Research Paper

Jaylen Strong

Yue Minjun is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He would be best known for his oil paintings depicting self-portraits in various settings in a sort of ire frozen laughter. He also reproduces his signature self-portraits in sculpture, watercolor and prints. Yue’s works are often associated with Chinese “Cynical Realist” movement, but he rejects this label. Yue’s style is inspired by Geng Jianyi, in which Yue wanted to create his own laughing face. He typically challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and political issues in abstract and radical ways. To fully understand his work, we must understand the smile behind all of his figures. Giulia Bortoluzzi helps clear up while the long smile by saying:

[1]Chinese culture smile is a sign of kindness and welcoming, “in China there is a long tradition of smile. There is the Maitreya Buddha who can tell the future and whose facial expression is a laugh. Normally there’s an inscription saying that you should be optimistic and laugh in the face of reality,” says the artist,” there were also paintings during the Cultural Revolution period, those Soviet-style posters showing happy people laughing, but what’s interesting is that normally what you see in those posters is the opposite of reality “. Hence the desire to make a parody, but also to laugh at themselves by staging his own face. But to paint self-portraits is also a way to take power and to have a greater margin for freedom of expression. The smile is not a sincere and direct smile, with no overtones. It is like the ancient theater masks worn by the actors. We must therefore interpret this smile as a facade that hides numberless shadows, but that also helps to preserve the freedom of expression.

Another key aspect of Yue’s work is the repition in most of his pieces. It aims to talk about the conformity of the people of the Mao dynasty. Giulia Bortoluzzi also writes:

[2]…Referring to the collective images of communism at the time of the birth of the Republic of China, the artist exaggerates – to show the absurdity – the uniformity of the individual. When you look at these paintings you look in fact a mass of indistinguishable characters, all dressed alike, all in the same positions and mechanically smiling.

It’s as if he is producing communist in a factory just for his paintings almost. I really good piece of Yue’s to look at that talks about conformity is his Untitled No. 24 (2006) (fig. 1) in which it is just multiples of his smiling self-caricature on one side of a white canvas. It seems to be talking about conformity because everyone is laughing at something. And with all of the figures being placed on one side, makes the viewer think that they are only laughing because everyone else is.

The first work of Yue’s I would like to analyze would be an untitled work, in which there are two self-portraits of him standing behind himself. The figure in the foreground is having his eyes closed by the figure behind him. The figure without his eyes being covered has his tightly shut, with Yue’s giant cheek to cheek smile. To fully get the piece, I had to learn exactly why Yue’s chooses smiles on all of his self-portraits:

[3]Yue Minjun was born in 1962 and therefore came to consciousness during the Cultural Revolution; he was adolescent when it was still a very raw memory and when, given China's recent history, the liberalization might still have seemed a cunning trap to catch the unwary and the ideologically unsound. It is hardly surprising that he came to see facial expression not as a window on thought and feeling but as a mask for them, a mask to deceive others and even, when worn long enough, the wearer himself.

Yue's canvases are large -- they are definitely not designed for the boudoir -- and the colors he uses are bright, the sky for example is always of purest cerulean. But the principal feature of much of his work is the human figures in it, all identical and most often stylized portraits of himself, with precisely the same open-mouthed expression of laughter.

In the work (figure 2), both figures seem to be trying really hard to fake their mask of a smile. Because both men are unable to see anything, it refers to the blind leading the blind. But in America, when I see this, I think of the game, “Guess Who”. The game when you go up behind someone, cover their eyes, and have them guess who is behind them. So the piece then begins to talk about the person asking the question doesn’t even know who he is. With the heavenly clouds in the background, it makes me think “ignorance is bliss”, because both figures are smiling, but they don’t care to know themselves.

This piece (figure 2) is gentle on the eyes compared to Yue’s other paintings. Which gives it more of the blissful and welcoming feeling of heaven. But because of the way their smiles are, it seems like they are trying their hardest to stay blissful by staying ignorant. As if they are trying their hardest not to believe in anything. The white t shirts that both of the figures are wearing is another hint of purity in the piece. As if they are two angels in the sky that don’t want to get corrupted by something they may see. And would rather laugh it away as if it weren’t happening. This could be shot at talking about society turning a blind eye to corruption in his country. I say this because of Yue’s background in which he was raised around a lot of corruption and authority.

Another piece I want to analyze is Yue Minjun’s Gweong Gweong(1993) (fig. 3). The work features jets dropping self-caricatures in the foreground. While in the bottom part of the painting, in the background you have a crowd of people running toward the Gate of Heavenly Peace with a portrait of Mao on the wall in front of them. The colors are more vibrant in this painting, and it also has a feeling of a propaganda poster. The painting is talking about how the country conducted war on its’ own people. Writer Andrew Cohen writes,[4] “The onomatopoeic title refers to the revving engines of military fighter-jets… Yue’s arsenal of repetitive alter egos and self-caricatures embodies the alienated and disposable individuals in Chinese society”. And of course Yue put his famous smile on all of his self-portraits showing the mask he keeps on his face. Since there is only two outfits that everyone is wearing in this piece, it shows the how disposable the people were being treated then.

