Wang Guangyi Political Pop Art Image Research

Wang Guangyi, pioneer of Chinese contemporary art, is entitled "the forerunnerof Chinese Political Pop Art". His Political Pop Art has become a classic artisticlanguage.In the international political and economic environment after World War II, theUnited States has become the world’s greatest economic power. With the superiorityof politic and economic, American culture has been spread all over the world andcontributed to the generation of Pop Art. In the1980s, with the Reform andOpening-up Policy and the frequent cultural exchanges between the West and East,Pop Art in China emerges under the influence of American pop art, and the politicalPop Art of Wang Guangyi is one of the typical. Meanwhile, with the influence ofpolitic, economic and postmodern culture, the daily life represents the characteristicsof aestheticization. Wang Guangyi combines the image of political figures during theCultural Revolution and the commodity symbols of consumer cultures, to dispel thepolitic-worship formed in the Cultural Revolution. Consumerism rises in modernsociety and daily life has been dominated by the logic of commodity. These make theart market-oriented. That Wang Guangyi’s political pop art agrees with the westernart’s comprehension of Chinese contemporary art results in his popularity ininternational art market.Wang Guangyi’s political Pop Art faces the problems of China by borrowing theexisting Western art models and methodologies. His political pop art effectivelyreflects the characteristics of China’s market economy and popular culture in the1990s from the expression of artistic language, the choice of art symbols and theappeal of artistic proposition. He combined the image of China’s peasants and soldierswith the Western business symbols in the artistic way of appropriation, integratedcollage, and mechanical reproduction, which helps to form a unique art symbol inWang Guangyi’s style. He extracted the image of peasants and soldiers from theposters during the Cultural Revolution. The change of Coca-Cola, Gucci, Cartier andother symbols after the extraction from commercial products helps to reveal thecharacteristics of the times, and also reflect the most realistic ideology of the Chinesepeople in the beginning of the Reform and Opening-up. With the accelerateddevelopment of the industrialization process and the diversification of artistic expression, Wang Guangyi no longer simply used the image of peasants and soldiersto express the localized political pop art style. However, he tried to use a wider varietyof expression means and performance themes to express the political pop art.As a pioneer of the Chinese contemporary art, Wang Guangyi’s political pop arthas far-reaching significance to the development of Chinese contemporary art. Fromthe "Mao Zedong" series to "Great Criticism" series, as well as the installation art andsculpture art that express the international political topics, they are all virtuallypenetrated by the political pop ideology. His political pop art makes the politicalfigures dispelled divinely in Chinese contemporary art and restores the politicalfigures by ways of ridicule and taunts. At the same time, with the reform of society,his arts gives birth to a variety of "pan-political pop" art forms, like Gaudy art,cartoon generation, and graphic arts all of which are the continuation and variants ofthe political pop art.