Liu Ye

signed in Chinese and Pinyin and dated 06

Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Sperone Westwater, Liu Ye: Temptations, 14 September - 28 October, 2006
China, Beijing, Asia Art Center, The Power of the Universe - An Exhibition of the Frontier of Contemporary Chinese Art, 15 December, 2007 - 13 January, 2008, p.146

China Art Book, Germany, Cologne, DuMont Buchverlag, 2007, p. 247

This set of work is generally in good condition. There are wear and handling marks around the edges. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Reeling from Reality
Liu Ye: International Blue

It is peculiarly appropriate that we should turn to Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as a point of departure for Liu Ye’s work. In what is considered one of the most famous lines of the playwright’s oeuvre, the character Prospero surmises, “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our life/ Is rounded with a sleep.” (The Tempest, 4.1.156-158) Aside from brushes with the dramatist in works such as Romeo (2002), Liu’s work is pregnant with the same whimsical marvels and enchantments that can be found in the heights of Shakespearean romances; from fairy tales and from myths. The piece on offer, Liu Ye’s 2006 work International Blue (Lot 906) was inspired by Yves Klein’s widely acclaimed pigment, International Klein Blue (IKB), situating the piece in a vastly important discourse on art. Coupled with its whimsy nature, International Blue exudes wonderment and mystique.

The work is set against a rich background of blues, and is quintessential of Liu Ye’s work. The piece is separated into two panels; the left one depicts Liu’s appropriated Miffy, borrowed from child-cartoonist Dick Bruna, while the right shows Liu’s archetypal school girl, frozen mid-step, staring blankly at the rabbit to her left. Miffy’s bright vermillion pullover stands in stark contrast to its wearer’s insipid posture. With its back turned to us, we can only gather that the rabbit is looking at the perfectly square yellow panel overhead. The school girl, with her round head, stout limbs, hair coifed into a flawless bowl-shape, is the very image of innocence and youth. Her emerald school-skirt, so reminiscent of childish drawings, with its gaunt angles so very pronounced, bordering on the unrealistic, creates an overall effect of utmost childishness. But her features suggest otherwise. The high-set eyebrows, usually a childlike sign, frame a countenance filled with what may otherwise be read as disdain; the downturned lips, half-open eyes, furthers this reading. The girl is situated in a comfortable middle between being mildly perturbed and bored, entirely unaware of, or perhaps uninterested in, the grand cobalt blue square canvas next to her. This dream world is deeply enigmatic, symptomatic of many of Liu’s paintings, and requires an investigation of the artist’s psyche. As aforementioned, the title of the piece, International Blue is an attribution to Yves Klein’s IKB. Klein acquired a patent for the colour in 1960, and the colour rose to worldwide fame for its purity of colour and singularity. The intensity of the colour was representative of what Klein considered “indefinable”,¹ a blue that he saw “eradicating the flat dividing line of the horizon, [that] would evoke a unification of heaven and earth.”² It was known for emanating a gleam when seen in flesh, a sight of pure energetic blue. The young artist once also claimed that “a painter ought to paint one single masterpiece: himself, perpetually… becoming a kind of generator with a continual emanation that fills the atmosphere with his whole artistic presence and remains in the air after he has gone. This is painting, the true painting of the twentieth century.”³ When joined, IKB and Klein’s own philosophy present a theme of vigorous self-exploration, much like Liu Ye’s piece does.

 Liu Ye was born to a father who wrote children’s books, and a mother who was a language teacher. Although he grew up in the throes of cultural upheaval, the time did not affect him at all. “When the revolution began in 1966, I was two years old, and I thought the world simply was as it was. For a child, there was nothing strange about it.”⁴ During this time, his father—with a position writing propaganda children’s stories—would slip his son banned books, expanding young Liu’s world to encompass the likes of Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen. The artist displayed his talents very early on, adding illustrations to his father’s pieces, enrolling at the department of Industrial Design at the Beijing School of Arts and Crafts at the tender age of fifteen. Perhaps because of this background, Liu’s youth is something he is unwilling to part with: “Childhood for me, was a golden time…Childhood for me means happiness.”⁵ He later enrolled at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and having graduated from there, succeeded in entering Kunsthochschule Berlin, Germany, in pursuit of a master’s degree. This latter experience, when the artist was forlorn in a foreign land, so far from home, was to be a time of intense self-inspection, and it was only upon returning home that Liu’s art burgeoned.

When asked by Zhu Zhu whether it is true that he became so lonely in Germany that he began speaking to his own reflection, Liu Ye neither affirms nor denies the comment.⁶ There is a profound theme of self-exploration here, characteristic of Liu’s preference for denial, “I’m not used to thinking profoundly about problems. I treat problems irrationally.”⁷ The evasive manner with which he deals with issues, hiding in the refuge of his childhood, has led some critics to read Miffy as a representation of the artist himself. Liu’s Miffy is largely androgynous, appearing in Sleepwalker (2006) for all intents and purposes as male, but in Temptress (2006) dressed in female school uniform, not unlike that of the school girl in International Blue. Miffy becomes the symbol of a universal, sexless childhood that Liu is yearning for; the “golden time” that is out of reach, which is perhaps a fitting statement considering how brightly yellow Miffy’s panel is.

