XU BING (b.1955) Happy the Man, 2019

XU BING (b.1955)Happy the Man, 2019Ink on paper, signed by the artist and with two seals, framed. 60cm high x 100cm wide (23 1/2in high x 39 1/2in wide).Footnotes:徐冰（1955年生）快樂的人 水墨紙本 鏡框 2019年作Xu Bing, born in Chongqing, Sichuan Province, is one of modern China's internationally acclaimed artists. He originally entered the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 1977, and eventually began to teach and acquired his Master of Fine Arts there. The work that made Xu Bing's name however, was the monumental installation Tianshu (1987-1991), now known as Book from the Sky; woodblock printed books containing thousands of invented characters that cannot be decoded. The artwork raised fundamental questions about the Chinese identity and its relationship to the written word. In 1988 he participated in the pioneering and seminal Chinese contemporary art exhibition 'China Avant-Garde' at the National Gallery, Beijing. A year later, Xu became honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and moved to the United States. Starting in 1993, the year in which Xu moved back to Beijing, he began to exhibit widely throughout the world and gained international prominence as an artist and educator.Xu is perhaps most famous, however, for his square-word calligraphy, as exemplified in the present lot. Square-word calligraphy, also known as New English calligraphy, is a way of presenting English or other words of the Roman alphabet as Chinese characters. The appearance of the writing is very close to that of a Chinese text; yet closer inspection shows that each 'character' is composed not a brushstroke components representing the radical or phonetic elements of a Chinese character, but letters of the Roman alphabet organised in a way that resembles the shape and proportions of Chinese characters. The present lot in fact is from the poem by John Dryden (1631-1700), 'Happy the Man'. Square word calligraphy forces the viewer to readjust their reading, and raises questions about cultural assumptions regarding language. It perhaps gives the viewer the feeling of learning to read again; see Xu Bing: Landscape/Landscript: Nature and Language in the Art of Xu Bing, Oxford, 2013, p.149.See a related piece of Square-word calligraphy 'On Returning to the Wheel Rim River', by Xu Bing, which was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 1 October 2018, lot 584.This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: W TPW Lot is located in the Bonhams Warehouse and will only be available for collection from this location.TP For auctions held in Scotland: Lots will be moved to an offsite storage location (Constantine, Constantine House, North Caldeen Road, Coatbridge ML5 4EF, Scotland, UK) and will only be available for collection from this location at the date stated in the catalogue. Please refer to the catalogue for further information.For all other auctions: Lots will be moved to an offsite storage location (Cadogan Tate, Auction House Services, 241 Acton Lane, London NW10 7NP, UK) and will only be available for collection from this location at the date stated in the catalogue. Please note transfer and storage charges will apply to any lots not collected after 14 calendar days from the auction date.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com