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Lot Essay
Untitled (Lot 30), an intimate portrait of what appears to be the artist's maternal grandparents from 1991. It belongs to Beijing painter Liu Wei's most famous and sought-after series, the Revolutionary Family series, created shortly after the painter's graduation from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1989. This series was one of the sources that prompted critic Li Xianting to coin the term popi (or 'cynical realism'), one of the most important and influential art movements of the 1990s. Like Fang Lijun, his inseparable friend at the time, Liu is a graduate of the Print Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and a student of Xu Bing. In the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident, many artists graduating from art academies turned creating works of a more personal subject matter, avoiding both the celebratory intonation promoted through official artistic policies and the activism of the 1980s avant-gardists. Liu's works, from the beginning, have been marked by his humor, cynicism, and fusion of metaphor to painterly technique.
Begun in 1991, Revolutionary Family is a series of portraits representing Liu Wei's family members and friends: the most frequent subject being the artist's father, a military man, often represented in uniform, while his mother, brother and friends also feature in many works. The visual and metaphorical crux of the series pivots on the playful juxtaposition of grand references to political discourse that had dominated Chinese public life for decades to the banality of life at home: family members become the heroes of the everyday, replacing the lofty models proposed by state propaganda. Thus, Liu paints his mother napping on the sofa in her underwear, his father watching Chinese opera on TV. Throughout the series, we see the artist reflect upon political and social changes into his most intimate relationships.
Liu's approach in these works recalls the art of the German Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) (Fig. 1). Like Liu, Dix experienced political optimism and disillusionment. He lived through both the carnage of World War I and the decadence of Berlin in the 1920s. Dix's works address the corruption and moral bankruptcy of post-war Germany with sarcasm and humor, using caricature and uglification as his main strategies. Society is described as a pathetic, garish cartoon. He said that in the genre of portraiture: "not only is form of great importance and a means to express the individual, but also colour. Every person has his own very specific color that affects the entire pictureK. .The portrait painter is always envisioned as a great psychologist and physiognomist who can immediately read the most hidden virtues and vices in ever face, and portray them in the picture."
The woman sits in the foreground, while the husband leans against her, propped on the side of the sofa. The two heads touch each other revealing the affection between the two. While the man wears a formal western style suit, with tie and vest, the woman is more simply dressed, wearing a hand-knit, neutral sweater, appropriate to her age. As with other works in the series, the composition is claustrophobic. Liu partially edits the man's body out of the frame, creating a more immediate sense of physical presence, as if the couple were sitting just before the viewer. Some of the props in the composition recur in other works, such as the window in the upper right, the details of the outside roof, and the green embroidery of the sofa cover. These forms remind us of the grim urban surroundings of heavily built-up Beijing, connecting the cozy interior to the urban and social context, suggesting that many of these painting are actually set in Liu Wei's parents' living room (Fig. 2).
The grandmother dominates the composition and is the most important character in the painting, symbolizing her role in the life of the family. She looks shy, with a demure expression and the restrained position of her arms, yet she is relaxed. Her husband, having dressed up for the occasion, is more comfortable, demonstrated by his affectionate posture. Their palpable intimacy is visualized by the similarities in the shapes of their eyes and mouths, as if after so many years of shared life they become physically similar. The palette of this painting is also unique, adopting soft and soothing colours. Such softer hues support Dix's statement on the importance of the "colour of a person", and tell us about the peaceful character of two figures. The only reference to the kitsch decor often found in many coeval works is the vase of flesh-colored roses in the otherwise humble interior.
The figure of the woman, her hair and her sweater, are created through the painstaking build-up of small brushstrokes of different intensities of white and gray. Touches of impasto also create a lively texture and luminous effect, a kind of opaque glitter that animates the surface. Such treatment brings to mind a traditional ink painting technique used in traditional landscape: the "hemp fiber" brushstroke, which was traditionally used to create soft textures in the representation of the land and natural forms (Fig. 3). It is executed by overlapping strokes of darker and lighter ink. Liu adapts this technique to the practice of oil, producing a visual effect that shifts between the image of boulders and the softness of these woolen folds. This attention to brushwork further anticipates the style that will later become Liu's signature: a decomposing painterly surface and the loose, impressionistic brushstrokes of his figurative and landscape paintings of the late 1990s (Fig. 4). This way of painting suggests visual proximity with modernist practice as in post-impressionist paintings such as Paul Cezanne's (1839-1906) representation of the Montaigne Sainte Victoire (Fig. 5).
Untitled is unique in that it appears to be absent any discernible political reference, leaving us with a gentle and affectionate portrait of an elderly couple. There is a solid quality and even a dose of reverence in the way the couple is represented: the caring expression, the dignified composition, the lack of Liu's usual ridicule suggests a close relationship between the artist and the couple and the respect that the Chinese have for the elderly. Even so, Liu cannot suppress his rebellious spirit, which we can find in the green hues and distortions of the flesh, echoed throughout the canvas in the sky, couch, and the leaves of the plant. Liu seems to present these figures with great affection, but also gently mocks them - with their wayward eyes and bucktooth grins, as somehow inept and na?ve. Liu's Revolutionary Family paintings are known for the artist's iconoclastic rejection of communist values vis-?-vis his satirical representation of his family and friends (Fig. 6). But in Liu's humor there is also sympathy and affection. One's home, however plain and ordinary, is still one's home, and Liu's sympathetic embrace of the banal and unheroic is most apparent here in Untitled; the pair, well past their prime, with one of them utterly delighted by the opportunity to dress up, as the other is humbly positioned at the heart of the composition, depicted by Liu as a figure of benevolent stability and security.
