Liu Ye

Chinese Contemporary, Ltd., London
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Beijing, Forbidden City - Tai Miao, It's Me!: A Profile of Chinese Contemporary Art in the 90s, 1998 -1999, p. 7, illustrated 
Venice, Palazzo Contarini, Sconfinamenti: L'Avanguardia Cinese, June - July 1999, p. 24, illustrated
London, Chinese Contemporary, Liu Ye: Fellini, A Guardsman, Mondrian, the Pope, and My Girlfriend, April 2001, detail on cover & p. 4, illustrated

Liu Ye is from the first generation of free Chinese artists, born in the 1950s and 60s, who matured as artists after the Cultural Revolution. These artists have witnessed not only the birth of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, but also the opening of China to the rest of the world.  Now, in their forties and fifties, they have incomparable experiences of remarkable depth, intensity and cultural strain.

Liu Ye's style is unique among his contemporaries as he does not adhere to a specific school of contemporary Chinese painting. His work bathes in the cynicism of the first generation while using a cartoonish facade to cloak the severity of his criticism.  His caustic commentary has anticipated the youngest generation of contemporary Chinese artists currently breaking onto the art scene as artists of  the Cartoon Generation.

Bleah!! is a classic large scale work by the artist executed in 1999. In his paintings, Liu Ye plays with the relationship between outward appearances inward, and often contradictory, states of mind. Focusing on the indefinable appearance of emotions, he is not concerned with realist or naturalist portraiture.  In fact, in most of his works, Liu Ye himself is the subject of the painting regardless of apparent subject matter. At first glance, Bleah!! depicts three angelic children in front of a red curtain. The two girls hold perfect bouquets of beautiful red tulips and the little boy in the middle has the white wings of an angel. As in traditional Chinese art, red signifies China, communism and good fortune. However, against this implied fortuitous background, the children stick out their tongues. For the artist, this otherwise humorous symbol of playful insolence is actually a more profound signification of revolt which has utilized other works from this period. What ostensibly appears as harmless and cheeky is actually a state of rebellion. This more sinister undercurrent is indicated by the title, "Bleah!!", which children may sometimes cry when they are disgusted with something or someone. As such, Liu Ye ironically aligns himself in more traditional painterly methods of misdirection by subtly veiling emotions behind beautiful and powerful exteriors.