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An interview with Yue Minjun by Karen Smith
Yue Minjun is a central figure in the generation of creatively attuned, self-styled individuals that emerged in the early 1990s. Its members were ultimately responsible for driving contemporary art practice in China into its important second phase, which has run from the early 1990s to the present. (This phase followed the first wave, which began in 1985 with the New Art Movement.) Today, almost everything that constitutes the bedrock of contemporary art in China, its ambitions and its motifs, its contradictions, focus, and forms, can be traced back to the decade of the 1990s and the handiwork of this early second-wave generation. Yue Minjun joined the “chorus” in 1991 when he moved to Beijing. A few years later, he had won himself a leading role.
Although as a young boy he was already drawn to art, Yue Minjun—unlike many of his peers—was sent to work before he could apply to one of the nation’s art academies. It took him a bit of time to navigate the system, but his perseverance in persuading his supervisors to let him go eventually paid off. In 1985, he embarked on a year-long course in the oil painting department of Hebei Normal University. Upon graduation, he moved to Beijing to join the first “settlers” in the Yuanmingyuan area, named for the old imperial summer palace nearby. Located in the suburbs in the northwest corner of the city, it was rapidly shaping up as an artists’ village.
It was not entirely a random event or location. In the early 1990s, this swath of rural land, which borders the northern edge of the capital’s university district, was rezoned as part of an urban redevelopment area. The city proper was preparing to expand in order to accommodate the accelerating level of residential and commercial development that Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform policy (first implemented in 1978) was finally precipitating. By the end of the 1990s, it would lead to an explosion in real estate development and a bubbling property market.
Against this tide of change, small agricultural holdings on the fringe of Beijing were becoming less profitable and harder to work by the day. It was here that an initial, largely unsanctioned phase of residential building work began. The farmers who formerly worked the now-decommissioned farmland began to erect cheap, almost prefab housing in the vernacular style: small buildings with self-contained courtyards. Although by today’s standards, the rents sound low—a couple hundred yuan a month, with seven yuan to the U.S. dollar—in the early 1990s it was an owners’ market. Landlords could charge more or less whatever the market would stand, and given the artists’ desire for independence, in their case, it stood for quite a lot. Even so, the cost of living was generally low, so once the rent was paid, artists didn’t need much cash in hand to support their lifestyles. Yue Minjun and his colleagues were the first group of “independent” individuals willing to give self-sufficiency a go—a huge step for any person in China, where, at the time, everyone’s life was governed by the work unit to which they were assigned. The work unit provided all basic necessities, including the ration coupons required to buy even basic foodstuffs like rice and oil. In early 1990, the first artist pioneers had moved into Yuanmingyuan. By 1994, just a few years later, the village was home to more than a hundred artists. Yue Minjun was one of the enviable handful who enjoyed not only a growing reputation and critical acclaim but representation abroad (Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong), and had several successful exhibitions to his credit.
Since that time, Yue Minjun’s career has gone from strength to strength. Today, he is widely acclaimed as one of China’s leading painters—one of the four modern-day Chinese masters known affectionately and humorously as the “si da jingang,” or the four cornerstones of contemporary Chinese art, an elite which includes Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, and Zhang Xiaogang (although there’s a larger group of contenders hot on their heels).
Here, on the occasion of his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., Yue Minjun talks about his life and work. He describes how he came to choose the contemporary end of the creative spectrum, how he arrived at his signature character with the ludicrous laughing face, and how he worked this motif into a special series of watercolor works on paper. He speaks with Karen Smith, a curator and art critic specializing in Chinese contemporary art, at his studio in Beijing.
Karen Smith (KS): When did the big smile, the laughing face, first appear in your work?
