Me-craze:

SELF-IMAGE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE PAINTING

Zheng Jiayin

ABSTRACT

After the downfall of Communist hero Mao and his ideology, people were left with a sudden void, no longer having anyone or anything worthwhile to believe in. Increasingly, new generations of artists started turning inwards to represent on canvas their individual psyches in relation to the now jaded society and their political past. Epic depictions of selflessness abundant in the Cultural Revolution are in effect replaced by micro-narratives revolving the individual. The trend of using the artists own image to create art is evident in mediums across the board, but this paper centres on painters, and in particular, what painting the self means to three different artists Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, and Yang Shaobin.

SELF-RIDICULING ANTI-HERO

In Maos famous 1942 Yanan talks on Literature and Art, he defined art as purely a conduit for political message, designed to serve the whole of society, not the individual. During his era, socialist realist art was the model art form taught to artists-in-training such as Fang Lijun. However, by the time of 1989 after the Tiananmen Incident put an explosive end to all individual ideals,
Fang Lijun, prolific self-painter

such realist styles and techniques were subverted to

become a personal form of expression for disenchanted artists.1 At this time, Fang Lijun began painting himself as an army of bald and bored characters involved in the oddest, most meaningless situations lumbering around, swimming, floating through air.

In essence, the pursuit of social ideals in art before the 1980s has been replaced by the self-conscious expression of individualist values in 1990s art. Leng Lin, 2000. Shi wo/Its Me. In John Clark (ed.), Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium. Hong Kong: New Media, 1424.

Fang Lijun, Series II, No. 2 (1992). Oil on canvas. 200x200cm.

Series II No. 2, for instance, shows a central figure that appears to be part yawning, part howling, against a row of almost identical glassy-eyed figures silently trudging behind. The painting is permeated with an ambiguous mood the characters are dressed in plain attire that denies categorization, and the flat background of endless azure skies points to no specific location. Overall there is an overwhelming sense of ennui and existential void. This deliberate negation of meaning in Fangs work is perhaps its central meaning, as an exercise of purging the value systems that had shaped him and his social reality. His selfimages, lackadaisical and directionless, satirize the revolutionary heroes of social realist propaganda that had instructed citizens the right way to conduct themselves. Maos maxim of selflessness towards the collective interests of the proletariat is rendered hollow here by a display of life that has become meaningless, purposeless and disorientated2. Fang understood that in these times, to express a serious, authentic statement in hopes of change, or to clash head-on with authorities, would be very naive. The only admirable attitude is to play the fool, engage in grey-humoured cynicism and by mocking yourself, you mock the system. Fang says this of the current situation: To be an intellectual, one needs to hold independent thoughts and views. But in China, intellectuals serve the government and are used just as a tool. So how can they have independent thought? The tool must either die, or hide what he
2

Phrases from Maos Little Red Book

thinks. While appearing ambivalent, his repeated paintings of his own image in fact encode a quiet resistance of the mind against official discourse, as well as an awareness of individual experience and what is being done to him. Such resistance should by no means be read as political dissent3, but as an internal measure through which he maintains his subjectivity and ability to think for himself. By playing the fool on the outside, he keeps himself from becoming a real fool. A fool is someone still trusting after being taken in a hundred times. We'd rather be lost, bored, crisis-ridden misguided punks than be cheated. Don't even consider trying the old methods on us, we'll riddle your dogma with holes, then discard it in a rubbish heap. 4

THE SELF AS A COMMERCIAL BRAND

Yue Minjun is another illustrious practitioner of realistic self-portraiture, producing serial images of himself that feature the trademark face-splitting laugh and eyes tightly clenched from hilarious strain. This exaggerated self was first created as Yue Minjun
Yue Minjuns iconic laughing mug

searched for a style that could accurately portray his inner feelings. And what to do it better than with a medium he

knew really well himself? In an early interview with critic Li Xianting, Yue Minjun said: "I began to work on images of people that helped to relieve the unhappiness in my heart. Before I produced these people, I felt my art lacked power. Art should be an expression of one's particular feelings and should be direct and deep. So I drew one person, and then added another and another until there were crowds of them. Then I felt my emotions were fully expressed." As evident, this tendency towards simple, direct expression and the use of multiplication to generate visual force was there right from the start. By drawing on the vibrant colour scheme of folk art and distilling complex meanings into simplistic compositions, Yue is able to create works that appeal and are accepted by the broad public.
3

Cynical realism is essentially a de-politicized art. Artists assume no ideological stance, but state that it is impossible for them to avoid politics completely it is embedded in their very being. 4 Fang Lijun, 1992

Over time, Yue Minjun's self-images began to take on features of a commercial brand. The wide-toothed grin makes each painting instantly recognisable, and most tellingly, his characters always possess a frozen, plastic-like skin quality, which brings to mind shiny plastic figurines found in mega toy stores. By putting these images through ceaseless repetition, Yue engineers an atmosphere of hollowness and superficiality. Yue seeks to sell himself as an idol, but instead of disseminating his icon through television and movies, as per normal, he does so using the traditional medium of painting.5

Yue Minjun. Ninety-nine Idol series (1996). (Right) No. 73. Oil on canvas. 25.5x20.5cm.

