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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jun 3, 2019 | China Guardian | Beijing | 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2079 | $****** - ****** | Flow1990-1 |
paintings
131 x 131 cm (51.57 x 51.57 in)
Oil on canvas
YU YOUHAN, by Paul Gladston, P76, 3030Press, 2015.
Signed in Chinese(lower right), signed in Chinese, dated 1990(on the reverse)
LITERATURE:
YU YOUHAN, by Paul Gladston, P76, 3030Press, 2015.
Signed in Chinese(lower right), signed in Chinese, dated 1990(on the reverse)
The item is held under the bonded status, please check the NOTICE ON AUCTION OF BONDED LOTS in this catalogue for details.
Throughout the 1980s, exploration of abstract art surged in the '85 New Wave, sweeping across the nation. During this period, a considerable number of young artists joined the movement of abstract experimentalism and became pioneers of China's avant-garde art. Concentrated in the Shanghai area, their works were so new and fresh that one can hardly find direct derivations from Western abstract art history, nor did they show direct impact from Chinese modernist art of the 1920s.
Although were still in the stage of exploration, with some works in between abstract and figurative, the artists demonstrated their courage and confidence in breaking with the monotonous realism. China's first wave of abstract artists emerged during this time, including Yu Youhan, Li Shan, Zhang Jianjun, Zhou Changjiang, Chen Jian, Wang Jieyin, etc. Yu Youhan's “Circle” series, Li Shan's “Extension Expansion” series, and Zhou Changjiang's “Complementary” series stand out to be the representative paintings of Shanghai abstract art.
As if touched by an atmosphere of a new era, Yu Youhan's “Circle” series, began in the year of 1980, when the loosened ideological domination of the 80s allowed an influx of various philosophical thoughts. It was a novel expression with an artistic impulse. Young intellectuals pored over Friedrich Nietzsche of the West and Tao Te Ching of the East, as well as the Western natural science and the Eastern mysticism. Among them, Tao Te Ching impacted and was referenced to the most with Yu Youhan. Born in the 1940s, Yu spent most of his youth in assorted struggles and strife. However, he saw all of these as violations of the teachings of Laozi, as they ran against the natural law, downtrading people into miserable lives. He yearned for a free, peaceful and diverse society that allowed everyone to have comprehensive development. He, thereafter, began to present his vision in abstract forms and initiated his nonstop creation of the “Circle” series.
The “Modernist Painting: Six-Man Exhibition” of early 1985 was Yu's first important exhibition. It exhibited eleven pieces of disproportionately dotted black and white paintings from his “Circle” series, presenting his understanding of the inaction and nihilist tranquility of the Oriental spirit. His first and second “Circle” both stood out in this exhibition. Following the second black and white “Circle,” he added more onto the paintings. The eleven pieces together represented the early explorative process of the “Circle” series from scratch. The “Modernist Painting: Six-Man Group Exhibition” was the first one to publicly announce the subjective crave of “modernist painting” among the exhibitions of the '85 New Wave. In the prologue, they assigned paintings with the task to search for the image of the time and believed that today's creation would become the foundation of the possible civilization of the future. As the curator and organizer of this exhibition, Yu had shown signs of fundamental changes in his conceptualization. He was acutely aware of the need to actively create modern culture, thus breaking through the bondage and pursuing true inner freedom. The nearly 30 years course of his creation of the “Circle” series had demonstrated the uninterrupted continuation of this concept.
The abstract works of the “Circle” series mainly aim at expressing a world of movement, various forms of movements and its self-discipline and harmony. Yu's understanding of contradiction is dialectical. He sees that contradictions exist in movements, and in some cases when a contradiction seems to disturb the harmony, nonetheless, on a higher level, the harmony keeps existing. The conditions of relative drastic changes and relative dormancy are only temporary. In most cases, things are always in the process of movement between quantitative change to qualitative change. This is the human life in Yu's understanding, and often the condition expressed by his works. The movements he expresses include movements of nature, of the human society, of the individual mental activity, and etc.
This canvas, Flow 1990-1, depicts mostly black and white. Yu regards black and white as colors of solemnness and thoughtfulness and are suitable for expressing the theme of “Circle.” Presented with dots and short lines, the “Circle” series illustrates the artist's concept that all things are composed with basic units, and the different compositions of innumerable units would possibly express the myriad poses of things, just as the different combination of 0 and 1 could express all sounds and images in computing. Yu's creation, therefore, is not a depiction and reproduction of the shape of the world, but an expression of the eternal change and movement of all the worldly things, namely an abstract, symbolic, and integrated representation of the perception of basic movements within the universe. In addition, the horizontally separated compositional form in Flow 1990-1 is rarely seen in the “Circle” series with mostly encirclement forms. This canvas seems to be two cosmic rivers with turbulent flows, ceaselessly flowing in the same direction.
