Ideology And Micropolitics: Two Ways Of Political Pop

In the early 1990s, Political Pop immediately caught the eye of art circles at home and abroad when it showed up on the stage of international important exhibitions. Political Pop has become a mirror of China society in post-Cold War era that the West interprets and explains for the subsequent decade. It relates to ideologized discourses during the study of contemporary China and influences Chinese contemporary art in a long time.The thesis tries to discuss that many people ignore a covered way of Chinese Political Pop that Zhang Peili represents, starting from micropolitics and criticizing the media, in the enormous shadow of ideological discourse of post-Cold War. This buried clue and Wang Guangyi's best-known work structure two ways of Political Pop together. One that Wang Guangyi represents is to accomplish visual representation of ideology from the exercise of political iconology; the other that Zhang Peili represents is to reach micropolitics and deconstruct biopolitics from the media criticism in the daily life.The first chapter of this thesis is to investigate the specially historical and social origin of Political Pop in contrast with American Pop Art and the context that gave birth to Chinese Political Pop; the second chapter is to unscramble Wang Guangyi's artistic creation ideas, from challenging "Southern Culture" to anti-art history and iconoclasm, by analyzing profoundly his works between mid-1980s and early 1990s. And the author also discusses the significance and ambivalence of Great Criticism series; the third chapter is to find out what Zhang Peili has done since 1985. By studying Pond Society and 85 New Space, the author finds that he strived to rid art of emotionalism and discovered "daily life". Besides above, the author also demonstrates Zhang Peili's critical thinking and idea expression on the media, as well as the relationship between his work and Political Pop; the last chapter is to further compare the works of Wang Guangyi and Zhang Peili, and the author concludes that both of them are to dissolve political landscape, but with regard to methodology, they run in the opposite direction and develop two different ways of Political Pop.