Date of Graduation
2000
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MFA
Department
Painting
Committee Chair
Paul Krainak
Committee Member
Robert Anderson
Committee Member
Christopher Hocking
Committee Member
Young Kim
Abstract
My paintings explicitly convey the tension inherent in the current Chinese social construct. As a painter my career journeyed through the education of Communist system during the Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao era. I have also experienced a cultural rupture upon my subsequent study in the United States. For me, figurative imagery provides a fulcrum for meditations on a wide variety of social and political issues. Basically the human figure functions as a metaphoric vehicle that conveys political or social content through pictorial appropriation of photojournalism. My figure also represents inner states of being which often theatrically expands or reinvents accepted definitions of self. My choice of an approach to representation is indebted to my artistic training from western tradition for the system of Socialist Realism in China. The influence of the tradition of social commentary in western painting which can be traced to the classical and romantic movements from Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century can be seen in the social or political gestures of my paintings.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Naijun, "Recent paintings: Untitled." (2000). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 10534.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/10534