AN UNCOMFORTABLE LAUGHTER

I can’t remember where I first saw Yue Minjun’s work. He’s a very discreet Chinese artist and what we were about to see was his first major retrospective in Europe of some 100 or more pantings at the Cartier Foundation. The title was YUE MINJUN - L’Ombre du Fou Rire - which if anything, intrigued me as «a shadow of tittering laughter» although not a good translation gives some idea that this could be black humor.

On the Rostrum of Tiananmen, 1992
At the beginning his work has individual features but as time goes by, this disappears and all the faces start to resemble his own. 

He depicts himself in improbably, impossible and even so they say, highly poetic situations. I did not see any of the latter. Many are surrealist and probably reveal dreams. Dream is perhaps not the best word for the Mao period but his earlier paintings do not escape this theme and although all the faces maybe laughing, it is very sad. The irony of such a political situation is never far from the eye. Nicky said to me that she could be glued to a painting and especially those in «pink» and there are many of them and yet there was a rejection because of their sadness.
The Sun, 2000
Memory-2, 2000,

Everybody Connects to Everybody, 1997


Great Joy, 199

Overlapping Series-2012-06, 2012,
In his latest period «Overlappings» Yue Minjun even goes so far as to obliterate his own face. I found these works similar to Bacon who I admire immensely. I was glad to escape the enigmatic smile but this distortion is not easy to take either.

Not being able to take photos, these have been taken from Internet. There is a lot to discover about this artist. His work is full of artistic references as he takes great masterpieces of Western art, repaints them with a twist of his own. They escape from his smile and yet they do not escape from political innuendo from my point of view. I doubt if he is everybody's cup of tea and yet there were quite few very young children there. I remarked to Nicky "I wonder how they see his work....." there was no answer!

His video-interview show how discreet he is - his paintings do the rest for him. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzZ-ey7yjzE

Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

CONFLICTS AND ENCOUNTERS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES

Image
Over the years, I have gone on discovering Wifredo Lam. He has been mentioned in different Blog chapters but always within permanent collections. I have to admit today that in the early years, I took one of his paintings for a Picasso….and seeing certain paintings of his today, it didn’t really surprise me. Especially as I learnt that he knew Picasso…This though was a retrospective of his work at the Beaubourg. Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a precursor of a cross-cultural style of painting, infusing Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbolism. He must have been one of the very rare artists who was in contact with all the movements of his time …and all those that I follow. Cubism, surrealism, CoBrA…but he never lost sight of the world around him and took on the struggle to paint the drama of his own country, Cuba. The above photo plunges us at once into the exhibition. Was he an attractive man? I think there are later photos which make him look less brutal….but in my book,
Lire la suite

MY BELOVED PICASSO -I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS -

Image
After 25 years as a museum, it was time to renovate the Picasso site. The « Hotel » as we call it, has quite a history. It is probably, as Bruno Foucart wrote in 1985,  (he is an art historian of 19th century architecture) “the grandest, most extraordinary, if not the most extravagant, of the Parisian houses of the 17th century”. Hotel Salé The Main stair case Another coming down "Picasso" would have liked these lights The building has seen many occupants come and go over the centuries. However, paradoxically, before the place was entrusted to the museum, it was rarely “inhabited”, but instead leased out to various private individuals, prestigious hosts and institutions. And so it became the Picasso museum. The renovations began in 2009 and quite obviously went well over budget and should have opened before the holidays started this year. The political arguments too had to be contended with not to mention the changes in Directors and the big question bei
Lire la suite

THE CHOICE OF ONE OF THE RICHEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD

Image
The exhibition season is very full between January and the French holiday period. I make less and less effort to go and see the « block-busters » and there are some museums which are not easy to get around. The Jacquemart André is one of them. The rooms are so small and when a couple of groups move in, it is virtually impossible to see a picture or move at all. Still I was interested to go and see the Alicia Koplowitz collection. Now I come to think of it, there have been quite a few private collections shown to the public since the end of last year.  Naturally I knew nothing about this woman.  Alicia Koplowitz is very well known in her home country, Spain. Thanks to her company, the Capital Omega Group  a comprehensive financial services company , she has become an important collect er Alicia is is a Spanish business magnate. When her father died, she and her sister inherited Construcciones y Contratas, S.A. (CYCSA), a company founded by her father. She  sold her part of the comp
Lire la suite