Yue Minjun

Galerie Serieuze Zaken, Amsterdam
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1999

Yue Minjun's Untitled is one of his most direct works to deal with his cultural heritage. The motif, based on a generic self-image of the artist, is depicted close up, his face filling almost the entire canvas. Unusually for Yue's work, the inane beaming smile - a cynical grimace that represents the artist's resignation and disdain towards his political environment - is replaced by a contorted mouth, lips pursed and cheeks sucked in. In a surrealist inspired twist, his cranium has been sliced off revealing a miniature Chairman Mao enjoying a few strokes in the water-filled cavity. The implication is that should he open his eyes to look at the reality around him or open his mouth to question the authoritarian rule of the State, the water in his head would pour out and with it the little Mao. Literally brainwashed, Yue's 'everyman' figure is forced to keep silent, his mouth clamped shut causing a tense grimace that echoes the stress endured by him and his fellow Chinese under an oppressive regime. As always in Yue's art, there is an undertone of self mockery, the artist/ everyman as the docile citizen willingly submitting to tyranny.

Mao Zedong was always a keen swimmer. In an article he wrote in 1917 for the journal 'New Youth' he stated that swimming was an essential exercise as it requires an astute level of concentration for the swimmer to reach the perfect pace while also overcoming his fear of sinking. Decades later, the now ageing Mao would on occasion swim for miles down the Yangtze River, often flanked by Communist party cadres. To his followers it proved that both the chairman and the party still had the strength and vitality needed to govern the world's largest nation.  For numerous others it was an empty political gesture from a self obsessed leader. Perhaps more ironic is how the supposed hero of the common man installed himself like an emperor in a compound for the party elite where he was the only person permitted to use the palace's sumptuous pool.

The idyllic blue water in Untitled suggests that it is in fact the latter scene we see inside Minjun's head. Oblivious to the strain endured by his subjects in order to keep him afloat, careless to the undercurrents of the artist's subversive thoughts, Mao bobs happily along the surface. Meanwhile, Yue's everyman is drawing ever closer to the point where his eyes and mouth will burst open, cleansing himself of both Mao and his legacy. In a poignant example of art as political statement, Yue calls for the very basic democratic rights that are being withheld: free speech and seeing the world through eyes that are not blinkered by State censorship.