Yang Shaobin’s Paintings

Yang Shaobin, 28 years old, arrived at Beijing in 1991. He was born in a strict family of a minefield located in Tangshan, Hebei Province. His living environment, however, was filled with affrays, pranks and turbulence. In the culture revolution, called for youths to go and work in lural areas so as to solve serious unemployment caused by wrong economic policies. He belonged to one of them but stayed in urban area by asking somebody influential to help. In his hometown, he became a police and started learning painting in spare time. Many art fans in remote cities shared similar experiences. They imitated war comic books at the beginning and then joined weekend and night fine art courses in local Children’s Palace. Different from most of them, Yang Shaobin held on painting. He got more time to paint under the care of elder colleagues for he was young and honest. Therefore, at his 20 years old in 1983, he could pass the examination of a local ceramics and industrial art school, Tangshan Secondary Fine Arts School. What it taught, however, was mainly applied fine arts except sketch and color painting. At that time, this is the only way of becoming an “artist”.

Normally, Yang Shaobin can get a ceramics-related job provided by government after his graduation. If wishing to be an artist, he may continue painting in his spare time and participate national exhibitions. He might win an award and become a professional artist in art academies, colleges or associations if he was lucky enough. It is the only way of Chinese artists in planned economic times. When it came to early years of 1990s, this mechanism started collapsing. Fang Lijun, one of his classmates, had worked for two years after his technical school years and entered the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Having his study in 1989, Fang gave up the government offered job and stayed in Beijing. He hired a farmer’s courtyard house and lived by selling his works. For Yang Shaobin with a painting passion, this life style is particularly alluring. So he left his job and family in Tangshan and arrived at Beijing alone. He hired a studio behind Dayuan Hotel in Winter Palace and initiated his career of aprofessional artist.

A detailed introduction of his earlier years is to make further analysis about his language and logo changes in a 15-year span of Chinese modern arts. For me, Yang Shaobin is a useful case about modern painting, language sources, social taste and art trends. There are several interesting factors in this case. Yang is prudent and dour in character. But why did he become a typical artist of cynical realistic art irrelevant with his personality since 1993? And why did he intentionally and uniquely come to keep away from this successful style in 1996? What background did his well-known violence subjects and style originate and succeed in? What expressive and conceptual relation does his latest works concerning international politics with his earlier inner imagic ones without specific signifier. As we know, Yang Shaobin has not been trained in formal art educations and lack of a systematic understanding for modern art language pedigree. How did this generation, in this case, get the energy of promoting language and concepts in international trends and succeed?

The most effective reply to above questions may be to return their creation, their works’ language and image and recover their art trends, social tastes and individual experiences as well as relations among different works. Those relations include what signals and languages appear in their works and why. What signals disappear and why? It might be a point to cut in Chinese modern art by perceiving a changing trace from these signals and languages . For me, it is boring to list “Chinese reality”, “cynical realism”, “Yang Shaobin”, “violence esthetics” and “international politics”. I attempt to find the inner relation of these modern nouns beyond various images and languages and recover artist’s connection with trend and practical environment. This method is built at the ground that an artist like Yang Shaobin, is not only valuable in their images but also in their complex relation with art taste, cultural power, imagic creation.

In Chinese modern art pattern, Yang Shaobin appeared initially as a part of cynical realism. It is obvious that he arriving at Beijing in 1991 is recognized as the second echelon of cynical realism.

Artists like Fang Lijun and Liu Wei have held their earliest individual exhibitions. Li Xianting, a famous planner and critic, puts this cynical realism forward. In his mind, this cynic style with contempt to authorities is born as a reaction to magnificent narrations and metaphysics in 1980s. Its root is the emptiness following the vanishing of political and cultural idealism in 1989. Cynical realism shows that pictures return to realistic language and senseless living moments with an emphasis to break and demolish those logical authoritative systems. Liu Wei was born in a military family and focused on his father in earlier creations. This uniformed serviceman is the symbol of both political and daily life authorities. Uniformed images have special meanings in the context of political accidents in 1989. Fang Lijun, Yang’s classmate and townsman invented a bare-head image in his paintings. Bare head is Fang’s image in daily life. Li Xianting regards bare heads as an expression of obscure identity and silly smile as a doubt to existing values.

