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Tank Man
Carolin Behrmann

With two shopping bags in his hands a single man in a white shirt stopped fearlessly a
column of 18 tanks that were heading down Chang’an Avenue in Beijing towards the
student protesters of the ’89 Democracy Movement on Tienanmen Square on June 5,
1989. A hunger strike by 3.000 students to claim political reforms in China was
followed by seven weeks of demonstrations and the movement grew up to one million
people who assembled and camped on the central square. In the early hours of June 4
the Chinese state troops struck back, and killed violently several hundreds of civilians;
the extent of bloodshed and exact number of deaths are unknown until today. As
hardly any images of the massacre persisted, the image and anonymous act of
de ance of the “tank man” became an icon and symbol of the protest movement.

The situation has been lmed and observed by international journalists who were
taking shelter in the proximate Beijing Hotel. In a short video that was shot by BBC
journalists from afar you can see the man all by himself walking towards the tanks,
forcing the rst in the line to stop right in front of him. After a few moments he starts
climbing on the top of the tank, knocks on its doors from outside, trying to talk to the
soldiers. After a while he jumps back on the street again, the driver of the tank opens
the door and they talk to each other brie y. The tank tries to go on, but the man
positions himself again right in front of it to block it. Four photojournalists, who were
later repressed and intimidated by the PSB agents (secret police) but could smuggle
the photomaterial out of Beijing, have captured the moment: Charlie Cole for
Newsweek, who won the World Press Photo Award of the Year 1989 ( g.1), Stuart
Franklin for Magnum ( g.2), Jeff Widener of Associated Press took the most-used
photo that was nominated for the Pulitzer Price ( g.3), and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah of
Reuters ( g.4).

No other image of the protests on Tienanmen Square has been more evocative as the
image of the unknown man in front of the tank. The photo and documentation of that
heroic action turned the defeat of political resistance into a victory (Drechsel). It has
been compared with other pictorial strategies of “asymmetrical” violent con icts as
for example the image of David defeating the giant Goliath. The “unknown rebel” was
listed by Times Magazine among the “most important political leaders and
revolutionaries” of the 20th century.

Among the artistic receptions of the gure there is a graf ti by Banksy “Golf
Sale”( g.5), that ironically comments this image of resistance: “We can’t do anything
to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go
shopping to console ourselves.” A moving document about fear and censorship of the
massacre is Liu Wei’s video “Unforgettable memory” (13 min, 2009) ( g.6). The artist
confronts pedestrians on the street with the image of the tank man and asks about
their memory of this scene. But none of them reacts with empathy or remembrance,
but ignorance, fear and denial, which proves that the massacre is still a taboo topic in
China. In 2013 the Spanish artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo has sculpted a
hyperrealistic lifelike sculpture that shows the “tank man” standing amidst the buying
public in Hoog Catherine Mall (today part of the Collection of the Centraal Museum
Utrecht) ( g.7). Also in his exhibition “Made in China”, 2015 the gure serves as a
template for 5.000 tiny plastic gurines, that were set up in the large entrance hall of
the Albertinum in Dresden ( g.8). As an antithetical-monument of peaceful resistance
they also remind of the fact that until today the reproduction of the “tank man”
photograph is still prohibited in China.

   

g.1 g.2

   
 g. 3 g. 4

   

g. 5 g. 6

g. 7 g. 8

Literature:

Benjamin Drechsel: Der Tank Man. Wie die Niederlage der chinesischen
Protestbewegung von 1989 visuell in einen Sieg umgedeutet wurde. In: Gerhard Paul
(ed.): Bilder, die Geschichte schrieben. 1900 bis heute. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
Göttingen 2011, pp. 228–235.
Pico Iyer: The Unknown Rebel, in: Time Magazine, April 13, 1998.
Banksy: Wall and Piece. London: Random House 2006, p. 204.

Web:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
New York Times: lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-
of-tienanmen/ (by Patrick Witty, Jun 03/2009)
Sánchez Castillo: http://www.skd.museum/en/special-exhibitions/made-in-
china/index.html
Liu Wei: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqx040596Fs; http://universes-in-
universe.org/eng/bien/sesc_videobrasil/unerasable_memories/artists_artworks
/liu_wei

Video:

The Tank Man. June 5,1989. Tiananmen Square. An extraordinary confrontation took
place which became an icon for the ght for freedom. Frontline: PBS Home Video

About the Author:

Carolin Behrmann studied Art History, Philosophy and European Ethnology in
Tuebingen, Bologna and Berlin. Master thesis on „Gianlorenzo Bernini. Representation,
patronage and symbolic capital (1623-1644)“. 2001-2005 scienti c assistant at the
research project „Requiem. The Roman Tombs for the Popes and Cardinals of the Early
Modern Age“. 2005-2011 scienti c collaborator (doctoral assistant) at the Institut fuer
Kunst- und Bildgeschichte at Humboldt University of Berlin, chair Prof. Horst
Bredekamp. 2008-2009 Fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, annual
theme „Networks and Boundaries“. Thesis on „Tyrant and Martyr. Images and the
History of Ideas of the Law around 1600“ which analyzes the correlation between Art
and Law after the Council of Trent by focusing on gurations of martyrdom and
tyrannical force in the 16th and 17th century. It seeks to explore and include the
juridical and political signi cance of martyrologies in their historical context of the
consolidation of statehood and institutionalization of power, as well as the Jesuit
concept of international law theory. September – December 2011 post-doc-fellow and
January 2012 to February 2014 scienti c assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in
Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut.
Since 2014 leader of the Minerva-Research Group „The Nomos of Images.
Manifestation and Iconology of Law“.
Contact: carolin.behrmann@khi. .it

Reference / Quellennachweis:
Carolin Behrmann: Tank Man, in: Aesthetics of Resistance, Pictorial Glossary, The
Nomos of Images, ISSN: 2366-9926, 12 October 2015, URL:
http://nomoi.hypotheses.org/19.

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