Artist:
Yue Minjun
Title:
Contemporary Terracotta Warriors
Year:
2005
Adress:
The Donum Estate
Website:
normal
This is not a "normal" gathering of people. There are no women. It's strange that the men wear the same clothes, are behind each other in rows. It is also strange that they wear a broad smile, have shut their ears with their hands, make no sound.
We "civilized" people understand what's going on with this terracotta army. We understand that we cannot understand everything. However, do we want that?
Will we accept that we may not understand everything? I think people are a strange race with a lot of contradictions. We want to win, want to fit in a group, want someone being in charge, want to have more always. Would it possibele that each of us is honest about the complex behavior? Would it be possible to have groups of honest and considerate with each other?
I would prefer that normal behavior would mean that we are careful for ourselves and each other. So that we gather as respectful and caring people.
By Theo, www.artatsite.com
Vertaling
normaal
Dit is geen ‘normale’ bijeenkomst van mensen. Er ontbreken vrouwen. Het is vreemd dat de mannen dezelfde kleding dragen, in rijen achter elkaar staan. Ook is het vreemd dat zij breed lachen, met hun handen hun oren afsluiten, geen geluid maken.
Wij ‘geciviliseerde’ mensen begrijpen wat er aan de hand is met dit terracotta leger. Ook snappen wij dat niet alles begrepen kan worden. Maar willen wij dat?
Willen wij accepteren dat wij niet alles mogen snappen? Volgens mij is de mens een vreemd ras met veel tegenstrijdigheden. Wij willen in een groep horen, willen dat iemand de leiding heeft, willen overwinnen, willen steeds meer. Zou het mogelijk zijn dat ieder voor zichzelf eerlijk is over het complexe gedrag? Zou het mogelijk zijn dat groepen eerlijk en begripvol met elkaar omgaan?
Het liefste zou ik willen dat normaal gedrag zou inhouden dat wij liefdevol voor onszelf en met elkaar zijn. Dus dat wij bijeen komen als respectvolle en zorgzame mensen.
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com
www.thedonumestate.com:
"In my work, laughter is a representation of a state of helplessness, lack of strength and participation, absence of rights that society has imposed on us," he explains. "In short, life. It makes you feel obsolete, which is why, sometimes, you only have laughter as a revolutionary weapon to fight against cultural and human indifference."
"To laugh is an expression of pain," he adds. "When you've endured the maximum level of pain you can tolerate, all you could do is laugh. It could be about life, society, health, death."
www.phillips.com:
Yue Minjun is one of the most representative contemporary Chinese painters since the 1990s. His works are immediately recognizable, whether in his over life-size paintings or sculptures, Yue presents a satirical version of his own self-portrait, frequently in multiples posing in absurd positions, and always with a gaping over-size grin. The figures are direct and their impact immediate; but their hilarity more often than not seems frivolous if not cynically hollow.
In the present lot (Contemporary Terracotta Warriors No. 7), the taller than life bronze figures stand squarely upright, arranged in an apex or circle formation, looking outwards straight at the viewer with an honest undeniable presence and demeanor. Here, Yue is making a visual parallel with the terracotta warriors, buried in the tombs of China’s notoriously tyrannical first emperor, Qin Shihuang, in which over seven thousand warriors and other treasures were discovered in 1974.
The stiff hard lines of the muslar figures evoke a history of familiar ideological positions while critiquing the extremes and contradictions inherent in China’s path of modernization. The bald head, exaggerated limbs, laughing mouth and dense row of tiny teeth are all symbolic features of Yue’s work, who adapts a modern spin on these statutory figures to create a contemporary ‘army’ of Chinese sculptures.
