To Be Is Just Absurd: The Art of Yue Minjun

It was the autumn of 1992 when I first got to know Yue Minjun. Xu Bing- who had just returned to Beijing from the United States- and I were visiting the artists’ village near Yuanmingyuan (the site of the original Summer Palace that was destroyed by Allied Forces in 1860) in the western suburb of Beijing. Yue Minjun wore his hair long, which gave him the look of a maverick avant-garde artist, or perhaps jokingly, that of a troublemaker (wanzhu). By contrast, the painter Yang Shaobin, who was also there, seemed a more gentle character, for Yue Minjun’s gaze was distinctly cynical. I was impressed by the scale of Yue Minjun’s large paintings, which occupied the whole wall of the farmhouse he rented as his studio. One of the paintings pictured row of people: a giggling crowd standing in front of the Tiananmen Tower. The image was absurd, but regular, coherent and intuitive, with a force that reminded me of the National Day parades that took place every year on October first, or of Chairman Mao inspecting Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Yue Minjun had recently decided to settle in the artists’ village. This decision rather went against convention, but it was here that his personal style begun to take shape.

In the early 1990s a number of important artists emerged, such as Fang Lijun, Liu Wei and Yang Shaobin. Their survival was conditioned by the especial historic climate in China from the end of the 1980s to the early 1990s. In the 1980s, across the board, Chinese society embarked upon a transformation to a market economy. This permitted some liberation of the self in the realm of culture. Passionate expressions- largely based on the promoting of Enlightenment philosophies, the power of reason, and humanist concerns- and the ’85 New Art Movement, which was primarily a campaign of experiment in the language of painting, became the central theme of avant-garde art in China. It was the harbinger of a new age.

The notion of a “new age” in art came as a reaction to the preceding era in which art was subjugated to politics: a demand which has been imposed even before the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In essence, this new era saw a metamorphosis of the art of the Cultural Revolution, which is why we define the art of this period as post-Cultural Revolution art. The “China/Avant Garde” (sic) exhibition, held at the China National Gallery in early 1989, can be regarded as a retrospective survey of avant-garde artworks that had been produced in China in the 1980s. After the June Fourth Incident in 1989, Chinese art and culture entered a period of stillness and reflection, signaling the end of the ’85 New Art Movement. The stillness and introspection also brought a conclusion to the ’85 New Art Movement. By the end of 1990, artists like Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Yang Shaobin, Xu Yihui, and Xu Ruotao- described as “vagabonds” in the media- had begun to settle near Yuanmingyuan. In the early 1990s, Yuanmingyuan became a primary dwelling place for China’s avant-garde artists: the first artists’ village.

The appearance of a community of artists on the border between the urban and rural areas near the capital, and the general behavior of these new residents can be explained as a yearning for a professional identity, which was of abiding necessity for Chinese artists when they graduated from any art academy. They further sought to eschew the limitations of a socio-political system in which all occupational identity was required to be transparent, whereby individuals were obliged to ‘be governed by registering their household’ across China.

Their yarning to live freely as professional artists engendered certain common features in their works, namely a strong desire for self-expression. For avant-garde artists, the ideal of ‘independent and free’ expression pivoted upon highly abstract and ideological notions of ‘independence and freedom’ rather than a desire to get rid of the system. Thus, these individuals appeared rather like characters from the novels of Beijing-based author Wang Shuo: meaning that in the eyes of ordinary people artists were made to appear troublemakers. In this period of social transformation, the artists had dissociated themselves from the system of planned economy, for they felt the fresh air of new freedom earlier than other people, and rebelled against traditional social order in a cynical way. They remained on the fringe of society, determinedly independent, proud of their stance for individual choice, the pursuit of personal enjoyment, all the while jeering (at society). If Wang Shuo’s novels are the best texts to portray such characters in literature, in visual art the same mission was carried on by leading painters who co-existed with the socio-cultural circumstances, whilst presenting them in their works. In the early phase of China’s market economy, these individuals were denied by the strictures of traditional social order, but these artists managed to maintain overwhelming appeal: intent to maintain a distance from conventional society, they still commanded attention.

Yue Minjun is a representative painter of this period. His artistic creation has pretentious narrative manners: uninhibited imagination, self indulgence, cynical tones towards existence, which put in bold relief the nature of existence. It makes his works showy yet intelligent, fantastic yet realistic and disordered yet well composed. We get no overall delight from viewing the works, but when we immerse ourselves in every scene that seems to be absurd, and ruminate over every conversations that sneer, brag, satire and tease, we are impressed by the unreasonable human nature, absurdness of survival: the artist’s oppugning radiates from their expressions.

