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Lot Essay
"Red could symbolize revolution, joy, violence or bloodiness. A single answer is therefore one-dimensional and inaccurate. I try not to provide single answers in my paintings. In fact I don’t have that power. My solution is to provide space for interpretation."
– Liu Ye
“I grew up in the days of the Cultural Revolution. Favourite subjects in my childhood paintings included aeroplanes, cannons and warships, and occasionally the sun and sunflowers. These subjects were mostly rendered with coloured pencils with red for the sun and the national flag, yellow for sunflowers and sunlight, and blue for the ocean and sky. This probably represents my earliest use of the prime colours of red, yellow and blue.” – Liu Ye
A little girl stands on the edge of a cliff, looking out over an expanse of red as delicate tears run down her delicately doll-like face. Her vibrant green skirt and coiffed hair flutters in the breeze, contrasting against her prim white blouse and knee-high stockings. Liu Ye provides little clues about what is causing the girl’s tears – whether it is joy or despair – but the intensity of her emotion is clear, as she gazes out into the vast field of colour that surrounds her.
Liu Ye’s Red No. 2 is part of an iconic series of paintings in which red is the dominant colour. Many of them feature cartoon-like girls standing on a cliff, silhouetted against a vibrant red background, the landscapes around them inspired by Song Dynasty paintings and mythical Chinese landscapes. Red No. 1 features a girl with her back to the viewer, gazing out into the void, while Red No. 3 depicts a girl in profile, holding a Chinese sword. Of the three part series, Red No. 2 is the only work that positions the protagonist facing towards us, and is the only one that features the enigmatic tears.
The influence of Piet Mondrian on Liu Ye’s oeuvre is well-documented; Liu Ye frequently cites the significance that his early training in industrial design had on his later output as an artist. Mondrian’s use of bright, saturated colours and rational composition organized around vertical and horizontal lines were a great source of inspiration to his own work, and elements of that linear rationality can be seen in both Red No. 2 and Blue . As Bernhard Fibicher, the Curator if Contemporary Art at Kunstmuseum Bern writes, “The main theme is the colour. The duel is fought between the painter and the canvas. The self-set task goes: How do Blue, Yellow and Green hold themselves against a dominant Red? Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?” Indeed, upon closer examination we can see that the little girl’s apparently white blouse is in fact rendered in vibrant hues of yellow and blue.
If one were to remove the figurative elements of both works, the entire canvas becomes an abstract painting – a red square and a blue rectangle – that look as if they could have been plucked directly from the details of a composition by Mondrian. Yet by foregrounding his work with figures, and adding figurative details such as a wisp of pine or a distant aeroplane, Liu Ye sets up a tension between the figurative and the abstract in his paintings. The eye is forced to logically interpret the colour, lending greater visual complexity to each work.
Liu Ye denies that his works are overtly political, but the frequency with which the colour red appears in his work is partially a result of his childhood experience growing up in a post-Cultural Revolution China. In an interview he stated, “I grew up in a world of red: the red sun, red flags, red scarves, with green pine trees and sunflowers often supporting the red symbols. As a child, I did not know the symbolic meaning of all these things. I just took them for granted and accepted them passively… The colour red was a key visual experience of my childhood days. It is also a tool of reminiscence, reminding me of my days at kindergarten.”
Red No. 2 and other works from the same series showcase the unmistakable influence of imagery from the Cultural Revolution era – the protagonist closely resembles the rosy-cheeked children that were featured on popular propaganda posters – yet the emotional themes that Liu Ye explores in his work are more complex and nuanced. The work also closely examines the visual and symbolic properties of the colour red, with the final work an iconic statement mixing elements of the vintage and modern.
– Liu Ye
“I grew up in the days of the Cultural Revolution. Favourite subjects in my childhood paintings included aeroplanes, cannons and warships, and occasionally the sun and sunflowers. These subjects were mostly rendered with coloured pencils with red for the sun and the national flag, yellow for sunflowers and sunlight, and blue for the ocean and sky. This probably represents my earliest use of the prime colours of red, yellow and blue.” – Liu Ye
A little girl stands on the edge of a cliff, looking out over an expanse of red as delicate tears run down her delicately doll-like face. Her vibrant green skirt and coiffed hair flutters in the breeze, contrasting against her prim white blouse and knee-high stockings. Liu Ye provides little clues about what is causing the girl’s tears – whether it is joy or despair – but the intensity of her emotion is clear, as she gazes out into the vast field of colour that surrounds her.
Liu Ye’s Red No. 2 is part of an iconic series of paintings in which red is the dominant colour. Many of them feature cartoon-like girls standing on a cliff, silhouetted against a vibrant red background, the landscapes around them inspired by Song Dynasty paintings and mythical Chinese landscapes. Red No. 1 features a girl with her back to the viewer, gazing out into the void, while Red No. 3 depicts a girl in profile, holding a Chinese sword. Of the three part series, Red No. 2 is the only work that positions the protagonist facing towards us, and is the only one that features the enigmatic tears.
The influence of Piet Mondrian on Liu Ye’s oeuvre is well-documented; Liu Ye frequently cites the significance that his early training in industrial design had on his later output as an artist. Mondrian’s use of bright, saturated colours and rational composition organized around vertical and horizontal lines were a great source of inspiration to his own work, and elements of that linear rationality can be seen in both Red No. 2 and Blue . As Bernhard Fibicher, the Curator if Contemporary Art at Kunstmuseum Bern writes, “The main theme is the colour. The duel is fought between the painter and the canvas. The self-set task goes: How do Blue, Yellow and Green hold themselves against a dominant Red? Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?” Indeed, upon closer examination we can see that the little girl’s apparently white blouse is in fact rendered in vibrant hues of yellow and blue.
If one were to remove the figurative elements of both works, the entire canvas becomes an abstract painting – a red square and a blue rectangle – that look as if they could have been plucked directly from the details of a composition by Mondrian. Yet by foregrounding his work with figures, and adding figurative details such as a wisp of pine or a distant aeroplane, Liu Ye sets up a tension between the figurative and the abstract in his paintings. The eye is forced to logically interpret the colour, lending greater visual complexity to each work.
Liu Ye denies that his works are overtly political, but the frequency with which the colour red appears in his work is partially a result of his childhood experience growing up in a post-Cultural Revolution China. In an interview he stated, “I grew up in a world of red: the red sun, red flags, red scarves, with green pine trees and sunflowers often supporting the red symbols. As a child, I did not know the symbolic meaning of all these things. I just took them for granted and accepted them passively… The colour red was a key visual experience of my childhood days. It is also a tool of reminiscence, reminding me of my days at kindergarten.”
Red No. 2 and other works from the same series showcase the unmistakable influence of imagery from the Cultural Revolution era – the protagonist closely resembles the rosy-cheeked children that were featured on popular propaganda posters – yet the emotional themes that Liu Ye explores in his work are more complex and nuanced. The work also closely examines the visual and symbolic properties of the colour red, with the final work an iconic statement mixing elements of the vintage and modern.