- 1053
Liu Ye
Estimate
3,000,000 - 5,000,000 HKD
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Description
- Liu Ye
- Killing Me Softly
- acrylic on canvas
signed in Chinese and Pinyin and dated 2002, framed
Provenance
Private Collection
Poly Auction, Beijing, 21 November 2006, lot 315
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale
Poly Auction, Beijing, 21 November 2006, lot 315
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale
Exhibited
China, Beijing and Hong Kong, Schoeni Art Gallery, Liu Ye: Red, Yellow, Blue, 2003, p. 49
Hong Kong, Schoeni Art Gallery, Liu Ye: Red, Yellow, Blue, 2004
Hong Kong, Schoeni Art Gallery, Liu Ye: Red, Yellow, Blue, 2004
Literature
Liu Ye, Liu Ye: My Own Story, Gallery 3, 2003, p. 130
Liu Ye, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2007, p. 39
China Art Book: The 80 Most Renowned Chinese Artists, Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, 2007, p. 246
Liu Xin Wu, Dés de poulet façon mégère, BLEU DE CHINE, Paris, France, 2007, cover
Wu Hung, Contemporary Chinese Art: A History 1970s to 2000s, Thames and Hudson, London, UK, 2014, p. 370
Liu Ye Catalogue Raisonne 1991-2015, Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2015, p. 306
Liu Ye, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2007, p. 39
China Art Book: The 80 Most Renowned Chinese Artists, Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne, Germany, 2007, p. 246
Liu Xin Wu, Dés de poulet façon mégère, BLEU DE CHINE, Paris, France, 2007, cover
Wu Hung, Contemporary Chinese Art: A History 1970s to 2000s, Thames and Hudson, London, UK, 2014, p. 370
Liu Ye Catalogue Raisonne 1991-2015, Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2015, p. 306
Condition
This work is generally in very good condition. When examined 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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
A Classic Work from a Golden Era
Liu Ye
A broad survey of Liu Ye’s paintings between 1991 and the present reveals a hidden theme. The layers of simple images contain riddles of wisdom and philosophy, which is one reason audiences seem to enjoy gazing deeply into them. These riddles represent the artist’s acknowledgment of the great river of art history that precedes his own creative practice. They are also mementos of his private life, but he treats them with a light hand, like an adult weaving a fairy-tale in childlike language. This secret realm is the private language of a solitary person: the paradise of a pessimist. Killing Me Softly (Lot 1053), completed in 2002, is a classic work from the beginning of Liu Ye’s Golden Era. The painting has been exhibited in multiple exhibitions, and for many people, it is the image that comes to mind when they think of Liu Ye. The visual enchantment lies within its rigid composition, where abstract and figurative coexist freely, and dreams interlace with reality. In this way, Liu attains his secret dream of achieving lightness of life. “I wish that each of my paintings only weighed one gram”. The Mondrian beneath the girl’s arm is traded for a tightly grasped knife; the pink background attenuates the tension of the confrontation; the piglet holds its head high, both proud and yielding. Like his previous paintings, Killing Me Softly is a stage, a secret chamber, a private play for the audience. The girl and the piglet have nowhere to run or hide. They stand silently in the light and shadows, perhaps communicating in murmurs too quiet for us to hear. Fabricated characters can be dimensional projections of actual lives; the girl stands in for all of humankind. Liu Ye has always fascinated by the faces of children, who he usually situates in some anonymous place and time. They are small, delicate, and isolated from the world.
Shortly after his birth in Beijing in 1964, Liu Ye was sent to the countryside alongside his father, who was an author of children’s literature. Liu’s childhood was one of forced relocations as the thoughts and minds of an entire generation of intellectuals were audited and censored. Thus he explored the world with a sense of secretiveness, aware of both its joys and its perils. Maintaining a submissive posture to authority while privately enjoying limited freedoms became a game. At the age of four, he discovered banned books hidden in a secret suitcase in his house; this suitcase became a glimmer of light within a dark and forbidding castle. His favourite book, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, tells the story of a portrait that allowed its subject to retain his youthful appearance despite the passage of time and horrific experiences. This story helped lay the seeds for Liu Ye’s creative career, in which literary scenes have played a prominent role.