Begun in 1991, Revolutionary Family is a series of portraits representing Liu Wei's family members and friends: the most frequent subject being the artist's father, a military man, often represented in uniform, while his mother, brother and friends also feature in many works. The visual and metaphorical crux of the series pivots on the playful juxtaposition of grand references to political discourse that had dominated Chinese public life for decades to the banality of life at home: family members become the heroes of the everyday, replacing the lofty models proposed by state propaganda. Thus, Liu paints his mother napping on the sofa in her underwear, his father watching Chinese opera on TV. Throughout the series, we see the artist reflect upon political and social changes into his most intimate relationships.
Liu's approach in these works recalls the art of the German Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) (Fig. 1). Like Liu, Dix experienced political optimism and disillusionment. He lived through both the carnage of World War I and the decadence of Berlin in the 1920s. Dix's works address the corruption and moral bankruptcy of post-war Germany with sarcasm and humor, using caricature and uglification as his main strategies. Society is described as a pathetic, garish cartoon. He said that in the genre of portraiture: "not only is form of great importance and a means to express the individual, but also colour. Every person has his own very specific color that affects the entire pictureK. .The portrait painter is always envisioned as a great psychologist and physiognomist who can immediately read the most hidden virtues and vices in ever face, and portray them in the picture."
The woman sits in the foreground, while the husband leans against her, propped on the side of the sofa. The two heads touch each other revealing the affection between the two. While the man wears a formal western style suit, with tie and vest, the woman is more simply dressed, wearing a hand-knit, neutral sweater, appropriate to her age. As with other works in the series, the composition is claustrophobic. Liu partially edits the man's body out of the frame, creating a more immediate sense of physical presence, as if the couple were sitting just before the viewer. Some of the props in the composition recur in other works, such as the window in the upper right, the details of the outside roof, and the green embroidery of the sofa cover. These forms remind us of the grim urban surroundings of heavily built-up Beijing, connecting the cozy interior to the urban and social context, suggesting that many of these painting are actually set in Liu Wei's parents' living room (Fig. 2).
The grandmother dominates the composition and is the most important character in the painting, symbolizing her role in the life of the family. She looks shy, with a demure expression and the restrained position of her arms, yet she is relaxed. Her husband, having dressed up for the occasion, is more comfortable, demonstrated by his affectionate posture. Their palpable intimacy is visualized by the similarities in the shapes of their eyes and mouths, as if after so many years of shared life they become physically similar. The palette of this painting is also unique, adopting soft and soothing colours. Such softer hues support Dix's statement on the importance of the "colour of a person", and tell us about the peaceful character of two figures. The only reference to the kitsch decor often found in many coeval works is the vase of flesh-colored roses in the otherwise humble interior.
The figure of the woman, her hair and her sweater, are created through the painstaking build-up of small brushstrokes of different intensities of white and gray. Touches of impasto also create a lively texture and luminous effect, a kind of opaque glitter that animates the surface. Such treatment brings to mind a traditional ink painting technique used in traditional landscape: the "hemp fiber" brushstroke, which was traditionally used to create soft textures in the representation of the land and natural forms (Fig. 3). It is executed by overlapping strokes of darker and lighter ink. Liu adapts this technique to the practice of oil, producing a visual effect that shifts between the image of boulders and the softness of these woolen folds. This attention to brushwork further anticipates the style that will later become Liu's signature: a decomposing painterly surface and the loose, impressionistic brushstrokes of his figurative and landscape paintings of the late 1990s (Fig. 4). This way of painting suggests visual proximity with modernist practice as in post-impressionist paintings such as Paul Cezanne's (1839-1906) representation of the Montaigne Sainte Victoire (Fig. 5).
Untitled is unique in that it appears to be absent any discernible political reference, leaving us with a gentle and affectionate portrait of an elderly couple. There is a solid quality and even a dose of reverence in the way the couple is represented: the caring expression, the dignified composition, the lack of Liu's usual ridicule suggests a close relationship between the artist and the couple and the respect that the Chinese have for the elderly. Even so, Liu cannot suppress his rebellious spirit, which we can find in the green hues and distortions of the flesh, echoed throughout the canvas in the sky, couch, and the leaves of the plant. Liu seems to present these figures with great affection, but also gently mocks them - with their wayward eyes and bucktooth grins, as somehow inept and na?ve. Liu's Revolutionary Family paintings are known for the artist's iconoclastic rejection of communist values vis-?-vis his satirical representation of his family and friends (Fig. 6). But in Liu's humor there is also sympathy and affection. One's home, however plain and ordinary, is still one's home, and Liu's sympathetic embrace of the banal and unheroic is most apparent here in Untitled; the pair, well past their prime, with one of them utterly delighted by the opportunity to dress up, as the other is humbly positioned at the heart of the composition, depicted by Liu as a figure of benevolent stability and security.