Museum of Fine Arts, Red Hot: Asian Art Today From the Chaney Family Collection, Houston, USA, 2007 (illustrated in color, p. 108-109)
Exhibited
Houston, USA, The Museum of Fine Arts, Red Hot: Asian Art Today From the Chaney Family Collection, 22 July – 21 October 2007.
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Lot Essay



Wang Qingsong depicts the contradictions that exist in Chinese contemporary society. With his monumental staged photographs, he wittily represents a transformed, globalized China and all its social, economic and cultural tensions.

Romantique makes the viewer enter what looks like both the Western representation of heaven and a Chinese garden. The photograph includes a Chinese Buddha and men posing as famous works by Botticelli, Raphael, and Matisse. The fake plastic green leaves in the background hint at the artificiality of this confusing grouping of Western and Chinese elements. Hence, this work highlights the chaotic and ambiguous results of China’s embrace of Western culture.

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