Story of Spring
Song Yongping
宋永平
Production date
2014
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
220.5 x 400 cm
Notes
The New China series emerged from Song Yongping’s reflections on his youth: his art education was geared towards serving the political interests of the proletariat, at a time when students were told they were the heirs of the revolution. He says, ‘Although the university exercised strict control over the expression of the students, privately we had the freedom to discuss our ideas. We would often talk about issues that we could not understand in the dormitories after lights-out.’ The paintings reveal an artist coming to terms with a cognitive dissonance between the past and present; using the language of painting he reflects on his own memories, examining them through the prism of public events. Story of Spring (2012-15) depicts Deng Xiaoping surrounded by the poor. Deng, the architect of China’s post-Mao economic reforms and the instigator of today’s ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’, may have sincerely dreamed of prosperity for all. Today, however, the dream has soured in the face of increasing divides between rich and poor, and rural and urban populations. Song Yongping appropriates figures of oppressed peasants from revolutionary posters as a pointed reproach. Deng Xiaoping was a tiny man, but here he is depicted as a large-bellied, Buddha-like figure; behind him big figures of a black cat and a gold ‘lucky’ waving cat ornament are a sly allusion to Deng’s famously pragmatic saying: ‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice it’s a good cat.’
Accession number
2016.061