In 1980, he gained admittance to the China School of Arts and Crafts. Like other Chinese artists of his generation, he received a strict, orthodox education in the arts while simultaneously experiencing the dramatic opening up of his society and the arrival of influence from the Western cultural world. In this complex and contradictory environment, Liu Ye developed his own painting language, drawing on the styles of Mondrian, Vermeer, and Klee. After graduating from the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he traveled to Germany to continue his studies. These repeated changes in environment compelled Liu Ye to adapt and refine his style. He honed his technical ability and sought to resist the past while also cautiously acknowledging its value. In the 1990s, self-portraits often appeared among the artist’s paintings, which featured dreams within dreams, paintings within paintings, and plays within plays. It all looked toward the future while glancing back at the past. The actions of his characters seemed to be earnest performances of life situations; the airplanes, steamships, seas and horizons in the distance were unreachable realities, unattainable worlds.
Liu Ye has always claimed to avoid political metaphor, but his experiences as a child during a tumultuous period of history undoubtedly informed his early paintings. Those works include red cloth, choruses, green skirts, naval uniforms, airplanes, and images of Mao that reveal the marks and scars of collective memory in the human heart. These political symbols subsequently became key surrealistic elements during a certain phase of Chinese contemporary art, but Liu Ye had no interest in continuing to play deconstructive games. He earnestly parted ways with these methods, seemingly isolating himself, and implying a struggle between the individual and history, as well as one between the individual and the group. This decision was a choice to take a more arduous road in his painting practice. He resolved to move beyond these scars and seek a quieter and more secluded path. In his understanding of art, politics are far less important than art, emotions, and people themselves. So Liu Ye drew a clear boundary between his painting and his politics.
Hints of Mondrian’s influence are evident in Liu Ye’s earliest work. Liu exhibits the humility and piety of a classicist, and these traits led him into dialog with the great masters of the past. He seeks to infuse his images with perpetuity, balance, and abundance, and this kind of intimacy requires avoiding the solemnity that people expect. Instead, Liu escaped into the world of the child who refuses to grow up, thus avoiding seriousness, which can lead to the suspicion of artificiality. At the same time, he cleverly disguised himself within his work. His own sorrow and pessimism is concealed in the bright colors and light humor of his paintings. In his own words: my works have never expressed joy.
Liu Ye
A broad survey of Liu Ye’s paintings between 1991 and the present reveals a hidden theme. The layers of simple images contain riddles of wisdom and philosophy, which is one reason audiences seem to enjoy gazing deeply into them. These riddles represent the artist’s acknowledgment of the great river of art history that precedes his own creative practice. They are also mementos of his private life, but he treats them with a light hand, like an adult weaving a fairy-tale in childlike language. This secret realm is the private language of a solitary person: the paradise of a pessimist. Killing Me Softly (Lot 1053), completed in 2002, is a classic work from the beginning of Liu Ye’s Golden Era. The painting has been exhibited in multiple exhibitions, and for many people, it is the image that comes to mind when they think of Liu Ye. The visual enchantment lies within its rigid composition, where abstract and figurative coexist freely, and dreams interlace with reality. In this way, Liu attains his secret dream of achieving lightness of life. “I wish that each of my paintings only weighed one gram”. The Mondrian beneath the girl’s arm is traded for a tightly grasped knife; the pink background attenuates the tension of the confrontation; the piglet holds its head high, both proud and yielding. Like his previous paintings, Killing Me Softly is a stage, a secret chamber, a private play for the audience. The girl and the piglet have nowhere to run or hide. They stand silently in the light and shadows, perhaps communicating in murmurs too quiet for us to hear. Fabricated characters can be dimensional projections of actual lives; the girl stands in for all of humankind. Liu Ye has always fascinated by the faces of children, who he usually situates in some anonymous place and time. They are small, delicate, and isolated from the world.
