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Liu Wei
Two Drunk Painters, 1990

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Two Drunk Painters
Artist name
Liu Wei
Date created
1990
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
59 in. × 39 1/2 in. (149.86 cm × 100.33 cm)
Date acquired
1998
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of Vicki and Kent Logan
Copyright
© Liu Wei
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.316
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Artist Hung Liu faces off with Two Drunk Painters

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HUNG LIU: Hello, my name is Hung Liu. I’m an artist from China, lives in US. 

Liu is painting two drunken artists. The paintings have a yin and yang, one artist in black, and the other in white top. And behind them also like a pair, was of Mao Zedong’s portraits. We had official Mao Zedong’s portraits.  He always stare at you directly– his gaze right look at you. Sometime feels like he looks through you. 

Liu was painting in 1990, which is within a year of the Tiananmen Square Incident. It’s a movement for democracy in China. Some got killed, some put in jail. 

Look at how tight this composition is. So the canvas is like a jail cell, almost– like crush them, you know, push them into very, very, tight space. I think that entrapped, imprisonment and no room probably both physical and psychological. 

Look at the two artists: the one in black – his face is open in a really strange way – I see he’s making face. And the other artist with wine in his hand, and I see he could barely open his eyes. They stare at the viewers but with dreamy, glazed eyes.   

In Chinese, we have a phrase everybody uses: [Chinese phrase]. Meaning you use wine to put down the sorrow, the sadness, the hopelessness.  But the more you do that, the sadder you get. So this is the stage– the artist not just representing the artist himself, but also the whole condition of freedom, liberty, justice in China. 

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