Liu Xiaodong in "Beijing"
Liu Xiaodong
A leading figurative painter, Liu Xiaodong creates large-scale works that dramatize the lives of everyday people: migrants, laborers, and others on the economic and geographic margins. Best known for his live, en plein air process, Liu travels to Eagle Pass, Texas, a city on the United States-Mexico border, to paint a county sheriff, his friends, and colleagues. As he works outdoors, Liu contends with the natural elements to complete his ambitious mural-size work, composed of loose brushstrokes and rich colors. The artist considers this process a meditative one that allows him to soften the harsh edges of the world. Reflective of the rise of China to prominence on the world stage, Liu discusses his humble origins as a boy raised in rural China, which inspired him to depict real and relatable people, and his international success, working across cultures and continents. Ultimately, Liu hopes, “Audiences will look at my art and think of themselves.” His paintings are at once tenderly realized portraits of specific people and places and also universalizing scenes from our globalized lives.
Featured artists
About the artists
Liu Xiaodong was born in 1963 in Jincheng, in the province of Liaoning, China. A leading figure among the Chinese Neo-Realist painters, Liu Xiaodong depicts everyday people in his enormous oil-and-acrylic paintings, foregrounding the human dimension of global issues like economic hardship, environmental crisis, and migration. The artist often works on site, painting his subjects en plein air.
Amid Beijing’s dizzying economic, urban, and cultural transformation, five artists respond to the region’s relentless evolution with urgency and ambition, all the while contending with many centuries of Chinese cultural traditions.
Educators’ Guides provide information about selected artists and themes, questions for classroom discussions, and hands-on activities that provide students with a fundamental understanding of creative and critical thinking processes.
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