Yue Minjun (YMJ): You can find it in the early paintings I created as far back as 1990. At that time, before I arrived at Yuanmingyuan—the artists’ village—a large exhibition of contemporary art made by the new generation of Chinese artists was held at our main national gallery of arts in Beijing. It was called China / Avant Garde. One painting in particular made a great impression on me—Geng Jianyi’s huge painting titled The Second State. It was huge because it was made up of four separate panels lined up in a row, each one depicting a single human face that filled the entire picture plane with an expression of laughter. At first, it made me think of the Maitreya Buddha, which is a smiling, pot-bellied Buddha. His smile is meant to remind people to hold dear the truth of Buddhist teachings in all the goals we set ourselves in life; to remind us that even in the face of conflict and adversity, and injustice, we should not lose control, nor give in to negative feelings.
Geng Jianyi’s painting was the antithesis of all that is positive about the Maitreya Buddha’s expression and symbolism. The four smiles in The Second State spoke of a world where things were not right, in which meaning had been inverted, and expressions turned upside down. Clearly, Geng intended to remind us that nothing is as it appears. For according to a clinical definition of a smile, his faces were smiling, but that’s not how it appears to the human heart and mind. So, this “second” state is not the first state, meaning the familiar form of the smile, but an inversion of it, a distortion, which makes it about as far from being a real smile like the one the Buddha wears, as it is possible to imagine.
For my generation, the expression itself was not entirely alien. We were born into a bitterly frustrating era, infested with contradictions and complexities. Every one of us had a private sense that our existence was not entirely happy—yet we could not say exactly what happiness might be like, or how we’d know when we found it. We also instinctively felt that despite being given an opportunity to assert our independence [in being able to move to the Yuanmingyuan Artists’ Village of their own free will], as long as we were marginalized by society for our choice of lifestyle, our desire to explore individual creative impulses, and our inability to conform to social convention, then we could never be entirely happy. The Buddha’s smile suggests that in the future things will get better, that a future life could be beautiful. Tomorrow will be better. But against the reality of the times, which was so entirely chaotic and strange, it was hard to hold onto that faith.
So this is how it all began: I was thinking that the image of a laughing face ought to be perceived as an assurance that things would get better: that a future life could be as rewarding and meaningful as the Buddha promised. Geng Jianyi had shown that this might not be the case—at least, that such an expression deserved close scrutiny. I decided that my laughing faces would be my own personal reminder of our situation, and which would be easily understood by people around me, and ordinary folk, too, who had learned to laugh because they understood that any other response was futile.
KS: I think people will be wondering if everybody in China felt the same way at that time. Am I right in thinking that the vast majority of the Chinese people lived, worked, and existed under the same sort of circumstances—that most would belong to the same work unit their entire working lives, and therefore follow a similarly linear existence?
YMJ: That was more or less the case.
KS: How did you get started? You have mentioned that at that point, the big smile was already beginning to establish itself as a motif in your work.
YMJ: In the beginning I experimented with a range of styles, including those of other artists I knew who were living in the village. None of them felt quite right. I found myself looking more at the artists themselves, reflecting on the nature of the life we were living and the personalities that were contributing to it. This whole energy said something about the times and the aspirations of the artists, but also about the complex emotions that were part and parcel of our independent status. I began to make these artists the subject of my paintings. Initially, it wasn’t clear where my instinct would lead me, but that changed when I decided to paint myself. Again, at first it was intuitive, but it was a conscious move away from depicting recognizable personalities towards finding a form that could express my ideas. The smile was the first step. Using my own features was the second. I could take more liberties with my own features, and from the first painting, I realized that this was something I could really work with.