The school girl in International Blue is also highly suggestive. The green school-skirt is typical of Liu Ye’s works, appearing endlessly in the nineties. The green-skirt wearing schoolgirl previously emerged in scenes of utmost absurdity, such as can be seen in his 1995 piece Bright Road. In this piece, two winged children—both in uniforms—smile innocuously at the audience, while what is apparently a plane crash occurs behind them. Another such example can be found in Silence of Sea (1995), where the green skirt reappears, this time donned by a sailor-girl. She farcically carries a fish bowl, surrounded by various male sailors: one reading a Piet Mondrian book, one inspecting the audience with binoculars, the other signalling with a flag with his back turned. Behind them is a sinking ship, its side engulfed in flames, but they seem wholly unaware; their innocence intact.

In International Blue, the schoolgirl, rather than facing away from issues, confronts them head-on. It is as if this childlike female—unlike her predecessors—finally stares maturity in the face. The look akin to disdain on the girl’s face could equally be longing; longing for the “golden time” that Miffy represents. The fact that the rabbit is turned away symbolises their distance: they are no longer collectively children as in the bright canvas of Once Upon a Time in Broadway (2005-2006), with both their backs turned together. The girl is entirely alone. It is perhaps equally poignant that after International Blue, very few of such school girls appear in Liu’s works, as if this painting is a remnant of the past; of being on the cusp of realisation; of maturity, before all innocence is lost, making this piece extremely rare in its position of Liu’s legacy. The final element to be explored in International Blue is that of Piet Mondrian. Liu Ye tenderly recalls, “It wasn’t until I was in Germany that I saw his [Mondrian’s] original works with my own eyes that I discovered his work is painted meticulously stroke by stroke, some places are thickly painted while others are thin, the paintings have many degrees of surface temperature and quality…Mondrian’s painting is like the Bible, continually guiding me.”⁸ Certainly, the yellow and blue canvases in International Blue are reminders of Mondrian’s works of flawless squares. However, what makes this piece particularly heartrending is perhaps the omission of the colour red.

International Blue presents a melancholy rendition of Mondrian’s variegated pieces, stripping them of their life, as if prohibiting itself from displaying the buoyant reds that Mondrian works are wont to exhibit. Furthermore, the different variants of blue that appear in the piece seem to evoke the various “degrees of surface temperature and quality” Liu mentions, as if hidden in these are thoughts and memories of this previous adoration, segmented by the rigid streaks; fragmented into two canvases. With regards to Klein’s statement of using blue to eradicate “the flat dividing line of the horizon”, to evoke “a unification of heaven and earth”, Liu seems to deliberately and stubbornly disrupt the piece’s harmony. The placement of Mondrian in this work also aptly answers the question “How do Blue, Yellow and Green hold themselves against a dominant Red?”⁹ posed by Bernhard Fibicher. The truth is that they are incapable
of doing so. Aside from being a dominant feature in Mondrian’s works, reds are heavily symbolic of Liu’s childhood. “I came of age in a world covered in red, red suns, red flags, red kerchiefs; even the green pines, blue cypresses, and sunflowers were just foils to this red cover.”¹⁰ Its exclusion reemphasises the loss of childhood, enhancing the sense of sadness that pervades the piece.

“I always feel that I live every moment in a fairy tale world,”¹¹ once recalled Liu. Incapable of escaping the sanctuary of childhood, it seems that the artist wilfully conceals himself in a fanciful world of little men and rubicund girls. Recently, however, Liu’s works, though still heavily reliant upon the themes of childhood and childlikeness, have become less fantastical, set in locations more concrete and feasible. Gone are the days of daydreaming in a world filled with rapture and delight, of high fantasy, of make-belief rabbits. As we can see in the valuable work International Blue, perhaps the little girl’s eyelids, half-open, are about to flutter open, and wake from a beautiful dream.

1 Modern Paints Uncovered: Proceedings from the Modern Paints Uncovered Symposium, London: Getty Conservation Institute, 2008
2 Yves Klein: 1928-1962, Germany, Taschen Basic Art, 2001
3 Refer to 2
4 Zhu Zhu, “Beginning with Leni Riefenstahl: Interviewing Liu Ye”, Today, 2008
5 “Questions and Answers, Leng Lin and Liu Ye”, Liu Ye, Mingjingdi Gallery, 1997
6 Refer to 4
7 Refer to 5
8 Refer to 5
9 Liu Ye: mit Essays von Bernhard Fibicher und Zhu Zhu, Kunstmuseum Bern, 2007
10 Zhu Zhu, “An Aged Childhood”, in Liu Ye: mit Essays von Bernhard Fibicher und Zhu Zhu, Kunstmuseum Bern, 2007 
11 Refer to 5