What+to+Drive+Out?--Liu+Xiaodong


 * What to Drive Out?--Liu Xiaodong**

@http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/what-to-drive-out-516386

@http://public.fotki.com/318eastninthst/boston-museum-of-fi/fresh-ink/liu/liu-xiaodong1/


 * Artwork Identification**
 * Title: What to Drive Out?
 * Artist: Liu Xiaodong
 * Date: 2008
 * Period: Contemporary
 * Country of Origin: China
 * Cultural/Ethnic Affiliation:
 * Medium: Acrylic Paint and Charcoal on Paper
 * Dimensions: 154.5 x 746 cm (60 13/16 x 293 11/16 in.)
 * Museum/Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Accession Number: 2008.172
 * Current Location and Manner of Display:
 * Provenance: 2008, Liu Xiaodong (b. 1963); sold by the artist to Mary Boone Gallery, New York; sold by Mary Boone Galery to the MFA. (Accession Date: June 25, 2008)


 * Introduction**

[|Liu Xiaodong] (b. 1963) is primarily a figure painter associated with Cynical Realism and Neo-Academism in China, and at times is called a neo-realist, though he should not to be confused with the [|Neo-Realism]of the ex-Camden Town Group post impressionist painters of England, nor the Neorealist Cinema. He does share the English Neorealist's quest to depict "common people" instead of the metaphysical, showcasing social reality. (Shao, 2011) He was trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing for both undergraduate (graduated 1988) and graduate studies (completed in 1995). He studied further at the University of Complutense in Madrid, Spain from 1998 to 1999.

//What to Drive Out? i//s a work commissioned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2008 for a 2010 exhibition called "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition." The intention of the exhibition was to commission artworks by contemporary Chinese artists that respond to different classical masterworks of Chinese art. (Unknown, Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition, Online) The work Liu was responding to is the anonymously painted 15th century Ming Dynasty work titled //Erlang and His Soldiers Driving Out Animal Spirits (////二郎搜山圖 卷).//

@http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/erlang-and-his-soldiers-driving-out-animal-spirits-28199

Liu sees a "...veiled protest against the violence authorized by an abusive power..." in his chosen masterwork, and uses the theme of violence as a starting point for his commissioned artwork. (http://the47th.com/clients/mfa/freshink/AllLabels/03_LiuXiaodong.pdf)


 * Descriptive Analysis**

The painting //What to Drive Out?// is on paper in the format of a long horizontal scroll (almost 24 and a half feet long), and from left to right, is composed of the hand-written statements of the teenage subjects in charcoal, followed by the standing subjects, drawn onto the paper with charcoal and then painted in acrylic, all facing toward their various statements (with a number flowers and plant-like objects and two dogs painted into the ground), followed by the charcoal text "何處搜山圖" ("Where to Exorcise the Mountain Spirits?"). The author's signature is located in the bottom right hand corner with one of the two dogs. --the above description could be worded better and broke into several sentences to add clarity

The statements, considered colophons, or finishing touches, are an indication that the piece is meant to be read from right to left, like the painted scrolls of antiquity (Unknown, Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition, Online). This is compositionally supported by the placement of the text "何處搜山圖." These characters are a direct reference to the master work to which Liu's painting responds, and therefore serve as a starting point for the viewer to read and understand the painting. The rhythm of the painting, created by the spacing of the figures, accelerates toward the colophons and is enhanced by the physical attitudes expressed in the figures' postures, and through the color, value and patterns within the clothing worn by Liu's subjects.

The first group of two boys are the only two figures that lean backward, the first more than the second. The feeling of acceleration begins with that decrease in angle and leads into the middle group of three girls arranged in height from shortest to tallest. The last group of subjects is composed of a tighter arrangement with a dog leading into a group of three boys and one girl, who have a staggered blocking with the sixth and eighth figure behind the seventh and ninth in space.