The next breakthrough came when I made a painting of multiple images of myself, all in a line, each one as dumb-looking as the next. I discovered that by using one figure and repeating it, I had created a generic being, like a cartoon character. It represented a caricature of reality, of human experience, and could be used to narrate stories of our experiences and the situations we encounter. The activities and scenes I set him in would be familiar to most viewers, yet imbued with an unexpected twist that would require a more studied look at the painting. I wouldn’t make it all hard: by using the same figure over and over again, retaining him even where the work went through different stages of development, I could shift the focus to the story, and use him and his “adventures” to narrate a series of different messages. That’s how “he” acquired a life of his own, and is now a motif, or rather a character, that is recognizable to all people. Being acquainted with him, they don’t come up against a barrier to looking at the work and subliminally ingesting the message. There’s an interest in seeing his latest antics that softens the idea that my art might be exclusive or beyond their understanding. This aspect of his existence became very important for me. It governed the nature of my style of painting, because the act of applying paint to canvas was primarily about illustrating a situation, rather than expressing a psychological mood.
KS: I guess that’s why there’s a constant smoothness to the surface of the paintings.
YMJ: Yes, that’s why.
KS: It seems that by the end of the 1990s this motif had undergone an enormous change. At the same time, for the greater part of those years, this image was being read by local critics and foreigners,in largely superficial terms, as a political statement on life in China. Not everyone looked at it in the context of a bigger picture, as your means of satirizing human existence, relationships, and the situations we all experience—albeit in slightly different guises, courtesy of the cultural and political frameworks in which we exist. How did you see it?
YMJ: At first, the smile might seem like a simple cynical device, but as with many well-known cartoon characters, the facial expression never changes too much. Even when there’s a smile, or a burst of anger, only a small, relevant part of the face moves. So when you are confronted by such a character, you are already trained to look beyond the features to the essence of the character, and the way you understand it to interact with the world. The actual drawing of the figure doesn’t express much of this essence directly: “he” has to go out into the world and engage with his life. It’s by seeing the stories he acts in, as they unfold, that we understand the attitude he encapsulates—or in truth, the attitude that the creator injects into his creation.
Having repeated the form of this figure in paintings again and again, it’s a question I often get asked: am I, in fact, repeating myself? Shouldn’t I try to do something more with the image? But it occurred to me that as people get older, and as they acquire more experience, they see things quicker, and more clearly. The repeated use of a visual motif creates a sense of familiarity, which in turn allows viewers to go beyond the superficial aspects and engage with the specific situation in which I have placed him. So the work is really about bigger questions relating to human nature than about referencing temporal events. After all, things happen every day; there’s always some incident unfolding somewhere that seems important at the time. But time is also a great leveler. It puts things into perspective. Human nature, however, is a far more compelling subject. In the grand scheme of things, it changes little from generation to generation. We think we evolve but the emotions and responses are innate, and beyond all the psychology we subject them to.
For me, each series of works is like writing a play and mapping out a storyboard of crucial scenes from the plot. Much of the inspiration for these “plots” comes from my own frame of mind as I deal with the society around me, and from the moods this engenders, or incidents I witness. Many compositions can be traced back to scenes that I have observed unfolding around me.
The most important thing for an artist to know is how to move forward with the work. Or else you paint a few paintings like this, a few like that…and then what do you do? So for me the biggest meaning is that the figure is like an actor: it can act for me any story I give it. It is flexible.
KS: A recent series played with the idea of hats, and all the professions, social status and identities that hats signify. What inspired that?
YMJ: My interest in the hat was piqued at the time of the Olympic Games in Athens, when various hats were used to denote the ranking of the medal winners. They were all based around the shaped of an olive. It was a harmless idea, intended to promote the fact of the games being held in Greece, where the whole concept of the games originated. It was also rather amusing. It made me think about the origin of hats, and how the symbolism of “the hat” evolved. Why was it that this particular accessory became the sign of a job, a social position? Or stranger still, how a hat could signify nationality, or an ethnic group. Today most societies don’t require people to wear hats. Those we see most commonly are part of a uniform that goes with a job—construction worker, policeman, soldier, nurse. People who choose to wear hats today usually use them to make statements about their personalities, so the hat becomes an extension of the wearer’s image. No one chooses a hat lightly: it has to be right. Unless it goes with the job—then you have no choice.
