Interview with Yue Minjun Karen Smith ue Minjun is a central figure in the generation of creatively attuned, self-styled individuals that emerged in the early 1990s. Its members were ultimately responsible for driving Ycontemporary art practice in China into its important second phase, which has run from the early 1990s to the present (This phase followed the first wave, which began in 1985 with the New Wave Movement). Today, almost everything that constitutes the bedrock of contemporary art in China, its ambitions and its motifs, its contradictions, focus, and forms, can be traced back to the decade of the 1990s and the handiwork of this early second-wave generation. Yue Minjun joined the “chorus” in 1991 when he moved to Beijing. A few years later, he had won himself a leading role. Although as a young boy he was already drawn to art, Yue Minjun—unlike many of his peers—was sent to work before he could apply to one of the nation’s art academies. It took him a bit of time to navigate the system, but his perseverance in persuading his supervisors to allow him attend university eventually paid off. In 1985, he embarked on a year long course in the oil painting department of Hebei Normal University. Upon graduation, he moved to Beijing to join the first “settlers” in the Yuanmingyuan area, named for the old imperial summer palace nearby. Located in the northwest suburbs of the city, it was rapidly shaping up as an artists’ village. It was not entirely a random event or location. In the early 1990s, this swath of rural land, which borders the northern edge of the capital’s university district, was rezoned as part of an urban redevelopment area. The city proper was preparing to expand in order to accommodate the accelerating level of residential and commercial development that Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform policy (first implemented in 1978) was finally precipitating. By the end of the 1990s, it would lead to an explosion in real estate development and a bubbling property market. Against this tide of change, small agricultural holdings on the fringe of Beijing were at the time becoming less profitable and harder to work. It was here that an initial, largely unsanctioned phase of residential building work began. The farmers who formerly worked the now-decommissioned farmland began to erect cheap, almost prefab housing in the vernacular style: small buildings with self-contained courtyards. Although by today’s standards, the rents sound low—a couple hundred yuan a month, with seven yuan to the U.S. dollar—in the early 1990s it was an owners’ market. Landlords could charge more or less whatever the market would stand, and given the artists’ desire for independence, in their case, it stood for quite a lot. Even so, the cost of living was generally low, so once the rent was paid, artists didn’t need much cash in hand to support their lifestyles. Yue Minjun and his colleagues were the first group of “independent” individuals willing to give self-sufficiency a go—a huge step for any person in China, where, at the time, everyone’s life was governed by the work unit to which they were assigned. The work unit provided all basic necessities, including the ration coupons required to buy even basic foodstuffs like rice and oil. In early 1990, the first artist pioneers had moved into Yuanmingyuan. By 1994, just a few years later, the village was home to more than one hundred artists. Yue Minjun was one of the enviable handful who enjoyed not only a growing reputation and critical acclaim but representation abroad (Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong), and had several successful exhibitions to his credit. Since that time, Yue Minjun’s career has gone from strength to strength. Today, he is widely acclaimed as one of China’s leading painters—one of the four modern-day Chinese masters known affectionately and humorously as the si da jingang, or the four cornerstones of contemporary Chinese art, an elite which includes Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, and Zhang Xiaogang (although there’s a larger group of contenders hot on their heels). 25 Yue Minjun in studio, Yuanmingyuan District, Beijing, 99. Courtesy of the artist. Here, on the occasion of his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. (Yue Minjun and the Symbolic Smile, Queen’s Museum, New York, October 14, 2007–January 6, 2008), Yue Minjun talks about his life and work. He describes how he came to choose the contemporary end of the creative spectrum, how he arrived at his signature character with the ludicrous laughing face, and how he worked this motif into a special series of watercolour works on paper. He speaks with Karen Smith, a curator and art critic specializing in contemporary Chinese art, at his studio in Beijing. Karen Smith: When did the big smile, the laughing face, first appear in your work? Yue Minjun: You can find it in the early paintings I created as far back as 1990. At that time, before I arrived at Yuanmingyuan—the artists’ village—a large exhibition of contemporary art made by the new generation of Chinese artists was held at our main national gallery of arts in Beijing. It was called China/Avant Garde. One painting in particular made a great impression on me—Geng Jianyi’s huge painting titled The Second State. It was huge because it was made up of four separate panels lined up in a row, each one depicting a single human face that filled the entire picture plane with an expression of laughter. At first, it made me think of the Maitreya Buddha, which is a smiling, pot-bellied Buddha. His smile is meant to remind people to hold dear the truth of Buddhist teachings in all the goals we set ourselves in life; to remind us that even in the face of conflict and adversity, and injustice, we should not lose control, nor give in to negative feelings. Geng Jianyi’s painting was the antithesis of all that is positive about the Maitreya Buddha’s expression and symbolism. The four smiles in The Second State spoke of a world where things were not right, in which meaning had been inverted, and expressions turned upside down. 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. So, this 6 “second” state is not the first state, meaning the familiar form of the smile, but an inversion of it, a distortion, which makes it about as far from being a real smile like the one the Buddha wears, as it is possible to imagine. For my generation, the expression itself was not entirely alien. We were born into a bitterly frustrating era, infested with contradictions and complexities. Every one of us had a private sense that our existence was not entirely happy—yet we could not say exactly what happiness might be like, or how we’d know when we found it. We also instinctively felt that despite being given an opportunity to assert our independence [in being able to move to the Yuanmingyuan Artists’ Village of their own free will], as long as we were marginalized by society for our choice of lifestyle, our desire to explore individual creative impulses, and our inability to conform to social convention, then we could never be entirely happy. The Buddha’s smile suggests that in the future things will get better, that a future life could be beautiful. Tomorrow will be better. But against the reality of the times, which was so entirely chaotic and strange, it was hard to hold onto that faith. So this is how it all began: I was thinking that the image of a laughing face ought to be perceived as an assurance that things would get better: that a future life could be as rewarding and meaningful as the Buddha promised. Geng Jianyi had shown that this might not be the case— at least, that such an expression deserved close scrutiny. 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. Karen Smith: I think people will be wondering if everybody in China felt the same way at that time. Am I right in thinking that the vast majority of the Chinese people lived, worked, and existed under the same sort of circumstances—that most would belong to the same work unit during their entire working lives, and therefore follow a similarly linear existence? Yue Minjun: That was more or less the case. Karen Smith: Given that, can you say what you think it was that made you special, or so different from others that you dared to step outside those confines, to move to Yuanmingyuan and become an independent artist? Yue Minjun: I think I was born independent. My parents tell me that as early as two or three years old, I was quite capable of taking care of myself; at least, of amusing myself. I could walk to kindergarten myself, and look after myself at home, without getting into any trouble! Karen Smith: Do you have siblings? Yue Minjun: Yes, two younger brothers. When I was small I also took care of them. I’d make breakfast, prepare our lunchboxes, and take them to school.