Untitled (Smile-ism No.4)

As one of the forefront pioneers of the Cynical Realists group, Yue Minjun is best known for his signature motif of stylized self-portraits. His gaping grins and eyes closed tight demonstrate a disillusionment with reality evident to avant-garde painters of the post-1989 generation. Having experienced the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident and the demonstrative closing of the 1989 China/Avant-garde Exhibition, artists like Yue Minjun became preoccupied with depicting the ironies of contemporary societies with cynical detachment through stark, direct visual language emblematic of his times.

In his works, Yue Minjun turns himself into an 'idol' to satirize what he felt was an idolatrous society - one that is too easily influenced by images of mass production, whether they be propagandistic images from the communist era or the spectacles of mass media in a consumerist society. Untitled (Smile-ism No. 4) depicts Yue’s signature self-portrait meditating while many pairs of arms fan out from his body, each one performing a different hand symbol. Though the imagery looks spiritual, the hand symbols themselves are insignificant and devoid of meaning, thus satirizing the lack of spirituality in contemporary times.