Yu Hong

initialled in Pinyin and dated 1990.8; signed and titled in Chinese and dated 1990 on the reverse, framed

Private Asian Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Germany, Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt; The Netherlands, Kunsthal Rotterdam; UK, Oxford, The Museum of Modern Art; Denmark, Odense, Kunsthallen Brandts Kladefabrik, China Avant-garde, 1993-1994
France, Paris, Espace Cardin, Paris-Pékin, 5-28 October, 2002, p. 233
China, Shanghai, Shanghai Art Museum, Yu Hong: Golden Horizon, 12-23 September, 2011, p. 125

Thirty Years of Adventure, Lü Peng ed., Timezone 8 Limited, Beijing, China, 2010, p. 342

This work is generally in good condition. There are some minor paint cracks, paint loss and abrasions in the corners and along the edges, the most severe around the signature. There are two scratches measuring approx. 1.7 and 1.2 cm. to the white glove nearest to the right edge. Please note this was not examined under ultraviolet light.
"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.
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The Power of Reason
Yu Hong

Yu Hong is indisputably one of the most important contemporary Chinese female artists. A 1988 graduate of the oil painting department of the Central Academy of Fine Art, she was subsequently retained as an instructor there. Like many artists of her generation, she was trained in socialist realism, which dominated art in Mainland China for over three decades, and thus has a firm foundation in figurative painting. On the other hand, during her student years, the ’85 New Wave, which leaned towards Western modernism, swept the country and posed a serious challenge to the official academic system. It was in this transformational period that Yu Hong came of age as an artist.

Over the first half of 1990, a group of young teachers at the Central Academy organized several exhibitions, including the “World of Female Painters” in May. As an organizer and participant, Yu Hong exhibited the first works she created after her graduation, the Portrait series. As she herself recounts, “The noise of the ’85 New Wave and the political turmoil of June Fourth made me sick of those big but hollow concepts and of political passion. I looked for an escape and a way to free myself. I wanted to express my inner feelings of helplessness, lack of direction, and doubt. I began to paint my female friends around me.”¹ This state of mind was general among her fellow young artists and graduates from art academies, who turned their attention towards individuals and quotidian existence. They created a new realism in painting that was at once indebted to Western modernism and infused with feelings of life as actually lived. After the 1991 “New Generation Art Exhibition” organized by critics like Yi Jinan and Fan Di’an, this new style became known as “New Generation” art. The exhibition opened a new chapter in art history and cemented Yu Hong’s status as a foremost representative of the “New Generation” painters.

However, Yu Hong’s concern for real life is far from mindless or sentimentalist. As the critic Pi Li writes, “Yu Hong’s figures all issue from comparisons with herself. They represent her simultaneous meditations on herself and on the things and environments that she paints.”² After the Portraits series, Young Pioneers (Lot 777) of 1990 also manifest this characteristic. Yu Hong gives a detailed account of the background of this work: “Youths and children are the flowers of the mother country. We have all been flowers and pay special attention to them. Once, in the busy square outside the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City, a throng of tourists were in a queue to purchase tickets. Hawkers were yelling to sell their cheap souvenirs. A large group of young pioneers, in blue dresses with back straps over white shirts, some with musical instruments in hand, were listlessly waiting for their teacher’s instructions. I took a casual snapshot of them. After I developed the photograph, I was surprised to discover adult expressions on their young faces. Those expressions were the inspiration for the oil painting Young Pioneers. I put them in a narrow space between red walls, silently following grey, indistinctly rendered adults. Between the dull red and grey, the young girls are lost in spite of their colourful clothes, wandering without direction. When I was at their age, I also did not know what growing up meant.”³ Unique products of socialist countries, these “young pioneers” are charged with an implicit political symbolism that starkly contradicts their superficial appearance as young vivacious girls. Yu Hong is intent on emphasizing this contradiction, visualizing their unexpectedly aged expressions, solitude, and lack of direction. Their alienation is further dramatized by the grey adults in their midst and the unreal, enormous red background.

In 1993, Young Pioneers was exhibited in the “Chinese Avant-Garde” exhibition, organized by Dai Hanzhi and Shi An’di, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. The painting garnered attention for the power of reason that it channels: “[Yu Hong’s] subjective but calm attitude contains a form of self-protection against a chaotic, crowded environment, but it is not sceptical about the world.”⁴ In 1999, Yu Hong began her Witnessing Growth series, which continued her meditations on growing up in Young Pioneers. When we survey her creative career of the past two decades, we realize that what her works manifest are the humanistic concerns of a female sensibility and a persistent power of reason. As Britta Erickson writes, “Yu Hong is one of the few artists who can present a female perspective in such a highly analytical and restrained manner.”⁵ Yu Hong’s paintings are at once symbols of the times and reflections of her own mental and emotional journey. This has clearly been a key reason for her singular prominence among the “New Generation” artists.

1 Yu Hong, “Tracing the bygone years,” Contemporary Art, issue 5, 2002, p. 87-87
2 Pi Li, “Gazing at the Sky,” Art World, October 2010, p. 73-75
3 Refer to 1
4 Chinese Avant-Garde Art, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 199
5 Cited in Xenia Tetmajer Von Przerwa, “Yu Hong’s Witnessing Growth: The Limits of History and the Accidents of Individuality,” Yishu, September 2003, p. 34