'When an image is duplicated continuously, the subsequent strength in numbers produces an immense force. Once the image transforms into an idol, I am able to manipulate and utilize the image repeatedly. An idol has a life force; it often influences our lives and regulates our conduct by setting itself as an example. A contemporary society is an idolized society; hence its culture becomes an idolized culture'; Yue Minjun quoted in: DianaYeh, ‘The Wisdom of Fools’, www.culturebase.net.
www.thedonumestate.com:
Yue Minjun was born in 1962 in the Northeastern city of Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, China, and livesn Beijing. Yue studied at Hebei Normal University in the 1980s, training as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker. Beginning in the late 1980s, during the political upheavals leading to the Tiananmen protests, Yue began using his art to understand the societal changes taking place in China.
www.designboom.com:
‘I paint people laughing, whether it is a big laugh, a restrained laugh, a crazy-laugh, a near-death laugh or simply laughter about our society: laughter can be about anything. laughter is a moment when our mind refuses to reason. when we are puzzled by certain things, our mind simply doesn’t want to struggle, or perhaps we don’t know how to think, therefore we just want to forget it.
In Chinese tradition you can’t say things directly. you have to show something else for the real meaning. I wanted to show a happy smile and show that behind it is something sad, and even dangerous.‘ – Yue Minjun.
www.publicdelivery.org:
Analysis
In portraying himself within his paintings, he allows himself more freedom of expression. Through this expression, he can look at himself and society. He can question reality, and the laugh that is portrayed in his portraits and sculptures is relatable for his countrymen and women who have experienced the changes in society. The smile that is so large and convincing often has something else behind it. Sometimes in any given situation, all we can really do is smile.
About Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun was born in Daqing in Heilongjiang, China in 1962. Yue moved from place to place for most of his life because his family had to move from oilfield to oilfield to find work. Before working as an electrician, he graduated from Hebei Normal University in 1989, where he studied oil painting.
What inspired him to create his laughing self-portraits?
1989 was the same year in which China was left shocked by the infamous student-led demonstrations and the suppression of such on Tiananmen Square. These movements played a large part in the inspiration and mood of Yue’s work. To fight the dark mood of the hour, the dark reality of the time, he created vibrant self-images embodying an almost mania; The laughing image.
The different meanings of laughter
Laughter never necessarily means happiness. Laughter can be nervous. It can be spiteful. It can be healing. A smile or a laugh can be genuine but can also be a mask. They can mask feelings of loss, feelings of helplessness and feelings of confusion. Although the smile on Yue’s sculptures and paintings has often been interpreted as a joke or bliss, the meaning behind the smile often is so much deeper.
Yue’s influences
Yue was influenced by the Chinese modern art revolution, during which old ideas were being broken down and new thoughts were being created. He grew up when market economic policies were beginning to release and there was accelerated development. This was also a period of global economic prosperity. social and economic changes that were happening globally, especially within China, pushed artists like Yue Minjun to quickly grow and evolve. Within this group of artists, Yue is without a doubt one of the most successful. He is also known as an influential member of the Cynical Realism movement.
Self portraits & using humor as a tool
His famous self-portraits take place in various settings, with an infamous expression of wide-toothed laughter. The figures featured in these self-portraits with disproportionately large faces, gleefully open mouths and eyes closed, have become recognizable to admirers worldwide. Throughout his work, Yue utilizes humor as a tool to convey a tempestuous stage in modern China.
www.montecristomagazine.com:
'This is not something I anticipated, but it is gratifying,' he says. 'My art is certainly meant to elicit a response. I cannot, and do not want to, control that response. This is very important. The art must speak for itself, and each person has their own way of understanding it.'
www.artsy.net:
In his oil paintings, Yueoften inserts himself in iconic moments in art history, painting exaggerated self-portrait figures in candy colors. The figures bear wide smiles with gaping mouths as they enact poses from the works of Caravaggio and other artists from the Western canon. Transforming himself into an icon, the artist has said, 'was not meant as a self-portrait in its traditional sense, but something more like a movie star acting in different roles.' Surrealism was an early influence on Yue, who shot to the top of an explosive Chinese contemporary scene as a member of the Cynical Realist movement, his serious political criticism and social commentary hidden behind the mask of his smiling faces. In another series, Yue turned his practice on its head, recreating famous Western and Chinese socialist paintings as empty settings with their subjects removed.
www.wikipedia.org:
Yue Minjun (born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in varioettings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolour and prints.
