Cynical Realist
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Cynical Realist
Cynical realism () is a contemporary movement in Chinese art, especially in the form of painting, that began in the 1990s. Beginning in Beijing, it has become one of the most popular Chinese contemporary art movements in mainland China. It arose throughout the pursuit of individual expression by Chinese artists who broke away from the collective mindset that existed since the Cultural Revolution. The major themes tend to focus on socio-political issues and events since Revolutionary China (1911) to the present. These include having a usually humorous and post-ironic take on a realist perspective and interpretation of the transition that Chinese society has been through, from the advent of Communism to today's industrialization and modernization. Artists associated with Cynical Realism include Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, and Yue Minjun Yue Minjun (; born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various setti ...
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Contemporary Art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of Medium (arts), materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that continue the challenging of boundaries that was already well underway in the 20th century. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform, organising principle, ideology, or "-ism". Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality. In vernacular English, ''modern'' and ''contemporary'' are synonyms, resulting in some conflation and confusion of the terms ''modern art'' and ''contemporary art'' by non-specialists. Scope Some define contemporary art as art produced within "our lifetime," recognising tha ...
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Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ...
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Art Movements
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered as a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality (figurative art). By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy (abstract art). Concept According to theories associated with modernism and the concept of postmodernism, ''art movements'' are especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. The perio ...
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Yue Minjun
Yue Minjun (; born 1962) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolour and prints. While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese Cynical Realist art movement developed in 1989, Yue rejects this label, but also "doesn't concern himself about what people call him." Early life Yue was born in 1962 in Daqing, Heilongjiang, China. His family worked on an oil field, and he also taught art in oil school for a short time. In 1980, he graduated from high school, went to Tian Jing National Company. In 1983, he decided to go to He Pei and became an electrician. He was painting and working at the same time, and he could normally paint and work non-stop for 20 days. This life experience could indicate why he paints skin in red. In the 1980s, he started painting portraits of his co-workers and the sea while he was ...
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Liu Wei (artist)
Liu Wei (; born 1972 in Beijing) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. He works in varied media – video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting – with no uniting stylistic tendency, though the Saatchi Gallery finds a uniting theme of "a sentiment of excess, corruption, and aggression reflective of cultural anxiety". Conceptualism, satire, and humor are the hallmarks of his works. His works include the ''Super Structure'' series of model cityscapes constructed from dog chews; the ''Purple Air'' oil paintings of stylised skyscraper cityscapes; the ''Landscape Series'' of landscapes made from photographic composites of human buttocks; and ''Indigestion II'', a two-metre model turd. He has shown work in exhibitions including ''21: World Wide Video Festival'' in Amsterdam, ''Cinema du Reel'' at the Pompidou Centre in France, ''Over One Billion Served'' at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and ''Between Past and Future'' at the International Center for Ph ...
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Fang Lijun
Fang Lijun (; born 1963) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. He was born into a wealthy family with a high social status. In the 1990s, there was a cultural movementLü, Peng. "21-New Art and Artists." A History of Art in 20th-Century China. Milano: Charta, 2010.nowiki>] in China referred to as Cynical Realism of which Fang Lijun was a member. Living in China during this critical time shaped his worldview in terms of his views on art, human values and morality. Biography Fang Lijun attended Children Cultural Place school. During his time at school, he met Li Xianting (who would later be a famous critic) and was introduced to watercolors, oil paints and ink. Fang Lijun decided to leave high school to pursue his artistic dream. He made a decision to go to Hebei Light Industry Technology school to study ceramics for three years. However, Fang Lijun did not want to stop his studies there. Instead of having an intellectual job in the ceramics department, he prepared himself to take ...
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Modernization
Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, and were strongly influenced by the writings of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, then went into a deep eclipse. It made a comeback after 1991, when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation on modernization theory and more generally of universal history. But the theory remains a controversial model. Modernization refers to a model of a progressive transition from a "pre-modern" or "traditional" to a "modern" society. Modernization theory suggests that traditional societies will develop as they adopt more modern practices. Proponents of modernization theory claim that modern states are wealthier and more powerful and t ...
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Industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Historically industrialization is associated with increase of polluting industries heavily dependent on fossil fuels. With the increasing focus on sustainable development and green industrial policy practices, industrialization increasingly includes technological leapfrogging, with direct investment in more advanced, cleaner technologies. The reorganization of the economy has many unintended consequences both economically and socially. As industrial workers' incomes rise, markets for consumer goods and services of all kinds tend to expand and provide a further stimulus to industrial investment and economic growth. Moreover, family structures tend to shift as extended families tend to no longer live ...
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Post-irony
Post-irony (from Latin ''post'' (after) and Ancient Greek ', meaning dissimulation (or feigned ignorance)) is a term used to denote a state in which earnest and ironic intents become muddled. It may less commonly refer to its converse: a return from irony to earnestness, similar to New Sincerity. Noted surreal humor comedian Tim Heidecker portrays a man living a post-ironic lifestyle in the 2012 indie drama film '' The Comedy''. In literature, David Foster Wallace is often described as the founder of a "postironic" literature. His essays "E Unibus Pluram" and "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young" describe and hope for a literature that goes beyond postmodern irony. Other authors often described as postironic are Dave Eggers,Jensen, Mikkel. 2014. "A Note on a Title: '' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''" in ''The Explicator'', 72:2, 146–150/ref> Tao Lin, and Alex Shakar. Overview Whereas in postmodern irony, something is meant to be cynically mocked and not ta ...
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Chinese Art
Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based in or draws on Chinese culture, heritage, and history. Early " Stone Age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After that period, Chinese art, like Chinese history, was typically classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors, most of which lasted several hundred years. The Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei contains extensive collections of Chinese art. Chinese art is marked by an unusual degree of continuity within, and consciousness of, tradition, lacking an equivalent to the Western collapse and gradual recovery of Western classical styles of art. Decorative arts are extremely important in Chinese art, and much of the finest work was produced in large works ...
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Revolutionary China
The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a decade of agitation, revolts, and uprisings. Its success marked the collapse of the Chinese monarchy, the end of 2,132 years of imperial rule in China and 276 years of the Qing dynasty, and the beginning of China's early republican era.Li, Xiaobing. 007(2007). ''A History of the Modern Chinese Army''. University Press of Kentucky. , . pp. 13, 26–27. The Qing dynasty had struggled for a long time to reform the government and resist foreign aggression, but the program of reforms after 1900 was opposed by conservatives in the Qing court as too radical and by reformers as too slow. Several factions, including underground anti-Qing groups, revolutionaries in exile, reformers who wanted to save the monarchy by modernizing it, and activists ...
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