Lot 854
  • 854

Liu Ye

Estimate
5,000,000 - 7,000,000 HKD
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Description

  • Liu Ye
  • The Pope Rescues a Small Pig
  • acrylic on canvas
signed in Chinese and Pinyin and dated 2001, framed

Provenance

Chinese Contemporary Gallery, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Exhibited

UK, London, Chinese Contemporary Gallery, Liu Ye: Fellini, A Guardsman, Mondrian, the Pope and My Girlfriend, 2001, pp. 14-15

Literature

Julia Colman, Critical Mass, Chinese Contemporary, London, UK, 2004, p. 34

Condition

This work is generally in good condition. Please note that it was not examined under ultraviolet light.
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Catalogue Note

Ambivalent Humour
Liu Ye

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between Liu Ye and other contemporary Chinese artists who grew up during the revolutionary period, is his persistent autonomy against representing politics in his works. As he once said, “in my opinion, politics only make up a tiny part of humanity. In the context of the universe and common human emotions, politics are insignificant. Basic human sentiments such as humanitarianism, beauty, kindness and sadness are far more touching and important to me than any political concepts.”1 Thus, instead of resorting to collective imagery as seen in Political Pop or Cynical Realism, the artist is largely inspired by Western children’s books from his childhood such as the works of Hans Christian Andersen, and later by the works of Piet Mondrian and Vermeer. The cryptic cartoonish imagery and vibrant primary-colour palette stemmed from these eclectic influences, would ultimately set him as one of the most popular contemporary Chinese painters working today.

The Pope Rescues a Small Pig (Lot 854) from 2001 is considered to be a truly exceptional piece by the artist. It is the first and only work to date to feature the Pope of the Catholic Church or even Catholicism as the main theme. The large red circle dominating the work is also a rare composition element from the artist. In the work, Pope John Paul II is dressed in a long white gown with a red cape and seated on a throne while calmly carrying a tiny pig in his arms. His head is slightly tilted to his right with his eyes directly gazing at the viewer with endless ambivalent implications. Catholicism and the Pope can be regarded as a fundamental theme in Western art, made most notable by Francis Bacon’s masterpiece Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X in which the artist created an image of a screaming Pope based on an older painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Many contemporary Chinese artists such as Yue Minjun have also used the motif in some of their well-known works. Unlike these artists who explicitly deface or transform the image of the symbolic figure, Liu Ye retains a lovable realistic illustration of the Pope. However, when looked upon closely, similar to his other works, it is not hard to discover the uncanny or irony within the seemingly harmless image. Liu Ye has compared this dichotomy to Charlie Chaplin’s film “City Lights”, “the first comedy I watched as a child was Charlie Chaplin’s ‘City Lights’, a movie that makes one laugh wildly and cry hysterically, using a comedic form to tell a tragic story. The harder you laugh, the more desolate the tragic fate of the character in the story comes to seem.”2

This can certainly be applied to the present work, as it is imbued with Liu Ye’s signatory humor marked by delicate brushstrokes and dynamic colour scheme. Yet, the unclear relationship between subject matters introduced, namely the Pope and the pig, arguably invites further interpretations beyond the innocent surface. Curator Julia Colman has attempted to decipher the image as revealing the subtle satirical connection between the two icons, “the pig in Chinese tradition is a lucky animal, even if a little stupid, since it symbolises the abundance of money and an abundance of food. […] At first this appears a materialistic juxtaposition with the Pope, symbol of Christianity with its vows of poverty and selflessness until one recalls the opulence of the Catholic Church.”3 Intentional or not, The Pope Rescues a Small Pig in particular attributes a whimsical characterisation to the Pope, the most reverent figure in Catholic Church, that inevitably brings to mind the many scandals surrounding the Church; it is as if the pig is the only and last entity willing to stay besides the lone but powerful figure. On another level, the work can also be said to be the artist’s imagination and an attempt to revive the peace of his own childhood to the present era, as he commented, “my painting basically belongs to my individual life. Childhood for me, was a golden time, many aspects of my painting reflect my childhood imagination and fantasies.”4

Most importantly, the work highlights Liu’s individualistic view unshaken by peer influence, a stand that he has boldly declared since his study in Berlin in the early 1990’s till the present. Liu Ye once recalled an important anecdote during an interview with art critic Zhu Zhu, “a German classmate once told me, ‘why are you still painting? Painting is dead!’ I was thinking, ‘what should I do?’ Then it came to me, I will continue to do what I want to do. It is not like I only started painting when I got to Germany. A year later while working late one night, I suddenly got the feeling of being back in Beijing. That was it, the moment when I had a genuine feeling of a new beginning. […] I think artistic sincerity, instead of realism in art, is the most important of it all.”5

1 Liu Ye Red Yellow Blue, Schoeni Art Gallery, 2003
2 Refer to 1