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Lot Essay
Immediately humorous and recognisable, Yue Minjun's paintings art is a light-hearted approach to philosophical enquiry and meditation on existentialist concerns. Drawing inspiration from the disparate images of the Laughing Buddha and the uniformity of Chinese communist propaganda posters, Yue's self-portraits have been described by theorist Li Xianting as "a self-ironic response to the spiritual vacuum and folly of modern-day China." He adopts the direct and accessible aesthetics of pop art, using both the exaggerated expressiveness of cartooning and the stylistic rendering of graphic illustration. Yue depicts his cloned doppelgangers as hysterical and contorted, all with pink skin, mouth wide open in a maniacal toothy laugh. Mostly identified as belonging to the Cynical realism movement with his fellow artists Fang Lijun and Liu Wei, his art reflects on the absurdity of contemporary life. However, when looking closely, one would discover beneath the mockery and narcissism, there lies a profound conviction; an art that is steeped in history, religion and culture.
With his monumental canvas Fools in the Night (Lot 46), painted between 1997 and 1998, a roll of eleven satirical self-images is in a seated position with their arms wrapped around their ankles. Their eyes are closed and mouth wide open in an uproarious laugh, situated in a dark and ominous space with thick clouds looming in the foreground. Such shadowy space is very rare in the artist's oeuvre, oeuvre; usually Yue places his figures in bright and daytime environments. The contrast between the pink faces and the dark background makes Fools in the Night especially impactful visually. His large planes of color, flat lighting, and direct engagement with the viewer are drawn from the visual lexicon of Pop Art and Western advertising, as well as communist propagandistic imagery. The arrangement of the figures in the painting suggests that they are an audience, watching a staged event not pictured. The figures grinning faces makes them fools in the dark, evoking the Shakespearian trope of the jester. Traditionally, the jester was to be both comical and wise, and as social outsiders, their folly served to question the wisdom or truth of their superiors and of accepted social conventions. Perhaps as an audience, the figures are laughing at the people in the spotlight, lampooning their self-importance and folly.
The artistic creation of the smile came from a desire to create a visual language that stays true to the artist's unique vision. He was also inspired by a painting he once saw by fellow Chinese artist, Geng Jianyi, where smiling faces in his paintings are hysterical to a point where the smile becomes the opposite of what it means (fig. 1). For the artist, smiling or laughing is not necessarily a joyous act but rather a coping mechanism for a reality that is grim and hopeless. The artist also observed that throughout Chinese history, "there were paintings during the Cultural Revolution period, those Soviet-style posters showing happy people laughing," he continued. "But what's interesting is that normally what you see in those posters is the opposite of reality." (fig. 2) "A smile," Yue muses, "doesn't necessarily mean happiness; it could be something else." Therefore, the smile in Fools in the Night can be interpreted as a sign when there is nothing else to do but to laugh at the absurdity of existence.
Another significant aspect of Yue Minjun's art is repetition. It creates two contradictory results; he turns his own image into an icon, while simultaneously rendering it meaningless. He once said "Using traditional modes of painting and sculpturing to unendingly clone the self-image is for the purpose of creating a new idol just like contemporary television and film modes. When an idol is constantly repeatedK.it acquires tremendous powerK.Today's culture is the culture of idols." Through the repetition of his own image, the artist made himself into an idol. This method is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's own self-portraits (F fig. 3). His purpose is to satirise and mock what he feels to be an idolatrous society, one that is too easily influenced by images of mass production, whether they are spectacles of the communist era or the mass media images of a consumerist society. However, this idolatry is essentially meaningless, pointing to the fact that what our society deem important is rather absurd and can be forgotten instantly.
Fools in the Night, therefore operates on many levels. As the jester, the hysterical laughing and mocking attitude sheds light on the absurdity of our world today. For the artist, smiling or laughing is perhaps the only reaction appropriate for such profound emptiness and meaninglessness. In the deceptively simple laughing motif, Yue has found a medium through which to offer sophisticated yet devastating parables for a world in the throes of unprecedented change.
With his monumental canvas Fools in the Night (Lot 46), painted between 1997 and 1998, a roll of eleven satirical self-images is in a seated position with their arms wrapped around their ankles. Their eyes are closed and mouth wide open in an uproarious laugh, situated in a dark and ominous space with thick clouds looming in the foreground. Such shadowy space is very rare in the artist's oeuvre, oeuvre; usually Yue places his figures in bright and daytime environments. The contrast between the pink faces and the dark background makes Fools in the Night especially impactful visually. His large planes of color, flat lighting, and direct engagement with the viewer are drawn from the visual lexicon of Pop Art and Western advertising, as well as communist propagandistic imagery. The arrangement of the figures in the painting suggests that they are an audience, watching a staged event not pictured. The figures grinning faces makes them fools in the dark, evoking the Shakespearian trope of the jester. Traditionally, the jester was to be both comical and wise, and as social outsiders, their folly served to question the wisdom or truth of their superiors and of accepted social conventions. Perhaps as an audience, the figures are laughing at the people in the spotlight, lampooning their self-importance and folly.
The artistic creation of the smile came from a desire to create a visual language that stays true to the artist's unique vision. He was also inspired by a painting he once saw by fellow Chinese artist, Geng Jianyi, where smiling faces in his paintings are hysterical to a point where the smile becomes the opposite of what it means (fig. 1). For the artist, smiling or laughing is not necessarily a joyous act but rather a coping mechanism for a reality that is grim and hopeless. The artist also observed that throughout Chinese history, "there were paintings during the Cultural Revolution period, those Soviet-style posters showing happy people laughing," he continued. "But what's interesting is that normally what you see in those posters is the opposite of reality." (fig. 2) "A smile," Yue muses, "doesn't necessarily mean happiness; it could be something else." Therefore, the smile in Fools in the Night can be interpreted as a sign when there is nothing else to do but to laugh at the absurdity of existence.
Another significant aspect of Yue Minjun's art is repetition. It creates two contradictory results; he turns his own image into an icon, while simultaneously rendering it meaningless. He once said "Using traditional modes of painting and sculpturing to unendingly clone the self-image is for the purpose of creating a new idol just like contemporary television and film modes. When an idol is constantly repeatedK.it acquires tremendous powerK.Today's culture is the culture of idols." Through the repetition of his own image, the artist made himself into an idol. This method is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's own self-portraits (F fig. 3). His purpose is to satirise and mock what he feels to be an idolatrous society, one that is too easily influenced by images of mass production, whether they are spectacles of the communist era or the mass media images of a consumerist society. However, this idolatry is essentially meaningless, pointing to the fact that what our society deem important is rather absurd and can be forgotten instantly.
Fools in the Night, therefore operates on many levels. As the jester, the hysterical laughing and mocking attitude sheds light on the absurdity of our world today. For the artist, smiling or laughing is perhaps the only reaction appropriate for such profound emptiness and meaninglessness. In the deceptively simple laughing motif, Yue has found a medium through which to offer sophisticated yet devastating parables for a world in the throes of unprecedented change.