The nine teenagers represented in //What to Drive Out?// are different heights, though they each fill the vertical space of the composition well (with the composition being over 5 feet tall), and their groupings indicate a shallow depth of space within the painting. This difference in height is read across the painting as an undulating wave that climaxes with the second to last figure. The arrangement of the subjects are in clusters of increasing number, from two to four, with decreasing space between each individual, so that not only is the wave from crest to trough at its greatest with that tall figure, but the spaces between the peaks of that wave decrease as the eye moves toward the left. This builds the intensity of the rhythm as we read the work from right to left.

Although the tendency might be to let the eye drift along the composition with the figures, by taking in the overall composition, the audience is able to read the tension created by the subjects' postures. The three subjects most responsible for this tension are the three closest to the picture plane, which are, starting from the right, the first, seventh, and ninth. It is the comparative difference in body language between the first figure, relaxed and leaning back, and the seventh, engaged and leaning at an angle toward the viewer and away from the first subject that create the most stress among the teens. The last figure parallels the seventh, but carries a slightly less charged attitude.

Not only do the subjects create tension through the manner in which they stand, but in the contrasts and repetition of color and pattern in the clothes that they wear. The majority of the students depicted in Liu's painting wear muted and neutral tones with the occasional hint of color highlights. In terms of color, two arrangements of three students stand out the most. The first group, less intense in variety of color in dress, is composed of the second, third and fourth figures. The second and fourth figures serve as "bookends" to the third figure. These two wear jeans and neutral colored tops with bright blue-green highlights and thus parallel each other. In contrast, the young woman between them wears a black dress and black baseball cap with white details and black and white striped leggings. The last three figures demonstrate the most variety of color and pattern. Figure number seven wears colors with a limited range of hue, but his plaid shorts and graphic tee shirt contrasts against the boy standing behind him to his right (our left). This tall young man wears dark jeans, a white shirt, and a multi-colored scarf that has the blue-green from the first group, plus blue and violet. These two, together with the last subject, a young woman wearing jeans, brown boots, and a bright yellow top (the only yellow in the whole arrangement), create the most visual impact in terms of color.

Finally, it is important to note the racially diverse teens with their varying skin pigmentation heightens the clothing contrasts. It is the value shifts in skin tone playing against the different values of color in the teens' outfits that support the effect of intense variation of pattern and hue.


 * Formal and Contextual Analysis**


 * Formal Analysis**

Liu Xiaodong discusses in a [|short film] made by the Museum of Fine Arts that he believes his role as an artist is to observe and comment on society in a dispassionate manner. His intention for the painting //What to Drive Out?// was to create a work that took on the subject of campus violence in America.

His original concept was to paint nine individual figures facing the audience, with a gun installed pointed at the painted figures from the vantage point of the audience. He abandoned this concept, thinking that it would have depended too much on obvious imagery and not enough on reality. He let his subjects, who are high school students from the Boston area, dictate the direction of the work through dialogue at the early stages of the work. He took their perspectives seriously by allowing them to write their thoughts about violence on the finished painting.

Liu's intention became to paint the students as they are, with their own individual attitude. He exercised his eye for composition by blocking their poses and placement in the overall arrangement. He also composed the placement of the subjects' written statements, which become a means for the audience to understand the purpose of the work. In the opinion of the artist, the teenage subjects offer an important perspective from a unique time in their lives when critical thinking skills are firmly established, but a comprehensive world view is still in development.

By allowing the teens to have their say in his artwork, Liu Xiaodong is remaining true to representing social reality. This is keeping with the Neo-Realist notion of revealing zeitgeist through form and content drawn directly from what is common. More specifically, in this case, Liu is using average high school students as social litmus paper for an environment with which he is not completely familiar.

One important aspect of his work is demonstrating the variety of individual views in a larger social context. This is achieved not just in the colophons written by Liu's subjects, but in the various groups composed of individuals expressing their own unique physical presence within their peer groups.

