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  • 作家相片Zhang Weiyi
    • 2020年8月18日
    • 讀畢需時 7 分鐘

Mixed secrets behind Liu Ye’s Smoke


Liu Ye, Smoke, 2001-02 ©Liu Ye


In October of last year, Liu Ye’s monumental opus Smoke was sold for HK$52.18m (US$6.65m) at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong which has broken his previous auction record (“Next-Gen Buyers Drive Successful Hong Kong Sales Series”, 2019). Smoke was created in 2001-2002 which is the first work from Liu Ye’s carmine series of three paintings. The second is Gun which resides in M+ Sigg Collection and the third one Sword was sold for HK$42.68m at Sotheby's Hong Kong. In this epic canvas, a little girl dressed in a green-coloured skirt with a green headwear is standing on the top of a mountain smoking calmly. Dense forests of green pine around her. And behind the girl, an enormous fired red sun is rising and the light reflecting off her face as well as the whole body. The image in the painting is lonely and the field of vision is vast, which makes the painting more historical, similar to an epic segment, showing an extraordinary comprehensiveness and the beauty of quietness.

Liu Ye, Sword, 2001-02 ©Liu Ye

Liu Ye, Gun, 2001-02 ©Liu Ye


Liu Ye, a Chinese contemporary artist who is born in Beijing in 1964 known for his typical childlike figures with plain faces. Liu Ye was raised in an open family: his father was a children’s writer, while his mother was a Chinese teacher (Liu Ye, n.d.). Under the wave of the Cultural Revolution Liu Ye spent his boyhood, but he was lucky than most children of his generation as his parents hiding all their books to allow him to read in which illustrations and contents all have great influences upon Liu Ye’s later creation. With a special red-coloured childhood memory, Liu Ye painted many pictures with red elements that not only implies an unforgettable memory but also a particular historical era. Smoke is no exception.


The Red


The initial inspiration of flaming sun in Smoke came from surrealist artist René Magritte’s celebrated painting of Le Banquet. Similar to but not the same as the round red sun in Le Banquet, the sun in Smoke is much bigger which aims to make diffuse feelings rather than a simple expression of the subject. It marginalizes all conceptions of time and space to restore the complete freedom of abstraction (Sotheby’s, 2020). This suggests that Liu Ye tried to dismiss Surrealistic restraint and pursuing Minimalism. Under the gold and red sunray, the whole picture seems to pull the viewer back to the revolutionary time filled with red colour. At that time, there is passion, poverty, hope and also despair, everyone from that era has his own feeling. But for children, red was purely a colour that represents their childhood instead of the colour of a dictatorial government. As Liu Ye once said: “I grew up in a world that was covered in red – the red sun, the red flag, the red scarves.” (Zhu, 2015)

René Magritte, Le Banquet, 1958, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago © René Magritte


When it comes to red time, the most typical movement is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 until 1976 which happens to be the childhood time of Liu Ye’s generation. Intending to stamp out all capitalist as well as traditional elements, the Cultural Revolution made Mao Zedong return to the centre of the political power (Cultural Revolution, n.d.). Red means the colour of revolution which chairman Mao used to stand for the justice of the communist party. Many revolutionary slogans during that time contain the word of red, such as “Long live the red terror!” and  “First we will make China Maoist from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red...And then the whole universe.”(as cited in the Cultural Revolution and Red Guards, n.d.). Red Guards at that time were composed of students supported by Mao to destroy historical antique and criticize dissidents. Growing up in such a complex and chaotic social environment, the colour of red is the girl in the picture, spending every day under a sky reddened by the sun. No one knows if she is happy, but all children at her age are the same as her, they have firmly believed that this is what their childhood should be like.


