From Symbols to Psychology: Post-2005 Shift in Chinese Figurative Painting and Modern Chinese Identity

While focusing on the history of Chinese figurative art, a clear pattern emerges relating to Western influence on traditional art. The socialist revolutionaries embrace Western realism, moving away from the more spiritual style of ink wash painting, to showcase powerful and happy figures as symbolic representations of the Maoist revolution. This style of art dominated for a few decades, only to be supplanted by cynical realists, as China moved away from stringent socialism, embracing many capitalist elements. The semiotic analysis of cynical realist paintings was conducted before, and this study focuses on the shift from symbolic to the psychological in post-2005 Chinese figurative art. Using visual analysis and a comparative case study of two artists, Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong, this paper establishes that 21st-century Chinese figurative painting moved away from overt sociopolitical critique, instead focusing on issues that create a profound psychological impact. The study revealed that the two representative artists of this era have very different approaches to psychological realism; while Liu prefers a more dispassionate and detached approach, the art of Yu Hong is profoundly rooted in her lived experiences.