Yue Minjun

signed in Pinyin and dated 2007

Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist

Indonesia, Jakarta, The Yuz Museum, Lovely Blossoms and Full Moon, December, 2008

Lu Peng ed., Contemporary Artists Collection - Yue Minjun, Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, Chengdu, China, 2007, p. 92
New China, New Arts: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Artists, Artists
Publishing House, 2010, p. 47

This work is generally in good condition. There are minor handling marks around the edges. Please note that it was not examined under ultraviolet light.
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A Joker in the Face of Tradition
Yue Minjun

Jokes and mockery have always been central to the works of Yue Minjun, but they simutaneously reflect the helplessness which the Chinese felt towards the social and political realities of the early 1990's. The curator Li Xianting has identified a current that emerged in 1990's Chinese art as "Cynical Realism". As one of its most prominent figures, Yue Minjun embodies an important intellectual characteristic of contemporary Chinese art, and his signature laughing faces are synonymous with it. Yue's monumental Backyard Garden (Lot 882), painted in 2007, portrays his classic laughing faces and their spirit in a carefully arranged composition. It is without a doubt a representative work of Yue Minjun's mature career.

Like the works of other Cynical Realist painters such as Fang Lijun and Liu Wei, Yue Minjun's paintings express a pessimistic resistance. Laughter is his weapon. He has once said, "Loud, hearty laughter; derisive laughter; mad laughter; laughter in the face of death; laughter at society--there seems a bit of all of these."

Yue Minjun and other artists who emerged after the political turmoil of 1989, witnessed the failure of two generations of artists trying to fulfill their dreams of rescuing Chinese culture. They had begun to doubt life in a fundamental way. With the rise of the Chinese economy in the 1990's, consumerism overtook the desire for political reform. Human pursuits were suppressed and controlled in various ways. When artists reflected on their environment, they could not help but feel lost. They chose self-exile, enabling a group of artists based in Yuanmingyuan in Beijing to thrive, including Yue Minjun. "Our generation experienced a chaotic period with complex tensions and emotional impacts. We all feel deeply that although a free and individual life is possible¿ we are placed on the edge of society. In this condition, our existence can never be completely content."

Under these circumstances, Yue Minjun chose to express his views on life through the absurdity of his large smiling faces. "For me, the image of the laughing face is a kind of guarantee--it guarantees that everything will be fine, just as Buddhism promises happiness in the next life." "At the same time, this image will also resonate with those individuals who have learnt to face life with laughter because they realize that any other response would be futile." Yue Minjun has perfected these laughing faces based on his own image--pink skin, perfectly neat teeth, tightly shut eyes--and repeated them as his signature motifs in his works, where by mounting his resistance against the absurdity and unpredictability of society and politics.

Backyard Garden was created in 2007. Its main subjects are four Yue Minjun-style pink laughing figures frolicking near a pool in a Chinese-style garden. One of them, wearing a white shirt and trousers, is running on the left behind the pond. The other three are all in black underpants. Two of them are standing next to each other further behind the pond, while another figure stands on a stone pillar in the middle of the pond with his arms crossed laughing dramatically at the affairs of the world. While traditions vanish or are distorted in China's rapid economic growth, these laughing faces at a traditional pool serve as a raw and authentic expression of the Chinese people's helplessness during these times.