So the placing of various hats on the figures in this series of paintings is about highlighting the role of the hat in asserting and reinforcing social differentials, and my sense of the absurdity of the ideas that govern the sociopolitical protocol surrounding hats.
KS: Can you talk a little about the sculpture you have produced and how that work relates to other areas of your art production?
YMJ: I began making sculpture in 1998. I had been invited to make some work for the Venice Biennale in 1999, and made a trip to look at the space. I discovered it was rather different from the kind of spaces in which I had exhibited before. First, each of the halls seemed to be enormous. That made it extremely difficult to think about a work on canvas. It was almost impossible to control the space, or take possession of the space, with paintings, unless one created a single monumental composition right across the wall, which would have had to be almost twenty meters in length to make any sense. But on that scale it ran the risk of becoming simply a wall decoration. The next thought naturally was to create a physical object; a sculpture or installation would clearly work better within this environment. Sculpture can be placed anywhere in the space that works; it gives the exhibition a different rhythm for viewers. As a painter, I am not usually required to get involved with hanging the paintings for a show, so this was both a challenge and a pleasure. My generation was never really afforded that kind of experience: to be given a large space to work in that you could organize as you wanted. Anyway, it was this opportunity in 1999 that made me start to think about working with three-dimensional forms, and how the sculptures were conceived.
The image of the figure brought to the sculptures is exactly the same as used in the paintings. As had happened with my use of the figure in the early days, when I started repeating it, the same approach seemed logical for the sculptures. Here, I was drawn to making a visual parallel with the extraordinary, 8,000-strong Qin Dynasty terracotta warriors (221-206 B.C.): hundreds of figures that all appear to be exactly the same, but with minute differences, rather like human beings. And to create a contemporary “army” of my figures that would just stand there and confront people…what would viewers feel? It was an interesting question for me. So I started out with a huge ambition to create 1,000 figures, similar to the volume of the warriors, but having produced a first batch of 25, all in the same pose, I realized what a mammoth scale this was about. Each of them is just a little bit bigger than me, so they take up quite a lot of space. I began to worry what I’d do with 1,000 of them. Where would I store them? How could they be protected? In the end, I cut the final number back to 250, which means that there are ten sets of 25, each set comprising figures in a different position—some just stand, some have their hands behind their head, some carry flag poles, others stand on one leg…
KS: From 1991 through today, what is the greatest success you feel you have achieved?
YMJ: It is in being able to develop a strong sense of what it is that I am doing, and clarity in what I wish to express. That is essential, and it requires a lot of hard work to achieve it.
KS: In the 1990s, it was a huge and brave step to become an independent artist. Today, Chinese artists are no longer marginalized. Their position has shifted from fringe member to leading figure in society: they are the new society’s celebrities. Previous political adversaries have laid down their “arms,” even to the point of supporting exhibitions such as your solo show in the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen in 2006. Of course, not everyone needs to have an opponent to goad them on, but surely a good punching bag helps. In present times, who or what plays this role?
YMJ: In the 1990s, society was not so open, but then neither were we. Today we have access to so much more information. The type of work artists are creating, as well as the range of subject matter that they are working with is increasingly pluralistic. It’s impossible to hold on to the simple perceptions we started out with, or fall into the trap of making impulsive responses to situations—political, social or economic—the moment they happen. An artist needs to speak beyond his time.
The demands placed on the artist today are growing at quite a rate. This makes it hard for emerging artists to find their place, and to settle down to evolving their thoughts and individual styles. Culture today in China cannot be a simple extension of traditional Chinese culture—something as rudimentary as adding a new stroke to a masterwork of ink painting, or using the same standards and criteria to evaluate a work. Having said this, Chinese artists seem much more mature—perhaps because they can now confidently go about their work without having to worry about the difficulties of showing it, or even selling pieces. It’s a much healthier arena for contemporary artists in China today, which means they can focus on exploring new ground, with new ideas and new philosophies that push each generation into new territory. |
