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The Man Behind the Smile

Chinese artist takes New York with his signature troubling grin

By Jonas Oransky, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 14, 2007 5:38 PM CST

(Newser) – It's contemporary Chinese art's most indelible image—the smile so huge it becomes false, accusatory—and it belongs to Yue Minjun, the artist who uses the grinning self-portraits, often many of them, in his paintings. The New York Times chats with Yue, who is enjoying his first US show in New York after one of his paintings sold for $5.9 million last month at an auction at Sotheby’s in London.

Yue was in art school when Tiananmen Square erupted in 1989, and he felt he had to recreate himself as an artist. “The first step,” he tells the Times, “was to create a style to express my feelings accurately, starting with something that I knew really well—myself.” The smile has a long history in China, he notes, including the false happiness of posters during the Cultural Revolution. “A smile doesn’t necessarily mean happiness.”

[Images (3)]

[Videos (1)]

A visitor talks on his mobile phone backdropped by 1993 painting "Sunshine" by artist Yue Minjun in London, Wednesday Oct. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) (Associated Press)

A photographer takes a picture of the painting named "The Massacre at Chios" by mainland Chinese artist Yue Minjun at a Sotheby's auction preview in Hong Kong Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Vincent... (Associated Press)

A Sotheby's employee (R) stands by a contemporary Chinese painting by Yue Minjun. (Getty Images)

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Yue Minjun's 1989 Tiananmen Square art sale (A1Huxley (YouTube))

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The Man Behind the Smile