“I still do not consider myself to be a painter of children. I think all the children that I have painted are in fact adults. The image of a child is not a particularly acute symbol.”
—Liu YeStanding silently in an otherwise empty, brightly-hued space, the protagonist at the centre of Girl and Piggy has a remarkable sense of gravity, mesmerising viewers with her steady gaze and enigmatic smile. Utterly captivating, the strangely serene and highly stylised character holds a small pig to her bare chest in a disarmingly familiar gesture of maternal care, a dreamlike tableau typical of contemporary Chinese artist Liu Ye. Inspired in part by a childhood love of fairy tales and informed by both the visual culture of revolutionary era China and the artist’s formative early artistic training in Europe, Liu Ye’s bright, bold, and balanced compositions are populated with symbols and motifs from his own personal iconographic universe. Richly allusive and untethered from the bounds of time and place, these works provoke a thrilling sense of mystery and imaginative freedom in the viewer. 

 
Born in Beijing in 1964, Liu Ye came of age during the Cultural Revolution, when China was still largely isolated from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the artist enjoyed an expansive education; encouraged by his father who was himself an avid reader and illustrator of children’s books, Liu Ye was exposed to the rich literary and artistic traditions of China and the West early on, immersing himself in the imaginative fantasies of European writers such as Hans Christian Anderson and Oscar Wilde. This blend of different cultural histories would prove decisive for the artist, eventually undertaking an extended period of study in Europe where encounters with a Western art historical canon from medieval to modern augmented the artist’s early training in mural painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Certainly, something of the meticulous construction, bold design, and clear, direct visual style typically associated with public mural painting persists in Liu Ye’s deceptively simple compositions. However, in the arrangement of the central figure and her adoption of a pose typically associated with the Western art historical tradition of the Vigo Lactans or ‘Nursing Madonna’ we can also begin to trace the depth of Liu Ye’s engagement with the rich traditions of early Northern European painting, and his adoption of these motifs into his own, highly idiosyncratic visual vocabulary.

 

Both the nursing Madonna and the pig motif have reappeared across Liu Ye’s work, although their symbology and personal significance for the artist remains mysterious. Auspicious creatures in Chinese culture, pigs are typically associated with wealth, happiness, and good fortune, and are noted for their close relationship to humans as domesticated creatures. Although more typically associated with gluttony and unmannered behaviours in Western contexts, the pig has also been a prominent character within European folklore, notably in the well-known Romanian fairy tale ‘The Enchanted Pig’ in which a Princess submits to prophesy in marrying a pig, to find he is in fact a prince cursed to occupy the animal’s form by day. Speaking to the connections between this motif and Christianity iconography, the artist has described, 'the pig in Chinese tradition is a lucky animal, even if a little stupid, since it smbolises the abundance of money and an abundance of food [...] At first this appears a materialistic juxtaposition with the Pope, symbol of Christianity with its vows of poverty and selflessness until one recalls the opulence of the Catholic Church.'

 

While in its Western art historical contexts the nursing Madonna is understood to represent divine love and the sacrifice of the Son of God, its unexpected evocation here in relation to a small piglet strikes a note of humorous absurdity that seems more in keeping with Surrealism’s stark juxtaposition of visual signifiers and the fertile possibilities for new, associative meanings generated by these unexpected combinations. Liu Ye had ample exposure to such works during his four-year studies at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, and it is worth noting that the present work was executed in 1999, shortly after he completed a six-month residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Acknowledging the importance of these experiences in developing his distinctive visual language, Liu Ye has explained: ‘In my earlier days, my art was more about the imaginary. At that time, I was influenced by Italian Metaphysical Art and Surrealism; René Magritte is one of my favourite artists.’ⁱ

 
Balancing compositional serenity with narrative ambiguity, Girl and Piggy is a paradigmatic example of Liu Ye’s celebrated oeuvre, playfully exploring the disjunction between outward appearance and our interior, often contradictory states of being. Animated by bold, brightly-hued colours and a wealth of privately symbolic motifs, Girl and Piggy exemplifies the artist’s broader project and the perceptive description of how ‘Complexity and richness can be described in simple and concise language, which is the direction of my work. The exploration of human emotions has always been the subject of my interest. I have painted people or things that I love.’ⁱⁱ

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• Born in China during the Cultural Revolution, Liu Ye’s work is characterised by its bright colours, a repertoire of familiar characters, and deceptively simple iconography. 
• The artist has exhibited widely in recent years, including the recent 2023 solo presentation at David Zwirner in London, and at Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai in 2018. 
• Examples of the artist’s work are held in numerous public collections including the Long Museum in Shanghai; the M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong; and Today Art Museum in Beijing. 

 

 

ⁱ Liu Ye, quoted in Cheryl Zhao, ‘Artist Liu Ye on His New Catalogue Raisonné and the Rise of Chinese Collectors’, Jing Daily, 10 December 2015, online.
ⁱⁱ Liu Ye, quoted in Sebastian T. Thorsted, ‘Liu Ye: The Art of Storytelling’, Metal Magazine, 2019, online.