Illustration:
ill. 5.68 (set: 5.68)
Author:
Xue Song (1965-) 薛松
Date:
2005
Genre:
art original, painting
Material:
Internet file, colour, original source: Mixed-media on canvas, signed, 135 x 175 cm
Source:
Xue Song, Parody of Dong Xiwen’s propaganda image The Founding of the Nation, (DACHS 2008 Mao images, plate 123), Heidelberg catalogue entry
Courtesy:
Xue Song
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, founding of the nation, Tian'anmen Square, clouds, blue sky, silhouette, Mao portrait, statesman, leader, parody, Chinese avantgarde, myth, hero, nation

Xue Song: PRC Founding Ceremony (Xue Song: Kaiguo da dian 薛松: 开国大典)

Images like this by Xue Song 薛松 (1965–) whose 2005 parody of Dong Xiwen’s 董希文 (1914–73) oft-revised propaganda image The Founding of the Nation (开国大典) (Wu 2005, 171–75) whites out Mao completely, are attempts at making a clean break with Mao, the myth—thus recovering Mao, the man. Mao is thus reconfigured in the same surreal and yet highly complex manner as he is disembodied in Sui Jianguo’s Legacy Mantel series. In both cases, Mao has quite literally “lost face”—not something that often happens to a god (unless in case of iconoclasm), and not an accidental pun in a Chinese context, to be sure.

But if Mao appears in contemporary depictions such as these as out of focus, overwritten, transfigured, cross-faded, and, last but not least, disembodied, it is not emptied of emotive content, but its emotive content is changed, taking on new meanings for ever new audiences.