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Lot Essay
In Liu Xiaodong's paintings of quotidian lives, the artist reveals the hidden power of the medium to expose the essence of an era. Painted in 1997, Peasants Playing Mahjong (Lot 60) depicts a scene of a small crowd enjoying a game of Mahjong. The immediate human quality in this work connects to the viewers on an intimate level that concerns with their everyday lives. The light and shadow on the wall suggests a non-specific time of the day - it could be dusk. It is a familiar scene that could happen anywhere. The characters in the painting immerse themselves in a world in which they are positioned. They are caught in a fleeting moment, seized by the clutches of the immediate scene, or controlled by a sense of self-gratification. However, what Liu Xiaodong wanted to remind the viewer is a fact that has been lacking in the Chinese society after the Cultural Revolution: outside of the images of the model citizens and the propaganda of their heroism, it is the gaping chasm between the ideal and the reality. Liu Xiaodong's paintings provide the common people with a momentary reflection of the truth.
The work Peasants Playing Mahjong is neither a narrative nor an anecdote. The protagonists are caught in a still frame where the crowd was playing Mahjong as if they are isolated in an interior of a dream. Similar to ?douard Manet's work The Balcony (fig. 1) painted between 1868-1869, it caused controversies at the 1869 salon. On one hand, it alludes to Francisco Goya's Majas on a Balcony. On the other hand, it successfully liberated itself from the academic style and the bourgeois taste. Through Peasants Playing Mahjong, Liu Xiaodong freed the post-Cultural Revolution Chinese painting from the propaganda connotations. Furthermore, this development enabled Chinese painting to abandon the burden of painting realistically towards the end of 1970s when it was under the influence of Marxist historiography. The Chinese people's appreciation of beauty has also shifted from the painted faces and the contrived merriment to the portraits of hardship in everyday lives. Beginning with Chen Danqing's Tibetan Series, the mold of Social Realism was broken, and Realism returned in Liu Xiaodong's painting with a newfound purpose of depicting the inner truth. ?douard Manet's works were scorned by art critics at the time to "Close the shutters!" Like Manet, Liu Xiaodong was the pioneer to "open the shutters" in Chinese art.
The sophisticated composition of the picture is devised from the separation of the foreground, middle, and background. Four figures are playing Mahjong in the foreground. The participant on the most right is the only one represented by a right hand, and only one participant is portrayed with lifted head. The middle ground is constructed by the sunlight casting in the shape of the window, the wall that divides the rooms, and the two smoking observers on the left. Vaguely seen in the background are the frame of the door and a group of people proceeding with another unknown activity. Yet, the most notable thing is that at this particular instant, the attention of all the characters in the painting are simultaneously drawn by something, and they have all looked to the same direction that is outside of the picture. Diego Vel?zquez' 1656 work Las Meninas (fig. 2) raises the question on the boundary between fantasy and reality with an enigmatic composition. Liu Xiaodong's Peasants Playing Mahjong similarly establishes an ambiguous relationship between the characters in the painting and the viewers.
Liu Xiaodong often paints from life so that he can directly capture the expansive scenes and a wide variety of characters onto large canvases. The immediacy of his creative approach has exceeded the definition of painting-from-life in Western painting in terms of medium and preparation - it becomes a highly individualized way for observation and production for the artist. If the evolution of the Chinese literati painting is based on an avant-garde spirit of revival and breakthrough (Shih Shou-chien considered Chinese literati painting as an "ideal type" defined by critics through the ages to distinguish itself from the banal and popular. It is particular to a specific time and context. Thus, it is impossible to reach a consensus on the definition. It is closer in meaning to a "declaration of the avant-garde spirit"), we can say Liu Xiaodong's works have inherited some of these characteristics. Against the clich?d subject matters and vague imageries, his paintings stand above the rest and represent the spiritual face of an era. They undertook the herculean task of developing the 20th century Chinese painting at the turn of the century.
The work Peasants Playing Mahjong is neither a narrative nor an anecdote. The protagonists are caught in a still frame where the crowd was playing Mahjong as if they are isolated in an interior of a dream. Similar to ?douard Manet's work The Balcony (fig. 1) painted between 1868-1869, it caused controversies at the 1869 salon. On one hand, it alludes to Francisco Goya's Majas on a Balcony. On the other hand, it successfully liberated itself from the academic style and the bourgeois taste. Through Peasants Playing Mahjong, Liu Xiaodong freed the post-Cultural Revolution Chinese painting from the propaganda connotations. Furthermore, this development enabled Chinese painting to abandon the burden of painting realistically towards the end of 1970s when it was under the influence of Marxist historiography. The Chinese people's appreciation of beauty has also shifted from the painted faces and the contrived merriment to the portraits of hardship in everyday lives. Beginning with Chen Danqing's Tibetan Series, the mold of Social Realism was broken, and Realism returned in Liu Xiaodong's painting with a newfound purpose of depicting the inner truth. ?douard Manet's works were scorned by art critics at the time to "Close the shutters!" Like Manet, Liu Xiaodong was the pioneer to "open the shutters" in Chinese art.
The sophisticated composition of the picture is devised from the separation of the foreground, middle, and background. Four figures are playing Mahjong in the foreground. The participant on the most right is the only one represented by a right hand, and only one participant is portrayed with lifted head. The middle ground is constructed by the sunlight casting in the shape of the window, the wall that divides the rooms, and the two smoking observers on the left. Vaguely seen in the background are the frame of the door and a group of people proceeding with another unknown activity. Yet, the most notable thing is that at this particular instant, the attention of all the characters in the painting are simultaneously drawn by something, and they have all looked to the same direction that is outside of the picture. Diego Vel?zquez' 1656 work Las Meninas (fig. 2) raises the question on the boundary between fantasy and reality with an enigmatic composition. Liu Xiaodong's Peasants Playing Mahjong similarly establishes an ambiguous relationship between the characters in the painting and the viewers.
Liu Xiaodong often paints from life so that he can directly capture the expansive scenes and a wide variety of characters onto large canvases. The immediacy of his creative approach has exceeded the definition of painting-from-life in Western painting in terms of medium and preparation - it becomes a highly individualized way for observation and production for the artist. If the evolution of the Chinese literati painting is based on an avant-garde spirit of revival and breakthrough (Shih Shou-chien considered Chinese literati painting as an "ideal type" defined by critics through the ages to distinguish itself from the banal and popular. It is particular to a specific time and context. Thus, it is impossible to reach a consensus on the definition. It is closer in meaning to a "declaration of the avant-garde spirit"), we can say Liu Xiaodong's works have inherited some of these characteristics. Against the clich?d subject matters and vague imageries, his paintings stand above the rest and represent the spiritual face of an era. They undertook the herculean task of developing the 20th century Chinese painting at the turn of the century.