Yan Pei-Ming

Private Collection, Europe

This painting is in a very good general condition overall. The white line in the upper white corner of the painting (which is visible on the catalogue illustration) is original to the painting. There doesn't appear to be any condition problem with this work. It was not examined under the UV light.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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The commanding painter Yan Pei-Ming works up epic-size portraits of himself, his relatives, and famous figures such as Mao, Pope Paul, and Bruce Lee, as well as studies of giant skulls, poignant in their giant anonymity. Yan's painterly style links together his broad range of references. With their forceful brushstrokes and expressive drips, Yan's portraits command the attention of both crowd and connoisseur, perhaps especially those from the Western world who remember the highpoints of Abstract Expressionism. But even if we acknowledge such influences, it seems more accurate to acknowledge Yan's essential independence and the presence of his own unique sensibility.

Yan's paintings appear more or less abstract when viewed at close range, but they take on a nearly photographic clarity from a more distant vantage. These grand works of art assert his interest in, as Yan himself puts it, "both metaphysics and everyday life." This double concentration—on both the "real" and the transcendent—is what makes his paintings so convincing; he is at once representing his subject and the act of painterly engagement itself.

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan made his way to France in 1980 with the goal of becoming an artist. As the son of a low-class worker, there was no possibility he could become an artist in China. Working first in Paris as a dishwasher, he soon began a five-year course of study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Dijon. There he worked to attain the technical skills of Western painting. While Yan's subsequent work regularly references Chinese subject matter, it cannot be said that his triumphant style owes much, if anything, to traditional ink and brush painting—even though much of Yan's oeuvre is fleshed out in black and white. Instead, a fascination with the expressive potential of oil on canvas—and the possibility of a conglomeration of bold, abstract strokes to serve representational purposes—seems to define his practice. Yan has successfully transcended the impoverished opportunities of his youth to prosper in the adopted home country where he has since lived. As a genuine artist with originality to spare, Yan has expanded the scope of his subject matter to include the dispossessed: impoverished children, immigrants, and prostitutes in contemporary Paris. These sitters suggest an empathic identification with and commitment to those of humble origins on the part of the artist.

In his 1998 portrait of Mao, one of many paintings he has completed on the subject of the Great Leader, Yan has emphasized the play of light and shadow in the modeling of three-dimensional form. Mao's countenance seems confident and discerning, appropriate for a man who held so much power. Given the carefully orchestrated and overtly triumphant public imagery of Mao in China, however, one might say that Yan's portrait presents a more human side of the leader in its deliberate lack of polish. Or perhaps it is Yan's simultaneous build-up of the man's image in grisaille tones and deconstruction of the iconic visage through assertive, broad slashes of paint that renders the work more powerful as an icon of contemporary painting than as an embodiment of political force. In this sense, the collective icon of the Socialist past is literally marked through and over by Yan's declaration of painterly individualism in this now markedly capitalist era. But one needn't discover such allegories of cultural and historical transformation in the work to enjoy Yan's almost architectonic compositional methods and the masterful confidence of his impressive brushwork.   

-Jonathan Goodman