Yue Minjun is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolor and prints. Although Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese Cynical Realist movement which was developed in China in 1989, he himself rejects this label. Yue was disillusioned with politics by the Tiananmen Square Uprising in 1989 and moved to an artists' colony outside Beijing in 1990. His signature style developed out of portraits of his bohemian friends from the artists' village.

Wang Guangyi was a leading protagonist of post 1989 political Pop movement. He is famous for his Great Criticism series of paintings which uses images of propaganda from the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and contemporary brand names from Western advertising. Classified in China under the genre of Political Pop, Wang’s paintings combine the ideological power of communist propaganda with the seductive allure of advertising.

I shall now compare these artworks based on their subject matter and aesthetic qualities.

Similarities

-Both paintings showcase men as the vocal point.

-There is a clear separation between the foreground and the background. Wang achieves this by using bold contours to outline the main subject matter in the foreground. Yue does this by amplifying the size of the 2 men in comparison to the smaller bridge in the background. Both artists cleverly makes use of proportion and perspective.

- It is interesting how in both artworks, there exists some form of ‘Anatomical Structuralism’ (bluntly jamming together icons from different cultures and eras). Although that term is coined by Wang, it can be applied to Yue’s work as well. This is because the 2 naked men in The Lovers look modernized and physically close to one another, which implies the openness of what used to be a conservative Chinese society. At the same time, they are wearing traditional theatrical Chinese hats, which only Chinese people in the past wear. This juxtaposition implies a clashing of the bygone era with the contemporary culture that exists now. Similarly in Art Go, there is a juxtaposition of icons from propaganda posters (used during Mao’s regime) and small numbers quoted from barcodes and serial numbers of merchandise. This symbolises China’s increasing obsession and consumption of excessive material goods.

- The way both artists put together elements of their cultural past in the setting of the present seems to reduce the worth of the cultural elements. The subject matters from the present seem to be dominating the elements from the past.

Differences

- Wang’s colour scheme is almost monochromatic, consisting of only red, blue and black. The red texts look dull and washed out. On the other hand, Yue makes use of bright and outstanding colours, such as pink, blue, white and beige. I find the shiny pink skin of the 2 men eccentric and unusual as Asians are commonly associated to yellow skin.

- The mood exuded from both artworks greatly differs. In Art Go, the 3 men look like ‘ideal labourers’ hard at work. They look serious and the way that the man in the foreground is looking ahead into the distance gives an optimistic feeling, as if they are working towards a better life. On the contrary, the two men in The Lovers seem to be lost in a world of happiness. Their mouths form wide semi-circles, framed with thin lips and more teeth than one would like to have. Their eyes are shut tightly from laughing so hard. There are deep folds on their cheeks, forehead and eyes as a result of laughing too much.

- Art Go has a graphic and commercialized look due to its unrealistic background which contains texts, numbers and a single colour, while The Lovers seems more realistic because of the bridge behind them. Furthermore, Yue makes use of sunlight and shadow to highlight certain areas of the men’s bodies. From the colour of the sky and the direction of the shadows, one can tell that it is in the early afternoon.