Yue Min-Jun (born 1962, Daqing, China) is one of the leading Chinese artists. He is best known for oil paintings depicting formations of his laughing self-portraits in various settings. His iconography is easily recognisable, it challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and political issues in a radical, abstract, ironic and cynical manner.
Yue Min-Jun initially started painting as a hobby, subsequently he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Hebei Normal University, China in 1985. In the 90s he joined an artist community in Yuan Ming Yuan, a village near Beijing where he began to form his style and iconography. The paintings, sculptures, and installations of Yue Minjun feature uniform laughing pink faces, which appear to be self-portraits. Through various symbols, metaphors, signs, or through depictions of daily life the artist constructs various realities against which the laughing figures are rendered. Yue became famous after his participation in the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, which granted him access to international art. One of the best-known paintings by Yue Minjun and an icon for modern Chinese art and the Cynical Realism movement is Execution. It was painted in 1995 and is generally regarded as a reaction to the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, as it shows several laughing men in front of an execution squad. The cloned all smiling Minjun self-portraits have become known in the art world as the "Silly Man". As the preparation for his paintings, the artist uses photographs of himself being photographed in various poses. This approach reflects the self-irony of the artist. Yue Minjun is often classified as part of the Chinese "Cynical Realist" movement, however, the artist does not support such attribution. Nevertheless, Yue often challenges social and cultural conventions by depicting objects and political issues in a radical, abstract, ironic and cynical manner.

Yue Minjun

In fantastical paintings populated with heightened, hysterical self-portraits, Yue Minjun satirizes contemporary society and art historical tropes.

Yue Minjun's work revolves around his characteristic grinning self-image - a repeated motif throughout his oeuvre. The figures, all based on a generic self-portrait, are each rendered with an inane beaming smile - a cynical grimace that represents the artist's resignation and disdain towards the materialism and spiritual emptiness of contemporary mainland Chinese culture.

In "Big swans" Minjun represents himself laughing, same recurring motif of his oeuvre, and pointing at flighting swans. Yue employs a minimal palette to create a simple, even simplified, composition. The result is a bold and striking image. This stylistic technique is characteristic to Yue's work and although possibly inspired by commercial advertising and Pop Art, the imagery undeniably taunts Communist propaganda painting and posters.

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“ In my work, laughter is a representation of a state of helplessness, lack of strength and participation, with the absence of our rights that society has imposed on us. „

—Yue Minjun