“Zhang’s strategy of provocation through playful juxtapositions and uneasy conflations defines his three-decade career. After his Chairman Mao paintings, he went on to fashion McDonalds’-style hamburger and french fry containers in the oxidized bronze style of ancient Han dynasty artifacts and Ming porcelain Coca-Cola bottles. One of the first Chinese artists to warn of the nation’s penchant for consumerism, he says, “If more than a billion people care only about money and materialism, it is big trouble.” He then taught himself to paint in styles reminiscent of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Picasso, and Cezanne, turning centuries of classical representations of Chinese landscapes and rivers into wild Starry Nights and serene Water Lilies. “At first, both sides — Eastern and Western art critics — hated it, but now I have so many orders to my gallery for this style of work that I cannot keep up. My point is to show how cultures mix.” ”

via China’s Warhol Paints Pollution – The Art of Zhang Hongtu | Foreign Policy.