Yue Minjun

Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Made in China: Contemporary Chinese Art at the Israel Museum, September 2007 - March 2008
Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Made in China: Works from the Estella Collection, March - August 2007, p. 381, illustrated in color

Mounted on a stretcher, the work is generally in very good condition. There are traces of minor abrasion to the extreme of the lower edges of the painting. Otherwise, there are no visible condition problems. Not examined under UV light.
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Yue Minjun, the painter whose spectacular, signature smile is found repeatedly in his paintings, was the most expensive Chinese contemporary artist last year. The continuously grinning face of the artist ties him to China's Cynical Realism movement, even though Yue distances himself from such a characterization. Still, it is hard not to take the paintings as an ironic indictment of Chinese authoritarianism; his laughter, frozen in time, has always felt as though the artist is mocking the status quo. Living since 1990 in Tongxian, an artist's colony outside of Beijing, he has pursued his art, which includes sculpture, prints, and watercolors as well as paintings. Yue's spectacular success is owed to the striking image of his laughing face, painted in wildly varying situations and reiterated again and again in his art. His imagery has become iconic for a generation that saw the failure of the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989; Yue's provocative smile sums up the disillusionment many have felt since that time.

Liu Chunhua—Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan (Lot 108, 2003) is a painting very different from the style Yue is known for. In October 1934, in the midst of the Chinese civil war, Communist leaders and their followers established themselves in the mountains of Jiangxi Province, where Anyuan is located. Surrounded by Nationalist troops, the Communists broke through by circling to the west and north. The Long March then followed, a journey of some 8000 miles, ending in the province of Shaanxi. The march itself took place in some of China's most demanding, most mountainous landscape, and Yue's black and white oil on canvas treats the terrain as an extraordinary paradise of tall mountains and clouds. In the lower third of the picture, we see a rocky path with small foliage on either side. Just above the path are snow-capped mountains that extend into the distance, half covered with thin clouds. All in all, it is an impressive landscape, although there is no hint of the revolutionary leader—no figures are found in the painting. The original painting of Chairman Mao goes to Anyuan (1967) by Liu Chunhua depicts an idealistic Mao Zedong walking towards the future of China.  The image was mass reproduced and became iconic during the Cultural Revolution. However, in Yue's work the grandeur of the imagery subtly hints at Mao's greatness, or its absence.

-Jonathan Goodman