Another important consideration is that Liu seems to be hinting at a disconnect between the human social construct and the greater world. By incorporating objects that hint at the natural world around the teenagers, and by including the dogs, which seem to serve as impartial, outside observers, Liu is able to give the viewer a means to look at the work more objectively. While the students focus their collective attention toward the colophons, one dog gazes toward the last group of students while the other considers the artist's signature. Of course, objectivity and the ability to see the bigger picture contrasts with the subjective passions that often are the causes of violence.


 * Contextual Analysis**

In 1992 Li Xianting in his essay "Apathy and Destruction in Post-'89 Art: Analyzing the Trend of 'Cynical Realism' and 'Political Pop'" (p. 160) labelled Liu a cynical realist, Lü Peng, on the other hand calls his work neoacademist, and Shao Yiyang calls his work neorealist. (Lü, 2010, p. 508) Liu himself identifies strongly with the term Realism, because for him it refers to "...actuality and immediateness." (Liu, Respect the Reality- I Paint this Way, Online)

As he stated in the above mentioned video, Liu Xiaodong's goal is to record what he sees in a dispassionate manner, and the works that he exhibited in his solo show in 1990 were of urban youth that was interpreted by Yi [Li??] as being apathetic. This perceived attitude by Li Xianting is what compelled him to apply the Cynical Realism title to Liu's work. Lü Peng noted that the prevailing techniques taught in university were based on the social realist mode promoted by the Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution, but since the explosion of Chinese Avant Garde art in the 1980s, these ideological trends in the Chinese art academies had been shaken, and it was up to the artists themselves to find inspiration and meaning in their work. (Lü, 2010, p. 508) It is the fact that the artist was able to instill his own philosophy into the work that allowed critics like Li to make assumptions about the intention of the artist. It may very well be that Liu's subjects at the time he was reviewed by Li displayed cynicism, but the freedom Liu had to instill his own perspective into his paintings after learning the realist techniques taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts lends credibility to Lü's classification of Neo-Academism.

The term Neo-Realism, if taken to be a Chinese strain particular to Chinese artists and not related to the English Neo-Realism of the early 20th Century and a return to a realism after the era of social realist art in China, is indeed applicable to Liu's work. His looseness and economy in painting technique shows the influence of Lucian Freud and a clean break from the technical restraint that would have been taught to a social realist painter. Although his early works were based on photographic sources, his work displays none of the intention to paint what the audience could clearly perceive as being derived from a photo, unlike work in Photorealism. Fellow graduate student Fan Di’an said of Liu that he tried to paint things realistically without embellishing it with his imagination, but he still composes his pictures, with a respect for reality, so what he is trying to depict must have more to do with content and his interpretation of his subject matter via his brush. (Lü, 2010, p. 510)


 * Links**


 * References**


 * Print**


 * Li Xianting. "Apathy and Destruction in Post-'89 Art: Analyzing the Trend of 'Cynical Realism' and 'Political Pop' (1992)." In //Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents,// edited by Wu Hung with Peggy Wang, 157-166. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.
 * Lü Peng. //A Pocket History of 20th-Century Chinese Art//, trans. Bruce Gordon Doar. New York: Charta Books, 2010.
 * Yi Ying. "Criticism on Chinese Experimental Artin the 1990s (2002)." In //Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents,// edited by Wu Hung with Peggy Wang, 316-323. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.


 * Online**


 * Liu Xiaodong. "Respect the Reality- I Paint This Way," trans. Hu Zhu, //Artzine,// http://www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid477_en.html
 * Shao Yiyang. "Why Realism? From Social Realism to Neo-Realism in Modern Chinese Art (Part II)," //Cafa Art Info,// 26 October 2011, http://en.cafa.com.cn/why-realism-from-social-realism-to-neo-realism-in-modern-chinese-art-part-ii.html
 * Unknown. "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition," //Asia Art Archive in America,// http://www.aaa-a.org/2010/10/19/fresh-ink/
 * Unknown. http://the47th.com/clients/mfa/freshink/AllLabels/03_LiuXiaodong.pdf
 * Unkown. "Liu Xiaodong," //Artzine,// http://www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid228_en.html