While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement in art developed in China since 1989, Yue himself rejects this label, while at the same time "doesn't concern himself about what people call him."
This is not a "normal" gathering of people. There are no women. It's strange that the men wear the same clothes, are behind each other in rows. It is also strange that they wear a broad smile, have shut their ears with their hands, make no sound.
We "civilized" people understand what's going on with this terracotta army. We understand that we cannot understand everything. However, do we want that?
Will we accept that we may not understand everything? I think people are a strange race with a lot of contradictions. We want to win, want to fit in a group, want someone being in charge, want to have more always. Would it possibele that each of us is honest about the complex behavior? Would it be possible to have groups of honest and considerate with each other?
I would prefer that normal behavior would mean that we are careful for ourselves and each other. So that we gather as respectful and caring people.
By Theo, www.artatsite.com
Vertaling
normaal
Dit is geen ‘normale’ bijeenkomst van mensen. Er ontbreken vrouwen. Het is vreemd dat de mannen dezelfde kleding dragen, in rijen achter elkaar staan. Ook is het vreemd dat zij breed lachen, met hun handen hun oren afsluiten, geen geluid maken.
Wij ‘geciviliseerde’ mensen begrijpen wat er aan de hand is met dit terracotta leger. Ook snappen wij dat niet alles begrepen kan worden. Maar willen wij dat?
Willen wij accepteren dat wij niet alles mogen snappen? Volgens mij is de mens een vreemd ras met veel tegenstrijdigheden. Wij willen in een groep horen, willen dat iemand de leiding heeft, willen overwinnen, willen steeds meer. Zou het mogelijk zijn dat ieder voor zichzelf eerlijk is over het complexe gedrag? Zou het mogelijk zijn dat groepen eerlijk en begripvol met elkaar omgaan?
Het liefste zou ik willen dat normaal gedrag zou inhouden dat wij liefdevol voor onszelf en met elkaar zijn. Dus dat wij bijeen komen als respectvolle en zorgzame mensen.
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com
www.thedonumestate.com:
"In my work, laughter is a representation of a state of helplessness, lack of strength and participation, absence of rights that society has imposed on us," he explains. "In short, life. It makes you feel obsolete, which is why, sometimes, you only have laughter as a revolutionary weapon to fight against cultural and human indifference."
"To laugh is an expression of pain," he adds. "When you've endured the maximum level of pain you can tolerate, all you could do is laugh. It could be about life, society, health, death."
www.phillips.com:
Yue Minjun is one of the most representative contemporary Chinese painters since the 1990s. His works are immediately recognizable, whether in his over life-size paintings or sculptures, Yue presents a satirical version of his own self-portrait, frequently in multiples posing in absurd positions, and always with a gaping over-size grin. The figures are direct and their impact immediate; but their hilarity more often than not seems frivolous if not cynically hollow.
In the present lot (Contemporary Terracotta Warriors No. 7), the taller than life bronze figures stand squarely upright, arranged in an apex or circle formation, looking outwards straight at the viewer with an honest undeniable presence and demeanor. Here, Yue is making a visual parallel with the terracotta warriors, buried in the tombs of China’s notoriously tyrannical first emperor, Qin Shihuang, in which over seven thousand warriors and other treasures were discovered in 1974.
The stiff hard lines of the muslar figures evoke a history of familiar ideological positions while critiquing the extremes and contradictions inherent in China’s path of modernization. The bald head, exaggerated limbs, laughing mouth and dense row of tiny teeth are all symbolic features of Yue’s work, who adapts a modern spin on these statutory figures to create a contemporary ‘army’ of Chinese sculptures.