Shortly after his birth in Beijing in 1964, Liu Ye was sent to the countryside alongside his father, who was an author of children’s literature. Liu’s childhood was one of forced relocations as the thoughts and minds of an entire generation of intellectuals were audited and censored. Thus he explored the world with a sense of secretiveness, aware of both its joys and its perils. Maintaining a submissive posture to authority while privately enjoying limited freedoms became a game. At the age of four, he discovered banned books hidden in a secret suitcase in his house; this suitcase became a glimmer of light within a dark and forbidding castle. His favourite book, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, tells the story of a portrait that allowed its subject to retain his youthful appearance despite the passage of time and horrific experiences. This story helped lay the seeds for Liu Ye’s creative career, in which literary scenes have played a prominent role.
In 1980, he gained admittance to the China School of Arts and Crafts. Like other Chinese artists of his generation, he received a strict, orthodox education in the arts while simultaneously experiencing the dramatic opening up of his society and the arrival of influence from the Western cultural world. In this complex and contradictory environment, Liu Ye developed his own painting language, drawing on the styles of Mondrian, Vermeer, and Klee. After graduating from the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he traveled to Germany to continue his studies. These repeated changes in environment compelled Liu Ye to adapt and refine his style. He honed his technical ability and sought to resist the past while also cautiously acknowledging its value. In the 1990s, self-portraits often appeared among the artist’s paintings, which featured dreams within dreams, paintings within paintings, and plays within plays. It all looked toward the future while glancing back at the past. The actions of his characters seemed to be earnest performances of life situations; the airplanes, steamships, seas and horizons in the distance were unreachable realities, unattainable worlds.
Liu Ye has always claimed to avoid political metaphor, but his experiences as a child during a tumultuous period of history undoubtedly informed his early paintings. Those works include red cloth, choruses, green skirts, naval uniforms, airplanes, and images of Mao that reveal the marks and scars of collective memory in the human heart. These political symbols subsequently became key surrealistic elements during a certain phase of Chinese contemporary art, but Liu Ye had no interest in continuing to play deconstructive games. He earnestly parted ways with these methods, seemingly isolating himself, and implying a struggle between the individual and history, as well as one between the individual and the group. This decision was a choice to take a more arduous road in his painting practice. He resolved to move beyond these scars and seek a quieter and more secluded path. In his understanding of art, politics are far less important than art, emotions, and people themselves. So Liu Ye drew a clear boundary between his painting and his politics.
Hints of Mondrian’s influence are evident in Liu Ye’s earliest work. Liu exhibits the humility and piety of a classicist, and these traits led him into dialog with the great masters of the past. He seeks to infuse his images with perpetuity, balance, and abundance, and this kind of intimacy requires avoiding the solemnity that people expect. Instead, Liu escaped into the world of the child who refuses to grow up, thus avoiding seriousness, which can lead to the suspicion of artificiality. At the same time, he cleverly disguised himself within his work. His own sorrow and pessimism is concealed in the bright colors and light humor of his paintings. In his own words: my works have never expressed joy.
An escapist air has continued to characterize Liu Ye’s work, including two recent series, Book and Bamboo. Liu has traced the traditions of Western abstractionism and Yuan Dynasty landscapes to the most essential aspects of painting. Leafs dissolve and bamboo joints jut forth; simple lines and murky tones describe the cool and bleak world of a recluse. But their fragmentary and dreamlike postulations also bring the viewer into the heart of tableaus that recall Mondrian. Liu Ye’s painting series are different parts of the river of life in his imagination. They show flickering signs of his ideas about the world. Each one-act play is a glimpse of a perpetual drama; each momentary glimpse is both a painting and an eternity.