Dusk of Idols: Yue Minjun’s Artistic Approach and Language

The past fifty years witness the dazzling parade of artistic movements in Chinese art scene: political propagandist art, socialist realism, neorealism, cynical realism, installation, and media art. Imagine a person who lost his consciousness in 1976 suddenly woke up in 2004. What a shocking experience it is for him to visit the 2004 Shanghai Biennale! From the 1950s to the 1980s, political icons formed the dominant subject matters of Chinese art. The 1980s championed critique of political leader worship in terms of form and content. In the tide of commercialization and globalization in the 1990s, many Chinese artists with their signature Chinese symbols entered the international art circuit. Their works often reveal the rich and complex historical, social, cultural, and political landscape of China. As a representative of the cynical realism, Yue Minjun became widely recognized in the 1990s. His works are characterized by his humorous and subversive commentary on the political icons. His signature multiple figures with empty smiles also respond to the changing socio-political and mental landscape in the 1990s when the market took the place of the communist ideology.

Yue remarks on his early artistic production, “Leader worship makes our life boring and absurd. I want to laugh at these political icons. Why not? My idea is to use idols to subvert the concept of idol. In this way our society can be more interesting.” His concept finds vivid expression in the following works. The sculptural piece entitled Terra-cotta Soldiers includes a group of smiling figures, who seem to be waiting for orders. Like Terra-cotta Soldiers, the work Pyramid deals with domination /subjection relationship. In Flying Red Flags a figure with red flags on his head conveys a celebratory atmosphere. Similarly, in Festival, balloons are placed on top of a political figure’s head .Long Live portrays many hands holding red books inside a skull of a political figure. The above-mentioned works evoke our collective memory of the Cultural Revolution. Furthermore, they trigger questions about the relationship between reality and memory.

Yue is an enthusiastic explorer of the art history of the People’s Republic of China. By borrowing and appropriating elements from the past, he gives new expressions to the icons he creates. On the one hand, he attempts to find something funny and interesting by subverting the seriousness of the political propagandist art. On the other, his works often suggest the pale of reality, self-ridicule, distortion, irony, emptiness, and dissolution of history. The simple forms in his paintings hold rich meanings. The multiplicity of political icons points to the absurdity and pale of the signifiers. For Yue, a witty and sober artist, playing with these icons is a path to knowledge. Unfortunately, knowledge does not necessarily promise a better society.

Yue’s oil paintings entitled Landscape without People at the 2004 Shanghai Biennale take a new approach. He borrows subject matters from four well-known works in China’s revolutionary and socialist construction periods, including Taking Over Luding Bridge by Li Zongjin, The Grand Founding Ceremony of the P.R. China by Dong Xiwen, Chairman Mao’s Tour of the Rural Areas in Guangdong by Chen Yanning, and I have Confidence in Your Work by Jin Shangyi and Pen Lin. According to Yue, the concept is that “by erasing the major figures, my paintings create a sharp contrast between image and memory and emphasize the specific contexts within which important revolutionary figures played specific roles.” Compared to his previous works filled with multiplied figures, Landscape without People marks a more subversive approach by evoking an unsettling sense of the Chinese political history and art history often defined by images of political figures. Yue’s contribution to the 2004 Shanghai Biennale Technique of the Visible has gained wide critical attention in the international art community.

Yue’s quotation of the Taking over Luding Bridge is distinguished by the tension between motion and stillness, between image and memory. The depiction of a desolate and silent scene after a violent battle recalls the famous poetic lines, “The Yangtze River is running to the east. In the waves heroes are gone.” Yue’s borrowing of Dong Xiwen’s the Grand Founding Ceremony of the P.R. China is stimulating in at least two ways. First, Yue reminds us that images in political paintings are not reliable because they are subject to political changes. Paradoxically, the changing images form our memory about the past. Second, the empty landscape, devoid of specific figures and political circumstances, brings a curious sense of history by stimulating our imagination as well as memory. Yue’s works also pose questions about the relationship between the original and copy. It is noteworthy that canonical works like the Grand Founding Ceremony of the P.R. China , and I have Confidence in Your Work have undergone several alterations in terms of composition and subject matters to fit the changing political situation. Yue’s re-work of the Chairman Mao’s Tour of the Rural Areas in Guangdong suggests the migration of rural population in the current process of commercialization and urbanization in China. In this light, Yue’s version may be considered as the extension of political painting. Yue confronts us with many difficult questions: What is history? How can we distinguish history from reality, the real from the virtual, and the original from the copy? What is icon? In an era of media saturation, the concept of the vicissitudes in history finds powerful expression in the emptiness, silence, and stillness in Yue’s works.

After China opened it door to the outside world at the end of the 1970s, a generation of artists embraced masterpieces in Western art history as symbols of the “advanced culture”. Yue’s reinterpretation of the Western classic works creates a curious tension between image and memory by effacing central figures in Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at Window, David’s The Death of Marat, Millet’s L’Angelus, and Manet’s Olympia. Yue’s works challenge the idea of historic authenticity by reminding us that history as an ongoing process can only be manifested by the unreliable remnants such as writings and images. Yue’s works also refer to the blind worship of Western culture icons.

As Nietzsche observes that idols outnumber the real in our world, idol worship has its manifestation in every age. Primitive effigies and cave paintings, religious paintings in the Middle Ages, badges of Chairman Mao in the Culture Revolution, stars in the contemporary media culture offer classic examples. Paradoxically, icons that represent the real for ritualistic, political, religious, or commercial purposes take only a certain aspect of the real. It was held that in order to survive the erosion of time the living beings need to take the form of an icon. For the ancients, idols are embodiment of spirituality. For example, the Egyptians mummified the dead and made it an idol because they believed that it housed the immortal soul. In modern times, it is debatable whether Nietzsche’s statement that God is dead signals a sense of freedom or disillusion? In the twentieth century, Hollywood’s star-making industry and other forms of popular culture have redefined idol as something new and ever-changing, as Heraclites observes that you walk into the river twice, but it won’t be the same river the second time. In this light, idol is something both existing and non-existing. Yue Minjun’s works suggest the paradox of icon; they are empty and full at the same time. French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye says that in theatre the only purpose of the character’s presence is to cover the fact there is an absence. Perhaps,Yue is hinting that all the idols are illusory.

At the moment when art is largely defined by conceptual art, installation, and video art, it is amazing to see how Yue uses the traditional painting medium to advance his cutting-edge concepts. Yue’s art journey stands as a vivid testimony to the importance of concept in artistic creation. Compared to his cynical realistic works characterized by exaggeration, expressiveness, and busy composition, the Landscape without People series assumes a more contemplative and intense quality that commands a direct encounter with the audience’s retina, memory, and intellect.

(Translated by Yiyou Wang)
(Art China, Vol.4, 2005)