L'Ombre du Fou Rire (The Shadow of the Mad Smile)
January 31, 2013 Art-Exhibit-Show-Expo-Gallery-Museum
This is the first major European exhibit of
paintings by Chinese artist Yue Minjun from 1990 to the present:
cinema media writing atelier short story south east Asia pop culture tour travel voyage articles author art journal magazine museum expo gallery exhibit crafts clothing designer small business local manufacture San Francisco Haight street life Paris fashion photo graph show café cool mode style Europe France French China Hong Kong film review movie director act Book Reading literature video icon music Group underground news performance
Everybody Connects to Everybody ... scroll right>>
The Wild Laugh or Mad Smile is a departure from the representation of Chinese people in Maoist Propaganda paintings as smiling politely, revealing no inner other emotions
Minjun invites the viewer to ask questions, to ask what the person in the painting is thinking, to ask why??
Find references to photographing people of the Chinese cultures in the following post on photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, kweejibo stories
By 2007, Yue’s landmark work Execution became the most expensive work by a contemporary Chinese artist at the time, selling for 2.9 million pounds (US$4.66 million) at Sotheby’s London.--Jing Daily, February 2013
The Bystander
In Sky, figures are posed on birds flying west, which symbolizes the next life, possibly a better one... this was painted at the death of his father ... scroll right>> for whole picture
In Gweong Gweong, a representation of the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in 1949 :
the background is filled with uniformed youngster in Tiananmen Square
there are images of military aircraft paralleled by horizontal bodies of persons which is meant to evoke the Chinese Communist idea of products being made from the "skin of the people". This is not meant in the literal sense; in a sense, the soul of the people live on in what they produce...
Other Works by Yue Minjun in the same Exhibit :
Isolated Island, A.D. 3009, Massacre at Chios, Death of Marat, Freedom Leading the People, The Artists and his Friends, Tiananmen Remains, Mao Xinglan