Artist: Yue Minjun

Biography
1962 - Born in Daqing, Heilongjiang, China
1985 - Graduated from the Oil Painting Department at Hebei Normal University, China
Lives and works in Beijing

In an interview, Yue Minjun revealed that Geng Jianyi’s The Second Situation--a single human face that filled the entire picture plane with an expression of laughter--inspired his toothy, smiling faces.



Geng Jianyi
The Second Situation
1987
Oil on Canvas





"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. 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."

"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."


"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. 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."

The use of the same recurring character runs the risk of becoming monotonous and boring. Yue Minjun defends his works, stating, "the figure is like an actor: it can act for me any story I give it. It is flexible."

The Pope
1997
Oil on Canvas

This work sold for $4,439,700 at Sotheby's London on June 21, 2007 - a record high price for contemporary Chinese art at the time.

Execution
1995
Oil on Canvas

This work sold for $5,964,700 at Sotheby's London on October 12, 2007 - the record high price at auction for this artist.