I think that what is most characteristic of Yue Minjun’s creative ideas and his language is the way in which his works manage to demonstrate the spirit of the age. Yue Minjun’s works have always presented a multiple arrangement of characters: each invariably the same, with a bald head, exaggerated limbs, a laughing mouth, and a dense row of tiny white teeth. These images have become a symbolic feature of his work. The context for his ideas derives from a characteristic element of so-called modern industrial civilization with its emphasis upon standardization, repetition and reproduction. For example, production lines in modern industry, skyscrapers, commodities and popular media are all outcomes of standardization and pluralism. The way we dress and make-up is an essential feature of contemporary social life that distinguishes modern sensibilities from classical ones. Social order has also been standardized. The neatly formatted role on plays in society is largely imposed upon them. In Yue Minjun’s art works, the restrictions imposed by standardization and pluralism are transmuted, distorted or interfered with. This leads our thoughts to stray from established order and conventional rules to daringly unconventional ones.

Yue Minjun’s artworks appropriate China’s socialist propaganda posters as well as the language of consumer advertising. Many of his earlier works contained specific symbols, such as Tiananmen Square, red flags, the sun, slogans, red lanterns, red air-balloons and army caps. There referred to the vestige of didactic functions advocated by official mainstream art: to present a beautiful life, to be an active participator in life, and to spur people towards progress. At the same time, Yue Minjun purposefully invokes the visual character of materialism that emerged with the market economy from the early 1990s. the profusion of advertisement is an earmark of contemporary culture, littered with advertisements that overwhelm the senses. Life is an open and extending arena, across with advertisements are diffused and spread. Yue Minjun combines the basic elements of past propaganda posters with those of modern advertisements: simple, flashy, superficial, and visually direct images and dazzling colours feed the language an style of his art. Through more than twenty years of opening and reform, China has reached a period in which daily life is least influenced by ideology. Cultural traditions have become hollow and political zeal and sensitivity has already begun to diminish. The direct experience of most ordinary Chinese people is largely westernised, and spiritually people have little to embrace or believe in. the pursuit of materialism and amusement dominates daily life. Therefore, those contemporary artists who continue to invoke political symbols are but sustaining an illusion of China at the expense of artistic achievement.

Since the end of the 1990s, aesthetic images from Nature, such as landscape, gardens, flowers and birds, beasts, even sky and outer space, have appeared in Yue Minjun’s works. He also uses memories born of his personal experience, as well as an exploration of the shifts in aesthetics that mirror the times. The works track reality through a period of social transformation in China. Viewed from this perspective, Yue Minjun’s works correspond with the nature of a Chinese society desperate to modernize; in other words, his works exhibit the changing reality during a period of social transformation in China.

Yue Minjun also uses his own image as a subject in his works. In fact, his efforts to exalt the culture of our time start with the image of himself. To be in ‘vogue’ today is to be a face of our time, and there is no better expression than his own face. He comically depicts the affected poses and attitudes, which are omnipresent within commercial culture. His style pays homage to pop art, and outlines a realistic but absurd picture of physical and spiritual quirks of today. The jocular language belies the his deep and earnest reflection upon contemporary life.

In an era of electronic technology, our thinking has altered from the linear thinking characteristic of eras of mechanism and printing: a new way of looking at things and aesthetical frame of mind have been formed. In practical appreciation activities of art works, new ways manifest themselves. The viewer does not look at and enjoy artworks with a leisurely mentality, but instead, glances over them, understanding them intuitively instead of brooding over them as might have been done in times past. The aesthetics this engenders reflects the changing rhythm of contemporary life, as well as an ideology of life reflected in art. Yue Minjun has done more than eradicating any sense of the personal from his works, or accentuating the mechanical apathy of modern life. He presents himself in his paintings in a quite superficial fashion, to highlight the anxiety and disappointment people bring upon themselves in the pursuit of enduring of profound expression. Anxiety and disappointment are metamorphosed into a flat plane without any depth, such that refutes any anxiety or concern. It seems that it is unnecessary to choose and to define anything; the value and significance of life have been dissolved in games and mechanical operations. Perhaps new art comes from such uncertain states, and is accomplished by those artists who feel modernity most keenly: perhaps artistic transformation is achieved by artists who conform to the tide of time, not as observers of cultural phenomenon, but as participants who help it to extend culture’s potential.

Alongside industrialization, popular culture has begun to sprout in China; this culture aims at comic, superficial and directly perceptible forms. A new aesthetic, derived from the contemporary cultural context, discards traditional grandiose epic narration and heavy-hearted introspection in favour of close-up and direct personal experience, and merely sensational perceptions. Following the trend of the 1990s as the political Utopia in China began to disintegrate, as a consumer economy became prevalent, the cultural market posed a new challenge to the established order. Yue Minjun reflects upon time as a guiding force of popular culture, and presents this as the kernel of contemporary culture. He does not simply go back to the old path of Enlightenment ideas to question and criticize established conventions, instead he ridicules and satirizes in a post-modernist manner. His sensitivity to contemporary cultural circumstances encourages a methodical remoulding of an old art form, while what artists need is a method prescribed as an ‘artistic one’ with which to present such a thought and concept.

