signed in Chinese and pinyin and dated 1994.11

Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner

Exh. cat., Liu Wei, Red Bridge Gallery, Shanghai, 2008, pp. 54-55

Generally in excellent condition. Evidence of mould to the upper right and left edges of the wooden frame. The corners and joins of the frame with some minor chips and loss to the wood. The left canvas with a minor paint flake to the right edge in the man's hari, approx 3mm. The right canvas with some scattered vertical paint drips probably ffrom the time of original painting. Some minor waving to the canvas along the centre bottom edge, covering approx 9cm. All three canvases with very minor abrasions along the edges.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Liu Wei has long been regarded as the most technica🤡lly virtuosic of the generation of Chinese painters who came to international attention in the years after 1989. His style and palette reveal a vision uniquely suited to its time and place; his compositions look askance at ordinary life, revealing the bizarre tensions lurking just below the surface of a society in transition. While traces of German expressionism have long been visible in his work, and while the label of "cynical realism" is often applied to his works of the early 1990s, Liu Wei's practice has long transcended both the influence of his European forebears and the narrow connotations of this quintessentially Chinese contemporary school.

 

The Revolutionary Family Series (Lot 7) marks the apex of this series, and with it, the early style by which Liu Wei first came to be known to the international art world. Mounted in a frame of the artist's own design, it culminates a period in his career during which explorations of nation and family were inextricably intertwined. As in earlier works from the same series, here two figures clad in army uniforms are placed uncomfortably onto a single pictorial plane. One looks at the other's back, as if no actual dialogue between them is desirable or even possible. The figure at right has appeared repeatedly throughout the Revolutionary Family series and is held to b♛e Liu Wei's own mil𝄹itary father.

 

The image is remarkable for its iconographic richness. In the left panel, we see the younger figure staring out over an ordinary wooden desk like might be found in any Chinese work unit. Atop the desk sits a hot-water glass-and-metal thermos painted with floral designs. This sort of vessel was a staple of the material culture of China's socialist period, and bears particular associations of hearth and home as these objects were often given as wedding presents. The vessel emits the steam of water just dispensed from a boiler, and towers over a porcelain mug and saucerꦗ of snacks which also steam. This left figure sits against a plain white wall, and beneath a bare single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling. His slightly ruddy cheeks are the only inflection the artist grants to a figure who wears an expression of bemusement. His freshly cropped hair emphasizes his status as a member of the military.

 

The central panel is richer with color and atmosphere. This panel, largely occupied by the space between the two figures, works as a "painting within a painting" structured by the trompe l'oeil trope of an unlikely view out a window. Through the window, which has every reason to be ordinary, we see first a five story brick-and-concrete building like many found on factory and housing compounds throughout China. The viewer has no way of peeking through the windows of this structure, left only to note its drab uniformity. Above the building a smokestack belches its industrial emissions into a sky that hovers between yellow and blue—a motif that first appears in this work but would occupy Liu Wei for years to come. By far the most striking aspect of this central panel is the surreal vista lying out of perspective just on the other side of the window: a trio of Peking opera singers, mid-performance, encircled by a pair of cooing pigeons. These androgynous  minstrels peer out of the canvas hauntingly, specters of some bygone tradition come back to reclaim their due. They appear before the blue curtains of a Peking opera stage set, but this assemblage is mounted improbably in a traditional temple struct🍸ure which seems entirely out of place if we are to believe—as all other details are suggesting—that this is a vista of a military compound.

 

In the right panel, these surreal associations reach a sublime climax. Here, the figure of the artist's father in his low-ranking officer's insignia appears once again, as it had in so many paintings of this three-year period. The father is however partially obscured by a potted flower, a succulent peony growing from a base scattered with eggshells placed there to aid its growth (and represent fertility). The "real" flower in the pot plays against the rendered flowers on the water jugs at center and left. Its eight corpulent blossoms are easily the most vibrant element of the entire composition, and the artist's concentration of painted designs on the frame just below points to the emphasis he wished to place on this crucial detail. In the floral bloom, we see foreshadowed a direction in which Liu Wei's work would travel during the following decade: his turn toward the carnal and the corporal. It is a short leap from these bulging blossoms to the cycle of works he was by then already producing for the 1994 Sao Paulo Bienal, flower-laden images of overweight women swimming. The line continues right through his famous Do You Like Pork? cycle of paintings for t☂he 1995 Venice Biennale, which featured depictions of female genitalia so graphic that Princess Diana, who visited that exhibition, had to coordinate her route through the pavilion in advance to avoid being photographed with his controverℱsial work.

 

There is more to this right-hand panel than the potted flower, however. Indeed, along the painting's far edge nearly every element that has appeared elsewhere in the composition finds its doppelganger. Just as the painted flower works in contrast with the painted-paintedꦅ flowers on the thermoses, so does the poster of a Cultural Revolution-era model opera at upper right play off of the fantasia of the Peking Opera singers at center stage. Likewise, in the mundane detail of the electrical outlet at center right, the light bulb hanging to the left finds its energy source. These subtle but intentional pairings serve to bring an otherwise sprawling composition under substantive control.

 

Writing about the Revolutionary Family series in the catalogue to the exhibition China's New Art: Post-1989 in which the series was first exhibited, Johnson Chang notes that Liu Wei "paints from a perspective of what he calls 'new blasphemy' to expose and dispose of what has traditionally been considered as sacr൲ed subject matter." Indeed, in this masterful triptych, Liu Wei's social with contends only with his painterly skill to create a twisted vision of a compromised society.