China’s Poly Auction has withdrawn the work Hairdressing 2 from its autumn sale in Hong Kong, scheduled for 5 October, after the artist Geng Jianyi challenged its authenticity. The work, originally created in 1985, was presumed to be destroyed in 1989 and was allegedly repainted in 1992.
In the auction catalogue and in other articles, the critic, curator and dealer Lv Peng vouched for the authenticity of the work offered at Poly, which came from the collection of Sun Yujing. It was described as a 1992 recreation in pink of Geng’s 1985 blue-toned original Hairdressing 2, repainted by the artist. When the sale was announced in August, Geng posted on the social media channel WeChat: “This work by Poly is better than Geng Jianyi’s, its name is wrong, the date is wrong, and the size is wrong.”
His friends, including the artist Zhang Peili and the curator Pi Li, echoed the artist’s objections. Zhang, who is also the director of OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Shanghai, posted an image on WeChat showing the offered work next to the 1985 original, with the comment: “Any artist from the Dafen Oil Painting Village can see the differences”, referring to the well known town where copies of famous paintings are produced.
Pi Li, a founder of Boers-Li Gallery and now the senior curator of the M+ museum in Hong Kong, chimed in with a four-image post. “Picture 1 is the painting that recently sparked controversy,” he explained. “Picture 2 is the namesake painting at the exhibition 85 New Space. Picture 3 is the photo taken at the site of the New Space Exhibition. Picture 4 is a dialogue between two experts, which I saw on the internet. This information is easy to find. Asia Art Archive has it all documented. What worries us the most is the over-confidence of some experts. They should have done solid research before urging people to buy and sell.”
On 18 September, Poly issued an initial statement, reserving “right of legal recourse” against “anyone who issue[s] false information, baseless accusations or… disseminate[s] the same in network or social media.” Poly’s latest statement, released on 29 September, says that the auction house “received an objection declaration” from Geng dated 23 September and, due to “inconsistency” with the seller’s story, has suspended the lot until the matter is resolved. Poly’s statement also stresses its commitment to the authenticity of the works it sells.
Geng Jianyi, born 1962 in Henan Province and based in Hangzhou, is among the founding figures of Chinese contemporary art. In 1985, he painted the four-piece Hairdressing series, comprising Hairdressing 1: Hairwashing, Hairdressing 2: Woman Entering a Salon, Hairdressing 3: Another Shave, and Hairdressing 4: Summer Fashions.
They were first shown in December 1985, in the exhibition 85 New Space at what is now the China Academy of Art. Hairdressing 1 and 2 were subsequently part of the February 1989 exhibition China/Avant Garde at the China Art Gallery Beijing, now the National Art Museum of China. That show was famously shut after the artist Xiao Lu fired a gun at her installation, and works including Geng’s first two Hairdressing paintings are believed to have been destroyed. Geng soon segued away from more lucrative figurative painting toward conceptual multimedia work.
The Chinese art system in the early 1990s was, like much else in the country, not very well documented or regulated. However, in a statement published on the Chinese auction website Artron.com, Lv Peng included letters dated to February 1992 that he says are from Geng Jianyi, and in which the artist discusses repainting Hairdressing 1 and 2, and then says the works are in transit. The Poly catalogue dates the pink Hairdressing 2 to 1986. In his statement, Peng says that this date stems from a misprint in his 2006 publication Chinese Art History in the 20th Century, which on page 832 contains the only prior public image of the repainted work.