Undoubtedly, the keynote of Yue Minjun’s expression is a sense of the absurd/fantastic, which comes primarily from his obsessive leaning towards sarcasm, irony and exaggeration. The context of his works is set in a dramatic structure, which possesses a strong flavor of irony, and presents a playful and unreal existence in a rapidly changing China. At the same time, it provides an ideological background where ‘to be is just absurd’. More importantly, Yue Minjun presents these ideas through a series of giggly and bald-headed people, depicted with flashy colours, and awkward anatomies. He seems to emphasize mannerist elements in his visual images which transform any showy and vulgar image about himself into a mere expression manner, and give full rein to the form until it looks both dazzling and dreadful. These typical, unreal images are processed with some exaggeration, but reveal the vivid and absurd circumstances of ‘his’ existence. China’s prevailing consumerism is refracted through this prism. His figures float in air, apparently starting form nowhere and never reaching anywhere either. This is also true of their lives. They just open their eyes wide, laugh and joke open-mouthed, dazed and bewildered. The contrasts between raffish, slick facial features and deformed limbs present not only the conflict between desires and their catharsis, which are rooted in the human heart, and also between the dreams of humankind that are dissimilated ceaselessly during their existence.

Of course, judging by his mode of expression, Yue Minjun’s works satirise the intellectuals’ attitude towards their own existence, as well as the pride and vanity inherent in human nature. These ironies add not only some aesthetic reason to his narration but also reflect his suspicion about all kinds of existing order and value. We can see that Yue Minjun intends to play the key images and depicted behaviours in his paintings to the full. The result has a complex symbolic effect, and illustrates the on-going expansion of material consumption in today’s society. This is achieved through a series of images of grotesque figures, pagodas and Taihu Lake stones, which symbolize tradition, and even by cannibalizing the structure of Chinese characters and images processed with computer programs. In this way his images transcend their fantastic realm and enter the real world, revealing his concerns for present-day society. In this time of morass and absurdity his works focus on the fashions of post-modern consumer culture. Therefore, the theme of his works contains an imprecation against the cause of such social phenomena, rather than merely presenting his own facial expression.

Where this self-image appears in Yue Minjun’s pictures, his passions, ideals and intentions are presented fully; without exception ‘he’ is made to look like a fool. I think this is the purpose of Yue Minjun’s irony: to deride absurdity in reality, especially the roots of absurdity. Through an exaggerated allegory of histories heroes and politics, Yue Minjun lays bare the absurdity of the creators of such absurd phenomena. He does an especially good job of criticizing social problems. What makes his works attractive is the monotonous and repeated focus of his subject: absurdity juxtaposed with freedom, which invokes a longing for freedom and liberation that is felt in the depth of human soul. It reveals Yue Minjun’s resistance to irrational elements of reality.

Yue Minjun never stops experimenting. With the exception of some prints and sculptures, he focuses mainly on easel painting. Yue Minjun’s conceptual paintings epitomize his understanding of painting per se. as early as 1994, he began to simulate and imitate classical paintings by western masters, such as Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, Scène des massacres de Scio and La Liberté guidant le peuple. Such prankish imitation actually carries on his sense of absurdity in artistic creation, and enhances the absurdity through deliberate mockery, transforming the paintings of revered western masters into comical parodies. He re-writes classical art using this painting language and symbolism, modifies and updates traditional styles, simultaneously distorting them. This excludes a single interpretation of (the history of) classical works, subjecting classical themes to contemporary zeitgeist, and fabricating many absurd japes. Since people have become accustomed to a stereotyped aesthetic understanding of these works, Yue Minjun’s experiments estrange these well-known modes, keep the audience in suspense, whilst providing them with pleasure derived from new approaches and perspectives, and a sense of freedom that comes from casting off classical rules demonstrated in works like Celebration of National Day, Manet’s Olympia, David’s Death of Marat, Vermeer’s Girl Reading A Letter at An Open Window, Chairman Mao on the Road to Anyuan by Liu Chunhua and Tunnel Warfare Luo Gongliu. Central to the reinvention of these paintings is that Yue Minjun removes all the central characters from each composition, obviously intending to rid them of their mythical colour. In this way he challenges the authority of stereotyped interpretation of established works by revealing limitation of widely accepted versions, and makes the standards set by these well-known works ephemeral and unreliable. It appears to Yue Minjun that artists need to change their perspective constantly, so as to create new styles and stave off stagnation. Simultaneously, Yue Minjun unleashes dormant memories of past events, which have been stifled by traditional narration.

In the 21st century, China is employing new criteria to achieve a new order: a new ideology is taking shape. This ideology, and order, is based on a market economy, one of the results of globalization. Yue Minjun’s art has always been closely related to his time: he knows that avoiding taboos and abiding by rules are always conflicting goals both tantalizing and irreconcilable. However, in spite of the pitfalls, the only real choice is to experiment courageously. There are beautiful confusions everywhere in China today; it is a source of creativity that, for a true avant-garde artist, is unlikely to dry-up. I think that Yue Minjun’s spirited experiments always lead the field. The troublemaker Yue Minjun seems never to grow old.

(Reproduction Icons: Yue Minjun works, 2004-2006)