'When an image is duplicated continuously, the subsequent strength in numbers produces an immense force. Once the image transforms into an idol, I am able to manipulate and utilize the image repeatedly. An idol has a life force; it often influences our lives and regulates our conduct by setting itself as an example. A contemporary society is an idolized society; hence its culture becomes an idolized culture'; Yue Minjun quoted in: DianaYeh, ‘The Wisdom of Fools’, www.culturebase.net.
www.thedonumestate.com:
Yue Minjun was born in 1962 in the Northeastern city of Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, China, and livesn Beijing. Yue studied at Hebei Normal University in the 1980s, training as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker. Beginning in the late 1980s, during the political upheavals leading to the Tiananmen protests, Yue began using his art to understand the societal changes taking place in China.
www.designboom.com:
‘I paint people laughing, whether it is a big laugh, a restrained laugh, a crazy-laugh, a near-death laugh or simply laughter about our society: laughter can be about anything. laughter is a moment when our mind refuses to reason. when we are puzzled by certain things, our mind simply doesn’t want to struggle, or perhaps we don’t know how to think, therefore we just want to forget it.
In Chinese tradition you can’t say things directly. you have to show something else for the real meaning. I wanted to show a happy smile and show that behind it is something sad, and even dangerous.‘ – Yue Minjun.
www.publicdelivery.org:
Analysis
In portraying himself within his paintings, he allows himself more freedom of expression. Through this expression, he can look at himself and society. He can question reality, and the laugh that is portrayed in his portraits and sculptures is relatable for his countrymen and women who have experienced the changes in society. The smile that is so large and convincing often has something else behind it. Sometimes in any given situation, all we can really do is smile.
About Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun was born in Daqing in Heilongjiang, China in 1962. Yue moved from place to place for most of his life because his family had to move from oilfield to oilfield to find work. Before working as an electrician, he graduated from Hebei Normal University in 1989, where he studied oil painting.
What inspired him to create his laughing self-portraits?
1989 was the same year in which China was left shocked by the infamous student-led demonstrations and the suppression of such on Tiananmen Square. These movements played a large part in the inspiration and mood of Yue’s work. To fight the dark mood of the hour, the dark reality of the time, he created vibrant self-images embodying an almost mania; The laughing image.
The different meanings of laughter
Laughter never necessarily means happiness. Laughter can be nervous. It can be spiteful. It can be healing. A smile or a laugh can be genuine but can also be a mask. They can mask feelings of loss, feelings of helplessness and feelings of confusion. Although the smile on Yue’s sculptures and paintings has often been interpreted as a joke or bliss, the meaning behind the smile often is so much deeper.
Yue’s influences
Yue was influenced by the Chinese modern art revolution, during which old ideas were being broken down and new thoughts were being created. He grew up when market economic policies were beginning to release and there was accelerated development. This was also a period of global economic prosperity. social and economic changes that were happening globally, especially within China, pushed artists like Yue Minjun to quickly grow and evolve. Within this group of artists, Yue is without a doubt one of the most successful. He is also known as an influential member of the Cynical Realism movement.
Self portraits & using humor as a tool
His famous self-portraits take place in various settings, with an infamous expression of wide-toothed laughter. The figures featured in these self-portraits with disproportionately large faces, gleefully open mouths and eyes closed, have become recognizable to admirers worldwide. Throughout his work, Yue utilizes humor as a tool to convey a tempestuous stage in modern China.
www.montecristomagazine.com:
'This is not something I anticipated, but it is gratifying,' he says. 'My art is certainly meant to elicit a response. I cannot, and do not want to, control that response. This is very important. The art must speak for itself, and each person has their own way of understanding it.'
www.artsy.net:
In his oil paintings, Yueoften inserts himself in iconic moments in art history, painting exaggerated self-portrait figures in candy colors. The figures bear wide smiles with gaping mouths as they enact poses from the works of Caravaggio and other artists from the Western canon. Transforming himself into an icon, the artist has said, 'was not meant as a self-portrait in its traditional sense, but something more like a movie star acting in different roles.' Surrealism was an early influence on Yue, who shot to the top of an explosive Chinese contemporary scene as a member of the Cynical Realist movement, his serious political criticism and social commentary hidden behind the mask of his smiling faces. In another series, Yue turned his practice on its head, recreating famous Western and Chinese socialist paintings as empty settings with their subjects removed.
www.wikipedia.org:
Yue Minjun (born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in varioettings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolour and prints.
While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement in art developed in China since 1989, Yue himself rejects this label, while at the same time "doesn't concern himself about what people call him."