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Lot Essay
Liu Ye’s Portrait of the Battleship measures an impressive 360 centimetres across. The work depicts a battle cruiser, showcased at full length in a striking horizontal composition. Not only is this the artist’s only work featuring a warship as the primary subject (unlike his earlier works which feature ships in the background), the size and format also make this painting especially rare and unique.
This masterpiece is one of the only two horizontally elongated canvases of this scale in his entire oeuvre, and took him eleven years to complete. He first painted the battleship in 1998, and added three little sailors in 2009 to finally complete the painting.
On the left side of the frame, two young sailors calmly ride the waves at night, seemingly unaffected and unheeding as their ship comes under fire and explodes on the right. The two halves of the work present events occurring at different times and from different points of view, being parts of a whole yet strongly juxtaposing each other simultaneously, leaving viewers ample room for interpretation and imagination.
Portrait of the Battleship has a narrative structure not unlike traditional Chinese scroll paintings, in that it is not limited by a single perspective, thus it offers a viewing experience similar to that of a traditional Chinese painting. At the same time, it depicts a clear duality and contrast: between the perpetuation of war as well as its end. The threat (to the ship and its sailors) in this painting only has an implied existence, yet the attack and explosion are vivid and palpable; the contention between winning or losing and that which is close or faraway also combine to spell out an anticlimactic journey.
In a conversation with Philip Tinari about his works from the 90s, Liu noted that apart from employing the cold abstraction of De Stijl’s leading artist Mondrian, he was also influenced by the formal aesthetics of Russian Constructivism, with a particular interest in Aleksandr Rodchenko’s posters of aircrafts and battleships. Rodchenko played an important role in the Russian avant-garde movement, and his poster design for Sergei Einstein’s Battleship Potemkin demonstrates his use of energetic colours as well as his geometric, constructivist aesthetics. In addition, the battleship motif in Liu’s paintings may have been inspired by the legendary Russian cruiser Aurora; at 124 meters long, it was an important symbol in Russia’s October Revolution and was featured in Einstein’s other cinematic classic, October.
Unlike artists from the early 20th century, Liu does not portray a single historical event or a specific battleship, not is he beholden to any ideology or formalism; on the contrary, he foregrounds the allegorical and theatrical sides of war, and made sure to keep a
reflective distance.
In this remarkable masterpiece, Liu adopted a simple, fairy-tale stylised vocabulary to achieve a subdued metaphor through the battleship, expressing one’s convoluted thoughts towards war. The rich and sombre blue hue hint at trepidation and melancholy, while the precise, rational, and linear expressions are undercut by an air of irrationality and dream-like ambiance. This approach of using order and structure to integrate internalised conflicts, and the sensory experience of traversing between reality and fantasy, make Portrait of the Battleship an empathic and moving statement which transcends the confines of time and space.
This masterpiece is one of the only two horizontally elongated canvases of this scale in his entire oeuvre, and took him eleven years to complete. He first painted the battleship in 1998, and added three little sailors in 2009 to finally complete the painting.
On the left side of the frame, two young sailors calmly ride the waves at night, seemingly unaffected and unheeding as their ship comes under fire and explodes on the right. The two halves of the work present events occurring at different times and from different points of view, being parts of a whole yet strongly juxtaposing each other simultaneously, leaving viewers ample room for interpretation and imagination.
Portrait of the Battleship has a narrative structure not unlike traditional Chinese scroll paintings, in that it is not limited by a single perspective, thus it offers a viewing experience similar to that of a traditional Chinese painting. At the same time, it depicts a clear duality and contrast: between the perpetuation of war as well as its end. The threat (to the ship and its sailors) in this painting only has an implied existence, yet the attack and explosion are vivid and palpable; the contention between winning or losing and that which is close or faraway also combine to spell out an anticlimactic journey.
In a conversation with Philip Tinari about his works from the 90s, Liu noted that apart from employing the cold abstraction of De Stijl’s leading artist Mondrian, he was also influenced by the formal aesthetics of Russian Constructivism, with a particular interest in Aleksandr Rodchenko’s posters of aircrafts and battleships. Rodchenko played an important role in the Russian avant-garde movement, and his poster design for Sergei Einstein’s Battleship Potemkin demonstrates his use of energetic colours as well as his geometric, constructivist aesthetics. In addition, the battleship motif in Liu’s paintings may have been inspired by the legendary Russian cruiser Aurora; at 124 meters long, it was an important symbol in Russia’s October Revolution and was featured in Einstein’s other cinematic classic, October.
Unlike artists from the early 20th century, Liu does not portray a single historical event or a specific battleship, not is he beholden to any ideology or formalism; on the contrary, he foregrounds the allegorical and theatrical sides of war, and made sure to keep a
reflective distance.
In this remarkable masterpiece, Liu adopted a simple, fairy-tale stylised vocabulary to achieve a subdued metaphor through the battleship, expressing one’s convoluted thoughts towards war. The rich and sombre blue hue hint at trepidation and melancholy, while the precise, rational, and linear expressions are undercut by an air of irrationality and dream-like ambiance. This approach of using order and structure to integrate internalised conflicts, and the sensory experience of traversing between reality and fantasy, make Portrait of the Battleship an empathic and moving statement which transcends the confines of time and space.