The explosion of freedom in the young Chinese painting began in 1985. Canvas and colors are available again, finally. The Chinese art will cease to be submitted to government rules and to censorship. Liu Xiaodong is still a student at that time.
Liu expresses tirelessly his visions of social realism, including sexual appeals and deviances. He is a ruthless and acerbic observer.
In 1996, when he watched in the same day a cart carrying emigrants and a full truck of pigs, he created a masterpiece entitled Disobeying the rules which was sold for HK $ 66M including premium by Sotheby's on October 5, 2014. Men and women are naked, like pigs. Their hope is vain, like pigs going to the slaughterhouse.
On October 2 in Hong Kong, Sotheby's sells Showered in sunlight, oil on canvas 180 x 195 cm painted in 1990 by Liu, lot 1056 estimated HK $ 15M.
Six very young men are near the sea under an intense sun. Within the new regime of freedom imagined by the artist, they have chosen to be naked or to wear a swimsuit. The composition is bold with the young nude in the foreground who extends far beyond the frame. Two other nudes are full frontal.
These boys look happy under the new dictatorship of the sun. They are rather remote from each other but the homosexual temptation of this exhibitionism is likely. Liu wanted to disturb and he succeeded.
SOLD for HK$ 18M including premium
Liu expresses tirelessly his visions of social realism, including sexual appeals and deviances. He is a ruthless and acerbic observer.
In 1996, when he watched in the same day a cart carrying emigrants and a full truck of pigs, he created a masterpiece entitled Disobeying the rules which was sold for HK $ 66M including premium by Sotheby's on October 5, 2014. Men and women are naked, like pigs. Their hope is vain, like pigs going to the slaughterhouse.
On October 2 in Hong Kong, Sotheby's sells Showered in sunlight, oil on canvas 180 x 195 cm painted in 1990 by Liu, lot 1056 estimated HK $ 15M.
Six very young men are near the sea under an intense sun. Within the new regime of freedom imagined by the artist, they have chosen to be naked or to wear a swimsuit. The composition is bold with the young nude in the foreground who extends far beyond the frame. Two other nudes are full frontal.
These boys look happy under the new dictatorship of the sun. They are rather remote from each other but the homosexual temptation of this exhibitionism is likely. Liu wanted to disturb and he succeeded.
SOLD for HK$ 18M including premium
Sotheby’s HK Goes Big For Its Contemporary Asian Art Autumn Sale Offering Large Scale Seminal Works https://t.co/5MacM8wVLf @Sothebys pic.twitter.com/1yUhLnwfBS
— ARTINFO HongKong (@ARTINFOHongKong) September 20, 2016
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