These key concepts are cleverly illustrated in a set of oil paintings titled Ninety-nine Idol Series. On ninety-nine canvases, Yue Minjun paints his own face with a stiffened guffaw and eyes tightly shut from slightly varying angles. Many of these faces are extreme closeups which claustrophobically occupy every available space on the canvas, allowing us to play the voyeur and observe minute details of their powerful, vivid expressions. With no narrative contexts or even the rest of the body depicted here, Yue Minjun brings us exclusively to the laughing face that made him so popular. Repeating the same visage ninety-nine times without any narrative setting may seem like overkill, but this is probably intended by Yue to imbed it deep in us, so that it could perform its function as an idol a life force which influences our lives and regulates our conduct by setting itself as an example.

'Creation of a Superficial Idol', a dialogue between Li Xianting and Yue Min Jun, 2002

With the embrace of the gaudy aesthetic of superficial idols, Yues self-images are far from fulfilling traditional aesthetic standards of poetry and sublime beauty. Bright pink skin, crimson lips, a long row of perfectly white teeth all of these are reminiscent of advertising prints and consumer images driven by kitsch, vulgar tastes. However, art critic Pi Li contends that this is what distinguishes him from the rest. The biggest difference between other contemporary artists and Yue Minjun, is that while other artists make boring moments sublime and poetic he resolutely employs a mode of degradation and adulteration of the concepts of sublime and poetic.

RED-HUED VIOLENCE: EXORCISING DEMONS WITHIN

Self-trained artist Yang Shaobin had gone through difficult struggles to find his voice, especially in the early days when he tried to fit into the group of Cynical Realists. It was only much later that he discovered his own naturalist-expressive red violence style. In 1991, when Yang Shaobin arrived in Yuanmingyuan village, he found himself among a tight-knit community of painters who influenced one another and observed a collective consciousness. Cynical Realism was huge at that time, with Fang Lijun as its
Yang Shaobin, cynical-realistturned-expressionist

natural head. Yang Shaobin admits that he, too, was a follower: "Fang Lijuns aura was too strong, it was his thing, "Cynical

Realism", it had nothing to do with me". His works of this period were often characterised as lesser imitations of Liu Weis playful style, his technique still undeveloped, almost na ve. For this there is only one reason: he was still at the stage of regurgitating general concepts pertaining to the movement, and had yet to synchronize his individual experience and judgment with his method. Yang Shaobin eventually came to terms with his incompatibility with Cynical Realisms visual language due to inherent personality differences Cynical Realists dealt with problems with humour and mischievous anti-sociability, but Yang was much more serious by nature, so his tension and anxiety contrasted awkwardly with the cool nonchalance he

was trying to portray. Besides, the central issue in his work violence was something he could not shrug off by means of humour, so the only way would be to approach it head-on, no laughter, no jokes.

Yang Shaobin. Untitled No. 15 (2000). Oil on canvas. 160x140cm.

In 2000, Yang Shaobin created Untitled No. 15, where two mangled figures surface from a cloud-like shape. This insistent focus on violence is likely a result of Yangs past occupation as a police officer, where personal sightings and complicity in brutal acts made him highly sensitive to blood and aggression. To Yang, the images that haunt him are those of violence. The figures he paints are based loosely on his own image, and in doing so, Yang Shaobin implicates himself as a representative of humans capability of committing violence against the self and others. Here, there are no signs of a realistic setting, rather, the figures are suspended in blank space, giving unadulterated attention to the violent impulse as our primitive human characteristic emerging from within. In this work, Yang's brush strokes appear to be slapped onto the canvas, as if the characters (himself) are being subjected to a painful beating. To reinforce the image of injury infliction, blood dribbles downwards from their open wounds. On the canvas, colours fade into one another in seamless exchanges, out of which Yang Shaobin builds up the two

heads. Overall, the atmosphere created is very evocative, fantastic and horrific, with a strong sense of the works painterly quality. Red is a potent colour to use here, particularly because of the multiple meanings it carries in China. Red represents luck, prosperity, success and marriage. It is also the colour of Chinas national flag and communism. It hints seductively at love, passion, danger and power. Therefore, Yangs choice of such a densely symbolic colour, along with his masterful treatment of the figures and paint, makes his work a powerful statement on historical and cultural violence, as well as basic human nature.

REFERENCES

1. Wu Hung. Making History: Wu Hung On Contemporary Art. Timezone 8 Limited, 2008. 2. Michael Sullivan. Art And Artists Of Twentieth Century. University of California Press, 1996. 3. Geremie R.Barme et al. Chinas New Art, Post 1989. Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1993. 4. Leng Lin. Shi wo/Its Me. In John Clark (ed.), Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium. Hong Kong: New Media, 2000. 5. Peggy Wang. Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. 6. Liu Chun. A History of Chinese Oil Paintings. Beijing: China Youth Publishing House, 2005. 7. Lu Peng ed. Fang Lijun: Thread of Time. Beijing: Culture And Art Publishing House, 2009. 8. Yue Minjun. A Few Words Behind My Works, unpublished manuscript, 2005. 9. Li Xianting. Post-89 essay, 1998. 10. Pi Li. As Mad as You. 11. Diana Yeh. The Wisdom of Fools. 12. Andrew Solomon. Their Irony, Humor (and Art) Can Save China, New York Times, 1993. 13. David Barboza and Lynn Zhang. Why Do Artists Say: Look At Me, Artzine China.