Yue Minjun

岳敏君 Yue Minjun
Birth name	岳敏君 Yue Minjun
Born	1962 (Heilongjiang, China)
Nationality	Chinese
Field	Painting, Installation art
Training	Hubei Normal University
Movement	Cynical realism
Works	Execution, Backyard Garden
Influenced	Fang Lijun, Liu Wei

Yue Minjun Art Exhibition. Times Square, New York, 2008

Yue Minjun (Chinese: 岳敏君; born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolor 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."

Early life

Yue Minjun was born in 1962 in the town of Daqing in Heilongjiang, China. Yue's family had been working on oil fields and when Yue was six, his family moved from Daqing Oil Field to Jianghan Oil Field. When he was ten, his family moved to Beijing. He eventually went to Tianjin after high school and moved to Hebei to find education and work. In the 1980s, he started painting portraits of his co-workers and the sea while he was engaged in deep-sea oil drilling. In 1989, he was inspired by a painting by Geng Jianyi at an art show in Beijing, which depicted Geng's own laughing face. In 1990, he eventually moved to Hongmiao in the Chaoyang District, Beijing, which was also home to other Chinese artists. During this period, his style of art developed out of portraits of his bohemian friends from the artists' village. It is important to note that Yue had been living a "nomadic" existence for much of his life, because his family often moved in order to find work.

Artistic career

The roots of Yue Minjun's style can be traced back to the work of Geng Jianyi, which had first inspired Yue. Apart from that, Yue had also studied oil painting in the Hebei Normal University from 1985 to 1989. 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". His self-portraits have been described by theorist Li Xianting as “a self-ironic response to the spiritual vacuum and folly of modern-day China.” 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.

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.

External links

• Yue Minjun at 88MoCCA - The Museum of Chinese contemporary art on the web
• Yue Minjun – Saatchi Gallery
• Yue Minjun at Art Beatus
• Chinese Contemporary Gallery
• Yue Minjun - Sgustok Magazine
• Yue Minjun - Artnet
• gallery of yue minjun
• Yue Minjun at Louis Lannoo Gallery
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