Yue Minjun (1962, Heilongjiang Province) is one of the chief proponents, along with Fang Lijun, of the Cynical Realist movement. His colorful
and vibrant paintings of men with full-toothed laughter are now some of the most popular contemporary art works on the market. One of his
works sold for over $4 million, the highest price ever paid for a work by a Chinese contemporary artist. Yue is
now a global art star. His portrait has appeared in the New York Times and on the cover of Time magazine's Asia edition. His works, which appear to
be self-portraits,show legions of cloned figures apparently caught in bouts of hilarious laughter with their mouths wide open and their eyes tightly
closed. But the portraits are actually intended to be false expressions of joy masking the trauma and despair that swept China in the
early 1990s, when youthful idealism gave way to cynical realism.
Yue Minjun now lives and works in Beijing.
