Tom Sanford
American Artist. 1975-present
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Mao Grid.jpg

Mao Paintings

Paintings over Chinese made paintings of Mao Zedong made by Sanford between 2010-2015.

the New York artist does not only identify himself as an artisan of painting, but also as a director of painting by having others fabricate paintings on his behalf, like in the series Mao Paintings, started in 2011. Using globalization to his advantage, Sanford takes a more conceptual approach by contracting Chinese painters to produce copies of the famous portrait of the dictator Mao Zedong –incarnate of rigid Chinese Marxism-Leninism and object of a social idolatry full of propaganda – on which Warhol based his 1973 serigraphs. The paintings are then shipped from China to Sanford's studio in New York, where he modifies them into culturally archetypal depictions based on his own Western cultural context. -Cesare Baisini Selvaggi

For his series of “Custom Mao” portraits Sanford has taken existing mass produced paintings from factories in China and then superimposed a photorealistic overlay to imply a contradictory personality. These new portraits range from archetypes (such as a Hasidic Jewish man) to specifics (like Sherlock Holmes or Elizabeth Taylor). Each jarring juxtaposition is intended to highlight the discrepancy between the man the Chinese government would like to immortalize and the liberty that may be taken with images once they enter the world of popular culture. Through his fame and subsequent repeated iterations of his image, Mao has ceased to be a real person. He is instead a carefully synthesized version of his former self, a versatile image onto which anything can be written, be it the glorious history of his country, or an unlikely identity he would never have had. -Anonda Bell