Grey Art and Humor 灰色幽默与艺术

From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki

During the 1980s, humor was a necessary gesture in the Chinese art world because of its power to counteract ideological standpoints. The landscape of China’s cities became increasingly unfamiliar during the Cultural Revolution due to the growing interest in urban modernization. The Grey Humor group created a form of art that both scoffed at and absorbed the increasingly depersonalized urban terrain of a new China. With a stylized realism, the group transformed the reality around themselves into a comically unreal landscape.

Geng Jianyi provided the force for the Grey Humor movement, creating a series of screaming and laughing faces to depict an excess of emotion. Because these paintings lack any defined background, the faces appear exaggerated, hanging in an empty environment, as if socially isolated. The facial expressions themselves are confused, unclear whether they are laughing, screaming, or crying in anguish.

In the midst of modernization, depersonalized cities, and tired ideology, Grey Humorists respond in a somewhat positive manner—they laugh. Their humor is by no means completely dark, but it is certainly grey--ambiguous. 

(Right: The Second Condition. Geng Jianyi. Oil on Canvas, 1989.)

[edit] References

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/finch/finch4-18-08_detail.asp?picnum=4

http://www.artandculture.com/categories/664-chinese-grey-humor#more