Another Grand Narration-the Transformation Of Perspective Of Xiaodong Liu’s Works

From 1980’s to 1990’s, China undergone transformation of social formation, and some foreign modern artistic concepts were introduced in China during this period. In this case, Held "Chinese Modern Art Exhibition" made Installation Art and Performance Art more popular, however, Xiaodong Liu, who received education in Academy of Fine Art for 8 years, didn’t work on Avant-garde Art, his works tended to describe real life in concept, and drew close to realism in techniques. Therefore, the works of Xiaodong Liu are defined as realism style. The fundamental principle of realism is to represent real life thereby achieving the objective authenticity of artistic expression, but there is difference of realization of art due to variable personal real life background. Although Xiaodong Liu’s works belongs to realism, they are significantly different from traditional realistic painting. In the case of choice of the theme of realistic painting, the early works of Xiaodong Liu usually present some person or items in daily life, the picture usually shows sense of humor, and the scene and person in picture shows strong sense of ridicule, thereby revealing the mental state of individual existence, this artistic feature is less in painting theme before. However, after entering 21 century, the situation of China made Xiaodong Liu changed the painting theme into a kind of grand narration with wordless state, the content started to pay close attention to critical social incident, and the art language shows strong expressive force, has a special feature on surface of life and exploration on humanity.In this paper, the perspective transformation about Xiaodong Liu’s paintings are regarded as the object, study from four different aspects of Xiaodong Liu early work which express digestion and ridicule, maturing "alternative grand narrative", the sociological significance and individual performance of generating grand narrative, the influence and inspiration on China realistic painting, explore another grand narrative of Xiaodong Liu’s painting work. First, the analysis of social spirit, the influence and performance of United States New figurative painter Lucian Freud and Eric Fishel about Xiaodong Liu early work which express digestion and ridicule. Secondly, analysis the gradually mature alternative grand narrative of Xiaodong Liu’s paintings in 21st century, study the impact of current social environment, then describe the transition of his painting subjects and the formation of unique narrative perspective. Thirdly, through analyzing the unique perspective about real life of Xiaodong Liu’s paintings in order to reflect individual performance of painting art language and show the hidden sociological significance. The purpose of this paper is to describe and think the problem of our contemporary realist painting through Xiaodong Liu’s paintings.