Liu Xiaodong

Yiying Wen, Liu Xiaodong - Well Known Contemporary Chinese Painters Case Study, Hunan, p. 103-104
"Liu Xiadong's New Realist Oil Painting," Beijing Weekly, Beijing, 2000, no. 42, p.30 

In 1988, Liu Xiaodong, then a new graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, received a picture in the mail from the artist Chen Danqing (Lot 204) in New York.  It was an image of a painting by Lucien Freud.  Lucien Freud’s painting grabbed Liu immediately, giving him a new sense of direction for his art.  Unlike contemporaries who were painting in the surrealist styles then in vogue or experimenting with performance art and photography, Liu chose to return to figurative painting. He later wrote that “Freud honestly paints a person with an inner explosive power, and it was like a curse that I was not able to escape from his shadows.”

In 1993, Liu and his wife, painter Yu Hong (Lot 97), starred in Wang Xiaoshuai’s first film The Days.  A leading filmmaker of the so-called “Sixth Generation,” Wang has been a friend to the couple for many years.  Liu and Yu played themselves in the film as a couple of artists living in a shabby dorm.  Their relationship deteriorates as the winter days come.  The Days was a hallmark for China's Sixth Generation filmmakers; in it, Wang adopted neorealism, a style that characterized post-war Italian cinema.   With neorealism, both Liu and Wang found a new democratic spirit for their art-making, emphasizing the value of ordinary people and mundane emotions rather than abstract ideas and forms.

Since the 1990s, Liu has established a consistent neorealist style for his painting, favoring loose and natural scenes that he renders in an organic, documentary style. He prefers to paint “on location” and to cast his friends and family in the principal roles of characters doing ordinary things—laughing, kicking balls against a wall, leaning against a car. Rendered, the result is a sort of “style-less” style.

Private Room, which dates to 1998, is considered turning point in Liu’s oeuvre to date. With this work, the artist grew impatient with his earlier serious approach to painting carefully planned scenes with controlled strokes. He invited two friends, a man and a woman who had never met, to his studio. He documented their discomfort at being introduced in and into such an odd environment.  Liu also photographed a hotel room where he eventually put his two characters, plotting a story.  The woman is laughing hysterically as if she was amused or flattered by the man’s words or the idea of going to a hotel room with a stranger.  The man holds a cigarette, looking cunningly into the camera.

“I loosen up more and more,” says Liu, “I want my painting to mirror the rapidly changing reality of China.  Life is more important than painting, and my painting is a way to capture the moment of action.”