One of Yue’s appropriated pieces (fig. 4) I would like to analyze is his The Massacre at Chios (1994), which is a take-off on Eugene Delacroix’s 1824 painting of the massacre during the Greek Revolution. In Yue’s piece (fig. 4) the sky is that nice vibrant blue seen throughout most of his pictures. There are a few cranes in the background either flying around or standing behind the rest of the self-caricatures. Unlike Delacroix’s painting (fig. 5), Yue’s typical smiling face self-caricatures cover the foreground. In Delacroix’s painting, the figures look defeated, mortified, and out of energy. In Yue’s painting, the figures on the ground are full of energy while they seem to about to be killed by the smiling figures behind them on horses. It definitely feels like a cynical piece. It’s as if Yue is saying, even though people were being killed by their authority figures, they continued to wear their mask until death.

The older Yue has gotten, he seems to be allowing his smiling mask to be taken off. This can be seen in his work entitled Water (1998) (fig.6). In the work, you have a self-portrait of himself with himself swimming in a pool that is put in place of his brain. He continues to stick with his vibrant color palette, but has drastically changed his style by taking away his giant smile. The giant head has a twisted mouth as if he had just eaten something sour. The work seems to be talking about getting lost in a pool of thought literally. Normally in his works he is seen with a giant smile and some form of repetition. In this case he has gotten rid of all that to focus on the pool of thought. It seems as if he is saying he can no longer focus on his fake smile because he is too busy swimming in his own thoughts.

The last Yue piece I would like to analyze is his Execution (1995) (fig. 7). I want to discuss this piece because it is the most expensive Chinese contemporary art piece ever sold at auction. It sold for $5.9 million in U.S. dollars.

It depicts four half naked men in front of a firing squad. The figure closest to the viewer in the foreground seems to be laughing at the entire situation. The red wall in the background is Tiananmen which Yue has said can be replaced with any other background. He only used Tiananmen because it is recognizable to him. [5]Yue states, "I want the audience not to think of one thing or one place or one event," he said from his Beijing home. "The whole worlds the background." The red building, he explains, is simply something that's familiar to him as a Chinese artist. "As I said, the viewer should not link this painting to Tiananmen. But Tiananmen is the catalyst for conceiving of this painting”.

Since most people are comfortable at home, in their underwear, this is the reason behind the men being in just their underwear. Their hands are also down in a way in which they are not afraid of what is about to happen next. Their future is uncertain because the firing squad isn’t holding anything in their hands. Yue states:

"it's on the whole world's human conflict that is worth laughing about." Drawing references to Francisco de Goya's "The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid" and Edouard Manet's "The Execution of the Emperor Maximilien of Mexico," the painting depicts a mock execution. Manet, it must be pointed out, modeled his painting after Goya's; and Yue's "Execution" mirrors both of those -- but with his trademark grinning clones, all likenesses of Yue himself. And the men in the position of being shot are shown in their underwear. "People feel freedom, most themselves, at home in their underpants," Yue said. And whereas in Goya's painting, the man's hands are up in resistance, the men's hands in "Execution" are down. "They do not fear death," Yue said.

This would explain why the figure closet to the viewer in the foreground is laughing. He is laughing at the entire situation. But this goes really well with American culture today. This is so because even though we know our future is uncertain with WWIII looming in the air, we continue to laugh as if nothing were happening.

Bortoluzzi, Giulia. "Yue Minjun E La Folle Risata." Juliet Art Magazine. February 4th, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://julietartmagazine.com/en/yue-minjun-la-folle- risata/.

Cohen, Andrew. "The Shadow of Laughter Yue Minjun." ArtAsiaPacific Magazine.

Daniels, Anthony. 2013. "Yue Minjun's haunting laughter." New Criterion 31, no. 10: 31-33. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 20, 2014).

Davis, Ben. "Guy Smiley - Artnet Magazine." Artnet. October 14, 2007. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis11-12-07.asp.

Lidgley, Mike. "Mike Lidgley." Mike Lidgley. October 17, 2007. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://mikelidgley.blogspot.com/2007/10/billed-by-sothebys-as-among-most.html.

2013. "Yue Minjun: L'ombre du fou rire." Publishers Weekly 260, no. 15: 58-59. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 20, 2014).

[1] Bortoluzzi, Giulia. "Yue Minjun E La Folle Risata." Juliet Art Magazine. January 1, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://julietartmagazine.com/en/yue-minjun-la-folle-risata/.

[2] Bortoluzzi, Giulia. "Yue Minjun E La Folle Risata." Juliet Art Magazine. January 1, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://julietartmagazine.com/en/yue-minjun-la-folle-risata/.

[3] Daniels, Anthony. 2013. "Yue Minjun's haunting laughter." New Criterion 31, no. 10: 31-33. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 20, 2014).

[4] Cohen, Andrew. "The Shadow of Laughter Yue Minjun." ArtAsiaPacific Magazine.

[5] Lidgley, Mike. "Mike Lidgley." Mike Lidgley. October 17, 2007. Accessed November 20, 2014. http://mikelidgley.blogspot.com/2007/10/billed-by-sothebys-as-among-most.html.