Incongruously, Liu’s realistic figurative works are imbued with a sense of vibrancy with the presence of the seemingly trivial small pictures of Mondrian’s geometrical abstraction in the artist’s paintings which accentuate his realistic renditions. Mondrian, the leader in the modern abstract art movement De Stijl, is repeatedly referenced in Liu’s works in the presence of small pictorial images. While the book is rather centrally placed in the overall composition in relation to the other objects, it is placed slantwise, hinting at the observation of perspectival rules even as the ladder-like alignment is deemphasized. The painting’s other half is taken up by buildings and trees outside the window.
The presence of the book as a signifier in Liu’s paintings can be seen in his early work Scale (1995), where half of the painted canvas features a windowsill, on which rests a little volume showing a Piet Mondrian’s picture, with a ruler and pencil nearby.
Books and people reading have also long served as prevalent visual motifs in various artistic genres, as seen from portraits of refined gentry, still lifes to expressions of political art, demonstrating the remarkable staying power of painting a printed volume. Artists have long sought fresh and inspirational ways to inject the subject of books and reading into their artistic discourse, as did Chinese artists such as Xu Beihong, Ai Weiwei and Huang Yong Ping as well as Western artists including Egon Schiele, Mary Cassatt, Marc Chagall, MC Escher and Edward Hopper. Rendering the books’ material structure, the spine, assemblage and binding in trompe l’oeil, these paintings indicate an obsession with the book as an artifact and a deep love for literature.
LIU YE SERIES
Liu Ye’s painstaking book series depicts close-up views of books that have been flipped open to unveil empty pages, revealing an emphasis of the object’s form over its content. Published for the event of a solo exhibition presented at David Zwirner New York in 2020, the catalogue includes the article “Reading at the Limit” by the acclaimed poet Zhu Zhu as well as an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Liu Ye: The Book Paintings features his meticulous, vibrant canvases which explore the charming symbiosis between the visual and literary arts through numerous paintings completed over the last three decades. Since the 1990s, the Beijing-born artist has been exploring the book as a physical tangible entity as well as socio-cultural icon. Liu Ye (born 1964) has a thing about books.
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