Mao and a Girl 1992

Yu Youhan made this painting, Mao and a Girl, sometime after he was born in 1943, and it looks like it was made with oil on canvas. It’s really interesting how he divides the canvas, right down the middle, with Mao in his very serious, grey suit in one panel. There’s this flatness, but also a clear delight in the materiality of the paint, which feels very physical. You can see how he’s applied it, these little dashes of color, especially in the background, which creates this vibrant texture. The other side is this woman in a wild, flowered dress, and somehow the colors work together to make this weird harmony. I think that Yu Youhan is having a conversation with Pop Art, and maybe also, Surrealism; it has that kind of unexpected, dreamlike quality, where familiar images collide to make something new. What I find interesting is that it is a serious, but not serious painting, or rather it finds a new way to be serious about painting.