“Who is the Doll?”: A Painter's Question
In a series of oil paintings, the painter Gao Xiang asks us, men and women, a very serious question, asked with a touch of humor: “Who is the doll?” Actually, one can easily reach a conclusion after viewing these works; the painter himself has already given a clear answer to this question. Therefore, he is suggesting his own idea rather than asking a question: in our world today, in which women seem to be dolls for men, the truth is that men are actually dolls for women! This conclusion is obviously supported by the XQEDODQFHGVL]HRIWKHPDOHDQGIHPDOH¿JXUHVLQ*DR VZRUN However, I disagree with this simple assessment. From my perspective, this series of works does not simply give an answer but asks a complicated question. Why does the painter keep asking the question “who is the doll?” when he has clearly asserted that the man is the doll of the woman? Does it mean that the painter himself is not exactly certain of what he has witnessed? Does he require the viewers to see the scene critically or questioningly? I cannot see any evidence in favor of this kind of doubt from the pictures. The painter even tries to tell us his idea with the straightforward image of the man as a doll in woman's hands. To know why the painter has acquired the doubt, we need somehow to look beyond the pictures rather than only at them. We can imagine how surprised the viewer will be and how involuntarily he/she will ask the question “who is the doll?” after stepping away from the pictures and finding a completely different scene in the actual world. The painter's question does not come from the ambiguity of his language; it comes from the
diametrical contradiction between the real world and the world in these paintings. It is based on this contradiction, that we can say that the painter has unveiled a surreal world for us. Elements such as the background stage, the dream-like colors, and the different VL]HVRIWKH¿JXUHVRIPHQDQGZRPHQFOHDUO\FKDUDFWHUL]HWKHVH surrealist pictures.
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