I found it very interesting, especially bearing in mind the celebrated Chinese-born artist who lives down our street. His paintings (some of them of large groups of very familiar faces, like this) are at least as good.
But something I've noticed about our friend, and I think I also see it in this painting - the double-meanings deliberately painted in. For example, Elizabeth II is wearing "Elizabethan" dress, from the period of Elizabeth I.
ANd the apparently disputed figure of Noah or CHarles Darwin - it's definitely Darwin's face. But to depict him as Noah, gathering animals to a place fo safety from the Flood - cheeky indeed.
There are subtle motifs all through the painting. Other things I've love to know more about, such as the significance of each small item and also the significance of the various abstract patterns here and therfe. They wouldn't be there without a very good reason.
Again, I see this in the paintings of our neighbour. One of my favourites of his is a painting of George Gittoes, a local artist who is often embedded with our troops and peacekeeping forces when they go into war-torn areas. George paints the struggle of the individual people and sometimes I feel is a very haunted man. When embedded he wears army fatigues but carries a notepad and pencils instead of weapons.
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In this link you will see an example of one of these paintings. Looking at the full-size painting, at first you see him standing on a battleground, flames int he background. But look again and the flames are the skirting board of a room, the sands underfoot are the floorboards. The subject is at first wearing army fatigues, but look again and they're paint-splotched clothing. The face and the horror the subject is seeing - it takes talent to paint that well. The broken idol on the floor is from the killing fields of Rwanda.
So I wonder if this technique of extreme symbolism and deliberately mixed visual metaphors is also perhaps a Chinese thing, at least in painting.
Marg