As he admitted frankly in many occasions, his earlier style from 1991 to 1996 is a logical “product” following cynical realistic style. In his famous work Police created in 1993, we can see typical symbols of cynical realism such as silly smiles, uniforms, clean water and blue sky. People may think that he reflected upon his earlier works in an attempt to separate him with cynical realism and seek larger space of development. If we look into his present works, however, we can discover that there are many inner breaks and conflicts of language. And many factors appear in a new way in his latest creation.

Charge as you are alive is the most important one in his 1993 series of police and soldier. Apart from they are a symbol of ideology as well as a proper target of cynical realism, they become the subject because there are many meanings for the artist. At first, he has been a policeman and there is a sharp contrast between this job and his experience as a professional artist. He has recalled many times that he once was caught in bed by policemen for he had no residence certificate required by Beijing city. So appearance of police in these works may be a playing revenge of the weak. Secondly, in Charge as you are alive, the soldier’s image comes from famous political poster of same title in the Cultural Revolution in the context of military conflicts concerning Zhenbao Island between China and Soviet Union. This conflict is a memory hovering in his mind when he was a child. It contains a boy’s admiration for hero and violence and in following days arises his concern for international politics. Thirdly, there is a smiling girl in white in the work’s right part. This image comes from a picture of one artist where a smiling girl is skinning a rabbit. Original picture shows a cruelty of smile and a sharp contrast between her smile and the bloody action. We are sure that this picture helps the birth of this work’s subject. In account of police, war, girl’s smile and hero’s grimace, it is clear that this work is a mock of violence.

Apart from these meanings, we can find interesting breaks and intentional choice by getting familiar with these works’special logos and sources. That girl’s smile is kept in picture but that cruel skinning is deleted. If we had seen his creation for a long period, we would ask why he omitted a violent image match with his techniques and ideas. In the lower part of picture, there is scenery with typical post-impressionistic techniques. Post-impressionistic, expressionistic and even Wyeth landscapes are the willful “forward” training of his generation out of school. This language emphasizes painting’s sense of speed and reality. But cynical realistic paintings usually do not adopt this language. Their typical techniques use simple color changes to show the difference of size and body, show light and dark by white and gray color without an emphasis on color variations. Character and main part of Charge as you are alive are completed with this simple skill but this landscape is painted with familiar techniques. Obviously, there are two different languages in this work. Familiar and subtle romantic language system exists as a background. Simple and direct language dominates the picture. The latter was popular at that time and then abandoned by him. In his following creation, Yang Shaobin developed a vigorous and subtle style from this post-impressionistic language.

Charge as you are alive is a valuable work where on one hand, the artist tried to create a typical cynical realistic style and did it; on the other hand, he seemed control some of his favorites subconsciously and unconsciously, such as violent images and subtle traditional painting languages. For us, its value not lies in its relation with cynical realism but in those interesting subtle breaks. It is the latter that leads to Yang Shaobin successful creation in future.

After 1997, Yang Shaobin started expressing some violent images in his pictures. Violent images were reflected firstly in language. Lipstick Lipstick of 1997 reserved some elements such as uniform, grimace and eroticism but got a clearer language. Though there is no background of romantic landscapes, some main parts show a matured “flow style”. This style makes full use of random effects of color oil being smeared on canvas. In some sense, this style is originated from “direct painting” technique of post-impressionistic language.

Yang Shaobin once used “pitter-patter” to describe this style. The style originally did not have violent features but then these techniques were used to express those distorted faces in tussle. Since 1996, tussle has become an image representing his turn of creation. This image has a clear sense of humor and dissimilation. With its extension in pictures, it reduced humor sense and seemed out of his control and acquired irrevocably an existence of independent and violent colors. So when the artist used “pitter-patter” to explain this sense of reality, it started getting a color of violence. “Pitter-patter” conveys both fights and flow. In some sense, it shows that violence in the concern of artists comes from body while it is a metaphor of human situation in modern society.

