Illustration:
ill. 5.69 (set: 5.68)
Author:
Qiu Jie (1961-) 邱节
Date:
2007
Genre:
painting
Material:
scan, paper, colour, original source: lead on paper, 250 x 168 cm
Source:
Revolution Continues 2008: The Revolution Continues, edited by the Saatchi Gallery, London: Random House, 2008.
Courtesy:
Qiu Jie
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, military jacket, disembodyment, reconfiguration， Chinese avantgarde, parody, Mao Suit, calligraphy, Mao´s writings

Qiu Jie: Portrait of Mao

Artists from all generations thus disembody or reconfigure Mao, and all of them show how much power he holds over the minds of those who are trying to rid themselves of, or at least come to terms with, him. Qiu Jie’s 邱节 (1961–) Portrait of Mao (猫的肖像) of 2007, drafted in lead on paper, shows, in a humorous pun reminiscent of the dictionary entry in Zhang Hongtu’s Unity and Discord (ill. 5.44) discussed above, a cat (猫 mao, pronounced the same way as 毛 Mao, the Chairman)—wearing a Mao suit and presented, in devotional imperative, before a background of flowers and calligraphy.

The calligraphy includes a line from one of Mao’s poems that in itself reconfigures and reverses a traditional lament about the loss of spring by Southern Song poet Lu You 陆游 (1125–1210). Mao’s poem, instead, greets the coming of spring, a trope used time and again to indicate the coming victory of revolution. The image playfully mixes several iconographies, that of the official Mao portrait on the one hand and that of traditional symbolic paintings for good luck on the other: A cat, pronounced the same way as the octogenarian 耄 stood for long life in traditional images.