Three Chinese artists

China has some really exciting artists- the most obvious being Ai Weiwei. Hard to pin down, Ai makes films, sculptures and is active in architecture and politics. Most people know him in the UK for filling the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern with 100 million hand painted porcelain sunflower 'seeds’ made by workers in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Have a look at all his other projects- there are too many to mention, including a subversive cover of ‘Gangnam Style’ which got blocked by the Chinese government.

Zhang Xiaogang is another amazing Chinese artist, his Bloodline series of  paintings are eerie and disturbing, reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 1960s. At one time Xiaogang suffered from alcoholism and was hospitalized. I think this quote is really great: 

“When night dawned, groaning sounds rose above the hospital and some of the withering bodies around had gone to waste and were drifting on the brink of death: these deeply stirred my feelings. They were so close to my then life experiences and lonely miserable soul.”

In April 2011 his 1988 triptych oil work Forever Lasting Love reached  a record auction price of $79 million.

Yue Minjun is widely regarded as one of China's greatest contemporary artists. Based in Beijing, he is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. Some people classify his work as ‘Cynical Realism’ - a post-ironic take on the transition that Chinese society has been through from Communism to industrialization, but he rejects this label. 

One of his most popular series was his "Hat" collection. This series pictures Yue wearing a variety of hats- a chef's hat, a Special Forces beret, a policeman’s helmet. Yue says that the paintings give you a "sense of the absurdity of the ideas that govern the sociopolitical protocol surrounding hats." Which is fine with me.

Take some time to find out about the many other artists that are doing amazing work in China today. Without meaning to sound trite, art could be the thing that will keep us all together at this very strange time.