Artwork Description

Title:Feast

Artist
Wang Chuanhe

Date
1999

Medium:
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
28.3 x 28.3 in (72 x 72 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
Wang Chuanhe’s Feast (1999) is a vibrantly expressive oil on canvas measuring 72 x 72 cm. The square composition is populated by a dynamic assembly of stylized human faces and fantastical fish rendered in saturated tones of red, green, orange, yellow, and blue, all set against a dark, nearly black ground. The whimsical repetition of forms creates a swirling, almost kaleidoscopic effect. The faces are rendered with simplified outlines and wide, enigmatic eyes, while the fish oscillate between decorative abstraction and symbolic form. The painting is in very good condition.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Wang Chuanhe’s artistic language draws heavily on folk art traditions, outsider art sensibilities, and the naïve expressionist vocabulary of 20th-century modernism. The stylization of the faces recalls the flattened perspectives of both Picasso’s later work and traditional Chinese opera masks, while the fantastical creatures and saturated palette gesture toward the dreamlike world of art brut and post-Mao experimental painting. The raw immediacy and symbolic layering of Feast suggest a vision both childlike and deeply metaphoric.

3. Historical Context
Created in 1999, Feast belongs to a period of increasing cultural experimentation in post-reform China. The late 1990s saw the emergence of a generation of independent artists who responded to the economic liberalization of the country with bold, highly personal visual languages. Rather than engage directly with Western realism or political critique, artists like Wang Chuanhe explored the subconscious, the folkloric, and the symbolic — offering a counter-narrative to both tradition and academic modernism. This work may be read as a reflection on abundance, desire, and the chaotic joy of human-animal coexistence.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The painting is in very good condition with no visible signs of damage, paint loss, or surface abrasion. The canvas is taut and stable, with the pigments retaining their original vibrancy. No conservation treatment is currently required.

6. Artistic Significance
Feast represents a key moment in Wang Chuanhe’s artistic exploration of fantastical realism and human-animal hybridity. The composition’s joyous confusion of forms resists fixed interpretation, allowing viewers to engage on both aesthetic and intuitive levels. As a work from the cusp of the 21st century, it exemplifies the vibrant, eclectic spirit of Chinese contemporary art as it broke free from ideological boundaries and embraced more instinctual, imaginative realms of expression.