岳敏君... “Man suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. The unfortunate and melancholic animal is, of course, the most cheerful” Nietzsche... The power of the laughter... Yue Minjun.. Cynic Realism

Yue Minjun's laugh is similar to Democritus' laugh, which according to Hippocrates' diagnosis is as follows. The condemnation of human vain restlessness, the feeling of absurdity that results from it, is the source of Democritus' mad laughter. But his laughter is not contemptuous. He must laugh at himself too. By the power of his gaze alone, he turns men's lives into a comic scene, populated by disjointed puppets restlessly agitated by an invisible hand. He is also a Freudian laugh. Without the liberating laugh, Freud says, man would not tolerate the straitjacket, the straitjacket, the inhibitions that society constantly arouses. The capacity for humour "saves" this intolerable. His humour is also Nietzschean.

The roots of Yue Minjun's style can be traced back to the work of Geng Jianyi, which had first inspired Yue with his work of his own laughing face. Over the years, Yue Minjun's style has also rapidly developed. Yue often challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and even political issues in a radical and abstract manner. He has also shifted his focus from the technical aspects to the "whole concept of creation". In the mid 1990s, the godfather of Chinese contemporary art Mr. Li Xianting tagged Yue Minjun a Cynical Realism mark, Cynical Realism means describe the living status with a cynicism and mocking ridicule art attitude, using self-opinion to understand political and commercial. "Yue’s pieces are mocking himself and the community, free himself and vent his emotions"."Art critics have often associated Yue with the Cynical Realism art movement in contemporary Chinese art. Yue is currently residing with fifty other Chinese artists in the Songzhuang Village. Since his debut, the work of Yue Minjun has been featured in numerous galleries in Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing. His piece Execution became the most expensive work ever by a Chinese contemporary artist, when sold in 2007 for £2.9 million pounds (US $5.9 million) at London's Sotheby's. Until its sale at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2007, this painting had been owned by Trevor Simon, a junior investment banker who bought it with about a third of his salary while working in the region. Simon kept this painting in storage for 10 years as required by the conditions of sale. The record sale took place week after his painting Massacre of Chios sold at the Hong Kong Sotheby's for nearly $4.1 million. ‘Massacre of Chios' shares its name with a painting of the same name, by Eugène Delacroix, depicting the 1822 event in Greek history. As of 2007 thirteen of his paintings had sold for over a million dollars. One of his most popular series was his "Hat" collection. This series, pictures Yue's grinning head wearing a variety of hats—a chef's hat, a Special Forces beret, the helmet of a British policeman, Catwoman's mask, and so on. The artist tells us that the series is about a "sense of the absurdity of the ideas that govern the sociopolitical protocol surrounding hats." The series nicely illustrates the way that Yue's character is universally adaptable, a sort of logo that can be attached to any setting to add value. When asked to participate in the Venice Biennale in 1999, Yue opted to begin fabricating bronze sculptural versions of his signature self-portrait paintings, playing off China's famous Qin Dynasty army of terracotta warriors. While the ancient sculptures are known for the subtle individuality of each of the warriors, his cackling modern-day version are relentlessly identical, cast from the same mold. In Noah's Ark, six of Yue's self-portraits sit in a small rowboat on a blue sea, squatting together, gripping their knees and screaming in silent laughter. In Solar System, three identical Yues are cackling at the bottom of the canvas, each clad only in underwear, giant planets wheeling behind them in outer space. During the "Year of China" in France in 2003/2004, he participated to the exhibition "China, the body everywhere?" including 39 Chinese contemporary artists such as Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobin at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Marseille (fr).

Yue Minjun’s first museum show in the United States took place at the Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York. The show, Yue Minjun and the Symbolic Smile, featured bronze and polychrome sculptures, paintings and drawings and ran from October 2007 to January 2008.[13]

The first major exhibition in Europe dedicated to the artist from November 14, 2012 to March 17, 2013. The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain presented the first major European exhibition dedicated to the Chinese artist Yue Minjun, a unique opportunity to discover the work of an artist who, in spite of his international renown, continues to maintain a relatively low profile.

