Yu Youhan

Yu Youhan
b. 1943, Shanghai
Painter
Yu Youhan, a protagonist of the Political Pop art current, graduated from the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing (1970). He is now an instructor at the Shanghai School of Art and Design. After adopting abstract, mostly monochrome painting in the late 1980s, Yu shifted to compositions employing notorious images of Communist iconography as an ironical commentary on the ideological changes in contemporary society. A member of a generation of painters who were young adults during the Cultural Revolution, Yu Youhan appropriates Mao’s official photographs to create grotesque or ridiculing effects. In the painting Mao Discussing with the Peasants of Shao Shan (1991), Yu reproduces a well-documented encounter between Mao and a peasant family in his native village.
The scene is repainted in garish colours, and a sense of the grotesque is achieved through the addition of floral patterns, used as a reference to the language of folk and popular art, which was promoted by Mao as a major source of high-culture inspiration in his ‘1942 Yan’an Talks’ on art. By pushing this folk mood to excess, Yu mocks the leader (and his ideology) through the paradoxical distortion of the principles he once advocated.
Yu Youhan has participated in various international exhibitions, such as : China Avant-Garde in Beijing (1989); China’s New Art, Post-89 (Hong Kong, 1993) and China Avant-Garde (Berlin 1993); the 45th Venice Biennale, Italy; and the 1st Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia.
Dal Lago, Francesca (1999). ‘Personal Mao: Reshaping an Icon in Contemporary Chinese Art’ Art Journal (Summer): 46–59.
Doran, Valerie C. (ed.) (1993;. China’s New Art, Post-1989. Hong Kong: Hanart T Z Gallery.
Knight, Juliet et al. (eds) (1996). Reckoning with the Past (exhibition catalogue). Edinburgh: The Fruitmarket Gallery.
FRANCESCA DAL LAGO

Encyclopedia of contemporary Chinese culture. . 2011.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Kazuki Fuuchouin — nihongo|Kazuki Fuuchouin|風鳥院花月|Fūchōin Kazuki is a one of the major secondary characters in the manga / anime series GetBackers. In the original Japanese version, he s voiced by Soichiro Hoshi, while his childhood voice is done by Yumiko… …   Wikipedia

  • Teochew people — For the Teochew dialect of Min Nan Chinese, see Teochew dialect. Teochew people 潮州人 潮州漢族 Taksin the Great …   Wikipedia

  • art academies — have played a fundamental role in the development of contemporary Chinese art, and to this day the majority of contemporary artists are a product of the academic system of art education. In the early twentieth century, the education reformer Cai… …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • political icons (and art) — Political figures, artists, intellectuals and unruly elements have readily used emblems, icons and cultural paraphernalia both to express themselves and to claim, or generate, cultural capital. Sometimes the commercial sector has treated Party… …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • Political Pop — Artistic trend ‘Political Pop’ is a critical art term I coined and used for the first time in a 1991 article ‘Apathy and Deconstructive Consciousness in Post 1989 Art’. It describes a social current emerged in the 1990s to contrast the arrival of …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • chinesische Kunst —   [ç ]. Die frühesten Zeugnisse der chinesischen Kunst sind die in Gräbern und Siedlungen des Spätneolithikums (um 5000 2000 v. Chr.) gefundenen Keramiken der nach den ersten Fundorten Yangshao (Henan) und Longshan (Shandong) benannten Kulturen.… …   Universal-Lexikon

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”