Guo Jian

Guo Jian (; born 26 January 1962 ) is a Chinese Australian artist.

He is part of a movement of contemporary Chinese artists whose work is characterised as Cynical Realism, which began in the 1990s in Beijing. Born a year after the Great Leap Forward, his art is heavily influenced by the last fifty years of political upheaval and violence in China, a period that included the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, the Sino-Vietnamese War in the early 1980s, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

A central theme to Guo Jian's art derives from his observations of the application of propaganda and the arts to both motivate soldiers and sway public opinion. His perspective comes from his experiences as a propaganda poster painter in the PLA and propaganda officer in a transport company, then later from the outside looking back in as a student demonstrator during the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989.

Art and influences Stylistically, Guo Jian's work falls within the Cynical Realism grouping that has been attached to many contemporary Chinese artists who draw from their experiences over the last four decades in China. Their work is broadly a response to the dominant government driven form of propaganda-laden art known as Socialist Realism. While studying art at Minzu University of China emerged, which also had a profound impact on his work.

Guo Jian's art focuses on the use of the female celebrity as a model patriot, a tool to motivate, influence, manipulate and ultimately serve as Ulyssean Siren. (文艺兵; Pinyin: wényìbīng or 文工团; Pinyin: wéngōngtuán) performers and their Western counterparts. In the book STUDIO, Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity, author John McDonald noted:

“A poster of two girls in army uniforms posed in front of the Great Wall shows how little Guo Jian actually makes up. His paintings may seem improbable but they are near reflections of Madam Mao’s Model Revolutionary Operas, and the over-the-top style of army propaganda. The message, to boys from the provinces like Guo Jian, was that beautiful girls love a man in uniform. Under capitalism or communism, sex sells.”

He highlights the implied innocence and the underlying eroticism of women used to manipulate and motivate men in uniform and in society as a whole.

Biography

Early life Guo Jian 郭健 was born in 1962, in Duyun 都匀市 the capital of Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in the autonomous prefecture of Guizhou province (贵州省) in Southwest China. when the country was victim to the internal political power struggles between Mao Zedong and his more moderate opponents. The populace were subjected to a perpetual climate of intense and relentless political indoctrination, struggle sessions and community violence which created a climate of general mistrust even of neighbours and one's own family members. More broadly, millennia of traditions, culture, society and beliefs were abandoned or destroyed as part of the Four Olds campaign.

“The depiction of soldiers has personal and political symbolism for Guo; not only was he a People’s Liberation Army soldier, but, as he has said: ‘My grandmother told me that the People’s Liberation Army had executed my grandfather.... I was shocked.... My father was a soldier. He had to denounce his own father, knowing he’d be killed too if he tried to defend him. And then in 1989, there I was, a former soldier, nearly killed by the P.L.A. myself on Tiananmen Square”

The same year, China began to open up to the world, and with it China's “85 New Wave Movement” of modern art began. For the first time new opportunities arose to see and study modern foreign art trends, as well as foreign political theories and philosophies. The American artist, Robert Rauschenberg held the first officially sanctioned American art show in China in fifty years, held at Beijing's National Art Museum of China. Rauschenberg's installation works inspired many young artists at the time.

In April 1989 the liberal ex-communist party leader Hu Yaobang died. Initially a small group of students began to commemorate his death and called for his legacy to be reassessed. Over the next few months the protesters numbers grew.

Like many students at the time, Guo Jian took part in the student protests and hunger strikes. Facing the soldiers together with the other students, he saw himself on both sides of the divide, both as a student and as the soldier. Guo Jian survived and graduated from university in July 1989, but his participation in the protest movement meant he was banned from being given employment through the formal job placement system for graduates at that time.

Guo Jian was part of the initial group of artists who moved to the outskirts of Beijing to Yuanmingyuan (the site of The Old Summer Palace ruins) and formed the Yuanmingyuan artists’ community. included a portrait of Guo Jian entitled ‘Guo Jian and Elly’ 1998, in a group exhibition at the Australian Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Back to China (2005) Guo Jian returned to China in 2005 to explore production techniques options for developing his sculpture ‘One World One Dream’ (aka “Dirty Mind”). He resided in the Songzhuang Art Colony, in the eastern suburbs of Beijing. The day after the offending article in the globally distributed newspaper hit newsstands, Guo Jian was arrested by Chinese authorities at his studio and detained for several weeks. As news of his arrest and detainment generated international news coverage Guo Jian was eventually deported to Australia for "visa issues".