In the early 2000s two opposite artistic movements developed in China. The first resides with artists who have left China and who establish a critical dialogue between Western and contemporary art and Chinese culture. Their best known representatives are Huang Yong Ping who is now in France, Cai Guo-Qiang who lives in New York and Chen Zhen who lived in France. The second trend brings together artists who have remained in China to form cynical realism and pop-politics. The latter was born simultaneously with the cynical realism of the early 1990s. These artists are Wang Guangyi born in 1957, Li Shan born in 1944 and Yu Youhan born in 1943. Cynical realism turns away from avant-gardist art and dedicates itself to the expression of experience within society. The suffering of artists and their criticism of society is reflected in the drawing of joyful figures. These two currents have radically challenged the'85 New Wave. This current of cynical realism is therefore less opposed to official art than to the romantic aspect of the New Wave'85 or experimental art. New Wave'85 is an avant-garde art movement between 1985 and 1989 in China as an alternative to official art and in response to the Cultural Revolution. The use of realistic painting was a means of asserting the domination of cynicism in the mentalities of the artists of the time. In the early 1990s, widespread disillusionment had weakened any idea that art had the capacity to play the role of society's saviour, and diminished the scope of experimental art. According to Yue Minjun, cynical realism expresses the authenticity of a personal sensation, a method and a language. The aim was to question all the previous methods. This questioning of whole sections of artistic expression has allowed a return to a more personal, more authentic way of being, which has also resulted in a withdrawal into oneself leading to a kind of closure, a resistance to reality or even a refusal of the past, a scheme which is essential when the person does not have the means or the strength to alter reality. From 1989 to 1991, many artists won over by despair met at the art critic Li Xianting. This art journalist is renowned for his bias in favour of Chinese avant-garde art of the late 1970s. He invented the classification "cynical realism" and "political pop" in 1992. Fang Lijun born in 1963, Liu Wei born in 1965 and Yue Minjun form the most emblematic trio of cynical realism painters. This Chinese artistic movement was born around the beginning of the 1990s. It is distinguished by figurative works focused on the presence of the body and by disillusionment with China's socio-political changes. The strong repression carried out by the army between April 15 and June 4, 1989 against the demonstrators of the Tian'anmen square triggered this state of disenchantment which had already been present with in 1987 the propaganda against the bourgeois liberalization at the end of the year 1986. In several large Chinese cities, students organized demonstrations to demand more liberty and democracy. Deng Xiaoping led a major crackdown throughout 1987 associating these demonstrations with a bourgeois liberalizing threat. The works are embarrassing because the depictions of the characters are repulsive with a pink, shiny skin, which resembles that of burnt people resembling torn flesh, with faces that look like wax masks, grotesque, dehumanized.

"If you look at the works we painted at that time, you will understand that we preferred above all to paint the things we felt, even if they were ugly and negative, rather than the beautiful, positive things we did not feel. That is why, in my opinion, we have returned to painting authentic and reliable things. Then art has regained all its strength."

Yue Minjun denies an aesthetic painting. He says he doesn't want to make beautiful paintings that make him nauseous. This beauty is non-existent according to him.

"For me, it is essential to paint a shape with which I am perfectly at ease, something that soothes me. People may say "this guy's painting is bad" but for me it's a way of being that's right. I'm not after elegance. What I paint is very common. I consider myself a vulgar performer. This vulgarity is rather well received by the general public because it does not like elegant things either. I'm just adapting to this popular flavor."

The ridiculous and sarcastic laughter is its artistic leitmotiv, allowing an immediate recognition of its author. His frank and massively laughing faces show an overly open mouth with a laugh that lets the teeth glimpse as if in an impeccable alignment of white piano keys, creating a strong visual effort by creating a striking image. This process can approach the close-up technique in cinema with the impact of induced punch. It is used to leave an indelible mark on the visitor and encourage him to reflect on what he observes. The zygomatic are so open that the eyes are closed like shutters. These faces do not look because they have nothing to look at, they have no interest in what can happen. He uses laughter to evoke the tensions of Chinese society. To circumvent censorship, artists who remained in China after 1989 must conform to the propaganda icons of Maoist ideology by painting faces with wild optimism. It is precisely the mask of this forced and hypocritical smile that translates the irony, derision, pain or sarcasm according to the painter's paintings. The constant smile on these faces is a ceremony in response to others except that laughter is not the same for everyone. The use of laughter has more force than looks of hatred in the name of irony. Great Joy, (1993) presents dozens of clones of the artist with his face hilarious standing, his hands behind his back, displaying on order a happiness commissioned by Socialist Realism. If the blue water of David Hockney's luxurious swimming pools has also inspired Yue Minjun, it is to cynically colour the sea where a Chinese drowns in front of a ship of tourists equipped with cameras who greet him joyfully, (Bystander in 2011).

Yue Minjun breaks the lock between the duos of laughter/crying, Democritus/Heraclitus, comedy/tragedy. If tears can only express pain, laughter is much more ambivalent and enigmatic. Tears call for interiority and invite sharing, laughter is externalized and leads to exclusion. This repetitive offensive laugh is intended to confuse. In the first works, the laughter is nuanced, different according to the characters, particular. A personality can be surrounded. The laughter considered as mechanics plated on the living according to Bergson is faulted by Yue Minjun. This insertion of mechanical stiffness in the fluidity of movement does not exist. The artist makes the living disappear behind this mask of laughter which prohibits any sensitivity. This laugh is uniformly identical, leaving no trace of personality. Indeed, by using human figures as a "brick", and no longer as a central element, as the end in itself of the work, the human is shown as a simple means for composition, and it is in this highlighting of an instrumentalization that lies the denunciation of the society in which he lives (and I am not necessarily talking about Chinese society). The human figure is the basis of totalitarianism, not the end; the head becomes the absurd receptacle of something else, not the center of everything. Paintings are the expression of tragedy, pain, scenes of struggle painting in brutal contexts. Being unable to express things directly, it is easier to express oneself by using laughter. The artist expresses painful emotions in a comic style. Faced with a violent and hard world, he opposes a laugh of challenge, of resistance with a wild optimism. This entrenched disenchantment is therefore not translated by an expression of suffering through suffering but by sarcastic gaiety, an attitude common by artists belonging to cynical realism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Minjun

Taken in: France / Île-de-France / Paris / Quartier Saint-Victor (show map)

Taken on: August 11, 2024

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Sets appears in: • 煉丹術...Chinese alchemy

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