Little Girl in Green Skirt


A part of Liu Ye‘s Smoke, 2001-02 ©Liu Ye


Many of Liu Ye’s works appear the image of a little girl in green skirt especially for paintings produced since the 21stcentury. This is to benefit from his experience of life in both Chinese and the western country. Not even finished his study as an undergraduate from the CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts) in Beijing, he went to Berlin University of the Arts and received his Master of Fine Arts in 1994 (Liu, 2007). His paintings are deeply influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s lines and colours and also learned from the painting style of Belgian artist René Magritte. Prior to the year of 2000, he directly or indirectly added elements from Mondrian’s paintings in numerous of his works. He fully made use of the surreal technique of painting to express his unique understanding of abstract art. The green skirt in Smoke was the first trial Liu Ye add the green in his painting which would be never seen in Mondrian’s abstract paintings. Through this work, Liu Ye started to loosen the bonds of superficial influences from Mondrian and entered into a world of freer personal expression. Besides, green is another classical colour of revolution which is what the colour of revolutionary uniforms is. Coordinated with prosperous and greenwood trees related to traditional Chinese painting skills under girl’s feet, increasing the sense of Chinese traditionalism. Thereby, Smoke has distilled the essence of surrealism in form while infusing the spiritual connotation of the Eastern culture as well as ideology.


Moreover, the little girl in Smoke can be regarded as a rewriting of fairy tales that echoing the childhood of Liu Ye’s generation. Liu Ye once remarked: “I always feel that I live in the world of fairy tales every moment.” (Liu, 1997, p.42) This indicates not just his time of early time but a habitat of a deep soul as well as a constant mind. For children, it is easy to persuade them of the realness in fairy-tale stories. However, adults like Liu Ye, they clearly understand that the world of tales originated from a sort of fiction and inevitably process memories or stories through adultness (Jones, 2001, p.177). What Liu Ye has done was to interpret his comprehension of the world as a child but depends on the adults’ perspective. In a nutshell, Liu Ye's technique is not such complex. He just remembers something and depicting them. As Saint Exupery wrote at the beginning of his book The Little Prince, “All grown-ups were children first (But few of them remember it)”. The figure of the girl in this painting is a reflection of this generation’s childhood as well as an opposite to others’ childhood without social disruption.


The Smoke and Smoking


The intention of "smoke" is rich. In art, this object always means death, while the meaning of smoke lies in the impermanence of life and the passage of time. In the Dutch vanitas tradition in the 17th century, the smoke especially symbolizes the poignant transiency (Hornik & Parsons, 2016). The looming sun is coming up behind the young girl, while a light smoke is rising from the cigarette between girl’s fingers. Although the sun generally signifies hope, in contrast with the revolutionary red sun, this smoke acts out much more feeling of dreariness and sorrow. Liu Ye once mentioned in an interview: “In fact, there is a sort of unhappiness in my painting, which is masked by the happiness it looks like.” (Liu, 2014). In this work, is the grief merely the artist’s expression? Probably not. The sadness is not only belonging to Liu Ye but also everyone with his generation under the irreversible impact of the Culture Revolution. Such a little girl even smoked as calmly as an adult. Therefore, the element of smoke here can be seen as a sad indictment of the society at that time and that generation was the one in decay.


On the other hand, in the history of New China, smoking is also an extraordinary representative scenario in the life of leaders and politicians. In a sense, smoking also on behalf of power and political struggles. The heroine takes the cigarette and blows the smoke. Her expression is detached and mysterious. Her gaze shocks the human heart, and it is implicit and profound. Different from the other two works of the trinity of canvases from which both contain images of weapons, there is only a lighted cigarette rather than a lethal weapon. What implies behind the cigarette is that power and political struggle are the real most powerful revolutionary weapons. Consequently, the artist shows the reality of the extreme policies that were taken in the Cultural Revolution and the autocracy of chairman Mao. In fact, it is difficult to recognize the tendency of politics in Smoke as well as Liu Ye’s other works. He always painted what he thought and what his real experience. As his demonstration to the question of “How to understand the phenomenon that happiness is more than the reflection in some artistic works with the theme of Chinese Red Period?” – “That’s not joy, but humanity. Humanity is easy to be deceived. It's hard for young people to think like mature people. If someone still thinks that era is better than now, there must be a problem.” (Liu, 2014) This series of red works represented by Smoke is a true description of that red era standing in some people’s memories. Thus, people of different generations have distinct interpretations and different interpretations bring various feelings.


Various elements embodied in the painting of Smoke including the red colour, the little girl, the green skirt, smoke, etc. which are all establish the tone of red in this painting. Bright colours may fill audiences’ hearts with elation at first, but after cogitating more about it, those red memories in the Cultural Revolutionary era will re-emerge mingled with innocence, happiness, sadness and enthusiasm. In general, Smoke is a piece of history, the integration of western and Chinese culture, a fault of a political decision as well as a period of social change.


References


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