For those small sized paintings completed in 1997, we can find that there are dry and wet senses of reality. These two senses seem in tussle and the result is that the wet flow style dominates his pictures. Then, body violence sprawled in his heart like reckless flowers. Those distorted faces have no specific historic situation and reasons, just like violence itself. What he expressed is an abstract violence, an essential one. The language also shows this abstract violence. Apart from large portraits, Yang Shaobin painted those grappling bodies again. But the flow style is not limited to head but is extended to whole picture and then is used to establish the uncompleted sense of pictures. It is important that Yang Shaobin came to find his linguistic connection with expressionism and new expressionism. Now those language breaks appeared in early 1990s are reconnected. Distorted faces took the place of that omitted bloody rabbit in Charge as you are alive and those subtle landscapes are replaced by a more energetic flow style by which, Yang returned from art movement to painting language itself.

He has his own logic about exploration of violence, but is consistent with violence trend of Chinese modern art in late 1990s. Different from many young conceptual artists, his violence is not limited to violence itself but return to its nature by abstract grappling and simple language, that is, violence is an assault from one body to another.

Among Chinese modern artists, especially painters, few can deny and doubt their old works in candor like Yang Shaobin. For being addicted to their brand and trying to maintain their market, successful artists usually keep their matured style cautiously. In Yang’s mind, he seems being violated by commercial mechanism when he keeps expressing violence. In his talk with Li Xianting, he repeatedly suggests his anxiety. When violent images are expressed in pictures, original violence attached in his childhood becomes far away from cultural metaphors and senses and withers into a simple image. With this anxiety, he is bored with copying beautiful violence of flow style. He, richer in experience and elder in age, becomes interesting in various forms of violence. In his view, politics, media and human contacts are reflections of violence. The sculpture Body is a typical work of this opinion. He pastes countless small pictures to mutilated body to indicate media’s violence. In 2003 Landscape, he directly uses pictures to express violence.

These works express some impressions for conceptual arts and his thoughts on painting. He is attempting to find basic differences between painting images and rampant “objective” images nowadays (photograph, film and television). After tests for a short period, he finds a new field, painting those “objective images” of news-photo. Those photos are political as a form of violence. For artists, the painting of these photos is a redemption. Therefore, these new works have multifold senses in concept and language.

At first, Yang’s concern for violence turns from body to society. Origin of violence is an assault from one body to another. Preference of violence is related with psychology in adolescence and experience in childhood. The artist discovers that besides assaulting and perishing body, violence as reflected in international politics and social contacts monopolies and deprives conscious, self and ideas. The process of monopoly and deprive is politics. So his new works is not looking for an existing exit for his language but a result of his thoughts on violence. They are outcomes of his conceptual developments. So his thoughts turn from violence itself to society. Secondly, the major difference with his works in mid of 1990s is that his viewpoint has a dramatic change. It is not a straight look or a stare at objects any more, but a up, side or secret look. There is not a single subject. This means the artist’s viewpoint disappears in picture so as to recover violence’s camouflage. Thirdly, while maintaining violence’s camouflage carefully, he draws out specific time, place and circumstance. The use of color oil to blur body focuses on injury of violence upon body in old works with a flow style. Now, this technique is used to make specific historic accidents and news affairs “foggy”. But the same technique has different purposes and concepts. The former focuses on abstract violence while the latter does on universal one. The top value of these works lies in the transference form violence’s abstractness to its universality. Finally, by using “nebulizing ” technique, Yang finds a wonderful point between objective images and true images. He changes the image’s objectivity by painting in order to expand his concepts.

We have offered a reply to the above questions at the beginning. There is no doubt that Yang Shaobin is an important member of Chinese modern arts. We can find that he has been in the center of changing art trends from the very start by analyzing all stages of his creation. His impetus is not his active participation in the trend but an unsolvable conflict between his inner world and the outer art tides or mechanisms. As a honest and matured artist, he keeps looking for these breaks and developing resources in his own logic, even if they are sometimes in conflict with the trend. So there is a clear clue in his creation where he returns from concepts to painting itself and then keeps seeking and enriching his own ideas in painting.