Discovering the Forbidden City

More about the book

In the course of creating the Forbidden City series of works, Jiang Guofang derived inspiration from those gorgeous rooms and Chinese traditional decorations and received more inspiration from the people who lived in them princesses, empresses and imperial concubines. But the painter did not want to recreate true history in the traditional sense, nor did he want to put rigidly on the canvas the scenes of that time and the way the specific people expressed their thought. The painter had no intention to explain the past era. The aspect of the pictures as records of actual events was covered up by the non-historic method of creation. Jiang Guofang has actually imparted a new content to historical themes and made it a way of expressing his personal concept of art. The painter himself said, I look upon all the pictures as cultural products. Like all other cultural products, they must be created and inspired by certain things. But I am not writing a history book, nor do I want to