Above: Work by Yue Minjun and a reference of the iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe. Minjun work consist of self-portraits which relates to the Chinese philosophy but put it into relation of the western commercial world. Always large scale paintings and always smiling faces.
Conceptual art in China first began to appear in the mid-1980's, as manifest in the Xiamen Dada Movement. Shanghai artists also became interested in the ideas that challenged traditional artistic practices of sculpture and painting. By the time of the 1989 China Avant-Garde Art exhibition, art on canvas was no longer what aroused the most interest among the art-going public. Rather it was conceptual works and related news events that impacted on the cultural psychology of the time.
The environmental works of Gu Wenda, Xu Bing and Lu Shengzhong; The installations of Huang Yongping, Song Haidong, Zhang Peili; the performances of Xiao Lu, Zhang Nian, Wu Shanzhuan; were all representative of this period; omens of the transformation from Modernism to Contemporary art that was to take place in the 90's.
Subsequently Political Pop art and Cynical Realism emerged in the early 1990's and, in as much as these works tended to suite exhibition organizers in the West, artists associated with these movements appeared predominantly in international exhibitions.
By focusing on broader social issues and cultural concerns very much within the realms of world discourse, these exhibitions reversed the slide toward commercialism that had begun among more traditional paint mediums and gave a new look to visual art in China.
