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Concept
Yue Minjun
Summary
Yue Minjun (; 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, watercolour and prints. While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese Cynical Realist art movement developed in 1989, Yue rejects this label, but also "doesn't concern himself about what people call him."
Yue was born in 1962 in Daqing, Heilongjiang, China. His family worked on an oil field, and he also taught art in oil school for a short time. In 1980, he graduated from high school, went to Tian Jing National Company. In 1983, he decided to go to He Pei and became an electrician. He was painting and working at the same time, and he could normally paint and work non-stop for 20 days. This life experience could indicate why he paints skin in red. 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 many 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 lived a "nomadic" existence for much of his life, because his family often moved in order to find work on various oil fields. Labeled by critics as a very influential member of the Cynical Realism movement, he found success and praise for his signature images in a variety of including sculpture, water color, and print. The whole country was experiencing the complexities of modernity and postmodernity, breaking down old thoughts and doing something new, very much reflected in the Chinese modern art revolution. This was crucially important for Yue.
Official source
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