Yue Minjun

signed in Pinyin and dated 1993, framed

Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong

China, Hong Kong, Schoeni Art Gallery, Faces Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Works by Yue Minjun and Yang Shaobin, 1994, p. 14

This work is generally in good condition. Under ultraviolet light, there are scattered patches of cleaning of linseed oil and occasional in-painting on the lower right quadrant mainly below and above the leg and near the right side of the second figure's shirt, which result in slight discolouration. There are also scattered patches of restoration around the edges. All of these are not very obvious under natural light and all the paint are in stable condition.
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Flying
Yue Minjun

In the Chinese avant-garde artist group of the 90s, very few artists have managed to bring into existence an icon so compelling, so representative of an entire generation, as Yue Minjun has done. Yue has become a defining artist amongst what pioneering art critic Li Xianting has coined the movement of “Cynical Realism”. Yue Minjun’s feature of his own smiling image, and the repetitive scheme of this smiling icon, materialised out of feelings of helplessness and disenchantment in the face of Chinese society during the early nineties. Flying (Lot 714) is a cornerstone of the artist’s personal style; a work of strong political allegory, and was painted in 1993. It displays many of the techniques and colour-choices of his earlier works, with more realistic characters in comparison to his later cartoonish style. This early creative movement is one of tremendous influence and rarity in the market, representative of a period spanning only three years, which ended in 1994 when Yue established his finalised image of the smiling faces.

Like other Cynical Realist painters such as Fang Lijun and Liu Wei, Yue Minjun is an artist who emerged after the political turmoil of 1989. Yue and his fellow artists had different aspirations when compared to the Chinese art world of the 80s as well as the world of Chinese intellectuals at the time. Rather than gear their initiatives to rescuing Chinese culture through literature and art, Yue and his companions sought to pursue personal feelings of utmost authenticity. When recalling the early 90s, Yue remarked, “We preferred, above all else, to paint things that we had felt, even if they were ugly and negative, than to paint those that were beautiful, positive, that we had never felt. This is why I think we had returned to painting things that were authentic and reliable. And through this, art had restored its strength.”¹

Born in 1962 in Heilongjiang, Yue Minjun belongs to the third generation of artists after the Cultural Revolution. Since 1991, he began to work independently as a full-time artist in Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan artist village in search of the direction for his artistic practice. From 1991 to 1992, his early works were mainly based on the portrayal of his friends, with the figurative approach differing from the cartoonish and repetitive style seen in his later works. On the Rostrum of Tiananmen from 1991 is the emblematic piece of this period, presenting four visually different Chinese youths wandering on top of the gate tower in Tiananmen Square, while one profusely laughs at what is to be outside of the canvas.

Flying depicts three laughing individuals on the left of the piece, with a background of an overturned Tiananmen Square. The pointlessness of the jeering, placed so close to political infrastructure particularly illustrates Yue Minjun’s carefree, humorous, yet rowdy take on the ridicule of reality. The glaringly large smile thus became the single most important element of almost all of his works. Much like the works of the other Cynical Realist painters, Yue’s paintings express a pessimistic resistance. Laughter is his weapon. He has said, ‘‘Loud, hearty laughter; derisive laughter; mad laughter; laughter in the face of death; laughter at society - there seems a bit of all of these. To laugh is to refuse to think. When the mind is faced with certain things, it cannot think or finds it hard to think, and wants to escape. This is an era that makes people laugh.^’’2

Li Xianting has pointed out that the repetition of smiling men configured in lines was the artist’s attempt at parodying China of the 90s as the economic machine, one that mass produces commodities and upholds consumerism, a movement that also brought new fears to the Chinese, “He uses commercialism and his empty-headed characters to present the problem of a consumerism which has poisoned both Socialist ideals and the individual of our society. This seemingly arbitrary combination of consumerism and anti-individualism gives a cynical and humorous edge to his work.” Clearly, the satirical tone and a critical examination into one’s state of being continue to be a consistent theme in the artist’s later works.

During the ‘85 New Wave movement came forward a group of Chinese idealistic artists who were inspired by modern ideas from the West to revitalise Chinese culture. For Yue’s generation, the Cynical Realists, their witness to the failure of the two previous generations had instead raised fundamental questions for living. For Yue, he has chosen to express his view on life through the absurdity of the big smiling face, “The image of a laughing face was to me an assurance that things would get better: that a future life could be as rewarding and meaningful as the Buddha promised.”³ Yue Minjun has perfected these laughing faces based on his own image--pink skin, perfectly neat teeth, tightly shut eyes--and repeated them as his signature motifs freely in his works, thereby mounting his resistance against the absurdity and unpredictability of society and politics.

1 “Interview with Yue Minjun, by Shen Zhong”,Yue Minjun: L’ombre du four ire, Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain, 2012

2 Faces Behind the Bamboo Curtain,Schoeni Art Gallery,1994

3 Reproduction Icons: Yue Minjun Works, 2004-2006, He Xiangning Art Museum, 2006