The Political Pop art movement that emerged in China in the 1980s, combined western pop art with socialist realism in order to create art that questioned the political and social climate of a rapidly changing China. The movement also was a creative means by artists to come to terms with the Cultural Revolution. Great Criticism - Coca Cola (Green), 2006 is an excellent example of Wang Guangyi at his best and would be a wonderful addition to any modern art collection!
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Sunday, October 22, 2023
Great Criticism - Coca Cola (Green), 2006 by Wang Guangyi
Untitled (Smile-ism No. 1), 2006 by Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun studied oil painting at the Hebei Normal University and graduated in 1989. In June of that year China was rocked by student-led demonstrations and their suppression on Tiananmen Square. “My mood changed at that time,” he said. “I was very down. I realized the gap between reality and the ideal, and I wanted to create my own artistic definition, whereby there could be a meeting with social life and the social environment. The first step,” he added, “was to create a style to express my feelings accurately, starting with something that I knew really well —myself.”
Close up of the Yue Minjun pencil signature.
Minjun's now iconic laugh was inspired by a painting that he saw by another Chinese artist, Geng Jianyi, in which a smile is deformed to mean the opposite of what it normally means. “In China there’s a long history of the smile,” Mr. Yue said. “There is the Maitreya Buddha who can tell the future and whose facial expression is a laugh. Normally there’s an inscription saying that you should be optimistic and laugh in the face of reality."
"So I developed this painting where you see someone laughing,” Yui said. “At first you think he’s happy, but when you look more carefully, there’s something else there. There were also paintings during the Cultural Revolution period, those Soviet-style posters showing happy people laughing,” he continued. “But what’s interesting is that normally what you see in those posters is the opposite of reality.” Yue made the decision to paint himself as the smiling figure giving him a greater margin for freedom of expression. “I’m not laughing at anybody else, because once you laugh at others, you’ll run into trouble, and can create obstacles,” he said. “This is the way to do it if you want to make a parody of the things that are behind the image,” he stated.
The Cynical Realism art movement that emerged in China began in Beijing in the 1990s, and has become one of the most popular Chinese contemporary art movements in mainland China. The movement arose as Chinese artists broke away from the collective mindset of the Cultural Revolution in the pursuit of individual expression. The resulting works of art focus on social and political issues that are transformed using humor. There is also a post-ironic take on the transition that Chinese society has undergone from Communism through industrialization and modernity.
Friday, March 24, 2023
I-S LXXa (Homage to the Square) by Josef Albers, 1970
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
La Primavera (Spring), 1988 by Sam Francis
Friday, March 10, 2023
Joseph (From Men in the Cities), 2000 by Robert Longo
Robert Longo's "Men in the Cities" series is composed of writhing dancing figures in space. For the series, Longo photographed his friends lurching backward, collapsing forward, or sprawled on an invisible pavement. After enlarging the pictures using a projector, Longo and his assistant drew them in sizes ranging from three-quarter scale to larger than life-size. In the process, the poses were often dramatized and their attire was converted into a black-and-white business formal. The idea for this work came, in 1975, from a still image in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film The American Soldier. According to art critic Los Angeles Times writer William Wilson, the pictures recall nothing so much as the final scene in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. About four years passed before Longo turned the vision of a man shot in the back into a monumental series of drawings.
"Joseph" is a large scale work by Robert Longo, with the sheet size being a huge seventy inches tall. The image shows a young man whose left leg has given way, as his knee buckles causing his left foot to lift and twist. Joseph's left shoulder is thrust back from his body, as is his left arm. His right shoulder and arm are in front of him and blocked by his body from the viewer. The movement is sudden and impactful, as exemplified by his black neck tie flailing in the air above him. Joseph's head is tilted back further conveying a very violent and unnatural human pose being caused by an unknown force. An absolutely stunning work by Robert Longo and a major addition to any art collection!
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Los Alamitos, from Race Track Series, 1972 by Frank Stella
Frank Stella's race track series from 1972 consists of three horizontal prints, each named after a horse racing track in California or Mexico. Comparing horse racing to the art world he says, "Racing is so much nicer than the art world, where everything is driven by opinion. At the racetrack, it doesn't matter what people think. At the end of the race, one horse crosses the finish line first, and that horse is the best horse. It's a lot simpler."
The concentric ellipse shaped color forms of the race track series resemble an simplified aerial view of race tracks. The first print in the series is "Del Mar," named after the racetrack in San Diego, CA. The light color values and hues are reminiscent of the the arid environment and coastal beach climate of the classic southern California way of life. "Los Alamitos," named after the racetrack in Orange County is a picture composed of shifts in color and light values. The oblong ellipses generate a pleasant and calming composition. The pale violet is surrounded by light values of blue and green and the black middle ellipse allows for the colors to pulse in a calming resonating vibrancy. The last in the series is "Agua Caliente," named for the dog racing track in Agua Caliente Casino and Resort in Mexico. The work is composed of only three ellipses and is the most bold of the grouping. An optical effect is created with a shade of green in the center surrounded by complimentary red color values. All three prints are large in size, being eighty inches long. It is this large format that allows for the works to be read as both important and to have their immediate presence further enhanced.
Friday, February 10, 2023
Special Assortment, 2004 by Peter Anton
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