Liu Ye

Galerie Taube, Berlin
Acquired by the present owner directly from the above

Berlin, Galerie Taube, Ye Liu, Bilder und Graphik (Paintings and Prints), May 23 - June 5, 1993, No. 13, illustrated in black and white

This work is in generally very good condition overall. Framed. Not examined out of frame or under UV light.
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Liu Ye's haunting parables, in which children play seriously at what are often sophisticated games for grown-ups, resonate deeply with our own preoccupations as care-riddled adults.  Liu's cartoon-like style makes much of the natural innocence of children, yet his oil paintings cannot be read as simple teddy bear confections.  And although Liu is quick to declare that he paints from happy childhood experiences, the message of his work seems more complicated:  one may read his works as allegories of blameless youth, but also of childhood anxieties that mature as problems inherent to the human condition, isolation and loneliness prominent among them.  Beneath Liu's charming, colorful surfaces something disquieting lurks.

Liu incorporates knowing references to great artists such as Piet Mondrian, a favorite, and Qi Baishi, the 20^th-century master of traditional Chinese ink painting.  But alongside paintings in which earlier art plays a lead role, the precarious innocence of children turns somber when Liu's single figures make their lonely stand against vast expanses of color.  While his small children pose before paintings in an effort to communicate the artist's love of culture, the images of childish virtue pale before the ominous responsibilities of the adult world and the weight of social and cultural history that Liu's junior protagonists are ill-equipped to understand.

Liu often depicts doll-like women with large heads in various states of undress, or, more ominously, carrying a whip.  Eroticism furnishes an alternative to the isolating placement of children in seas of color.  In both older and more recent works, the nubile outlines of Liu's female bodies pose erotic pleasure as a way of assuaging psychological distance.  But the scenarios are often grim: the artist seems bent on communicating awkwardness, whether in a state of desire or childhood, or both.

The Little Mermaid (Lot 8) is an excellent example of Eros and innocence combined.  The cute little figure stands upright in the large painting, in an expanse of teal blue enriched by darker blues in some areas.  The mermaid is clearly not a child, as indicated by her long black hair and developed breasts, but her simply painted features - and the mermaid theme itself - suggest a naivet¿ corresponding to the figure's lower half, a long red fish's body and tail perfectly balanced upright in a happily colored sea.  A delightfully absurd, if somewhat disturbing treatment of the mermaid legend, the painting bears comparison with other works by Liu in which female figures alluringly pose for the viewer's pleasure.

In the earlier work entitled Der Ausflug (The Outing, 1992-93, Lot 7), Liu offers an updated version of Western romantic painting of the late 18^th and early 19^th century.  The composition as a whole with its ominous mountain and figures on a skiff reminds one of Arnold B¿cklin's Island of the Dead series circa 1880, but putti from an earlier art historical period have been blown into Liu's storm-tossed sky.  Amidst the mayhem, a neoclassical structure has fallen into the murky waters in the middle ground of the painting at right, one among an anarchic panoply of Western imagistic tropes that are irreverently quoted.  For example, two of Liu's plummeting putti, one blowing a trumpet, carry an upside-down image of Angelo Bronzino's c. 1540 Allegory of the Triumph of Venus, itself an enigmatic painting.  Again, we shouldn't underestimate Liu's nonchalant treatment of visual clich¿, which enables the artist to encapsulate an attitude toward an entire category of painting that undermines our awe before great images.  Tellingly, the painting was the last work Liu completed during his studies at Berlin's Hochschule der K¿nste in 1993.

Liu's subversive activities - from this fascinating early painting to his mature recent work - suggest his generally irreverent view of art.  At the same time, his avowed appreciation for it and incorporation of it in his work reveal the same intriguing ambivalence that characterizes the whole of this unusual artist's oeuvre.