| Execution | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Yue Minjun |
| Year | 1995 |
| Type | Oil painting |
| Dimensions | 150 cm× 300 [1] cm(59.1 in× 118.1 in) |
Execution is a 1995 painting by Chinese artist Yue Minjun. The piece was inspired by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, although the artist stated that the piece should not be viewed as depicting what happened at Tiananmen Square. [2] In 2007 it became the most expensive work sold by a Chinese contemporary artist. [3]
Yue Minjun painted Execution in 1995 in a month. He sold the painting to Hong Kong art dealer Manfred Schoeni for $5,000. [2] Trevor Simon, an investment banker, stumbled across the painting in 1996 in the back of a Hong Kong gallery. He convinced Schoeni to sell the piece for HK$250,000 / US$32,200. The painting was then shipped from Hong Kong to London, where Simon stored it in a warehouse. Under the terms, the painting was to remain out of sight for five years in a warehouse. [1]
In 2007, Execution became the most expensive work of Chinese contemporary art, selling for £2.9 million / US$5.9 million / €4.2 million at London's Sotheby's. [2] The art piece was billed by Sotheby's as "Among the most historically important paintings of the Chinese avant-garde ever to appear at auction." [2] Simon called Yue a brave man for painting something so politically dangerous. [1]
The artist, Yue, denies that his paintings are a veiled criticism of his government or of Chinese society, and he does not believe his work will bring him trouble. [2]
I want the audience not to think of one thing or one place or one event. The whole world's the background. As I said, the viewer should not link this painting to Tiananmen. But Tiananmen is the catalyst for conceiving of this painting. [2]
The painting has been compared to Goya's The Third of May 1808 and Manet's The Execution of Emperor Maximilian . [2]
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Amsterdam, Geneva, Shanghai, and Dubai. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault. In 2022 Christie's sold $8.4 billion in art and luxury goods, an all-time high for any auction house. In 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold at Christie's in New York for $450 million, the highest price ever paid for a single painting.
Sotheby's is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and maintains a significant presence in the UK.
Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in Paris; one each in Basel, Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong.
Zhang Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. Paintings in his Bloodline series are predominantly monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, he also created sculptures, translating for the first time into three dimensions many characters of the sort seen in his "Bloodlines—Big Family" portrait series. These sculptures have featured in many exhibits and continue his work as one of China's leading, and most highly sought-after, contemporary artists.
Zeng Fanzhi is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing. Zeng's works have been praised as possessing an emotional directness, an intuitive psychological sense, and a carefully calibrated expressionistic technique.
Yue Minjun is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolour and prints. While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese Cynical Realist art movement developed in 1989, Yue rejects this label, but also "doesn't concern himself about what people call him."
Joseph Lau Luen-hung is a Hong Kong billionaire. Lau is the former chairman of property developer Chinese Estates. He is an avid art and wine collector. His fortune is estimated by Forbes at $13.3 billion as of September 2021. In 2014, he became a convicted felon and fugitive in Macau.
I Nyoman Masriadi is a painter and a leading artist of the post-Suharto era in Indonesia. His works have gained a collectors base which includes prominent collectors in and around the region.
The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) is a non-profit organisation established in 2003 by Howard Bilton, a tax lawyer and today's chairman of the Sovereign Group.
Liu Ye is a Beijing-based contemporary Chinese painter known for his bright-hued paintings of childlike female figures, his favorite cartoon character Miffy the bunny and works inspired by Piet Mondrian. Liu Ye is part of a generation of artists who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. However, unlike most acclaimed Chinese contemporary art, his works have little political implications. Instead, he prefers to use a universal language to depict his inner world. His work has been exhibited extensively in China, Europe and the United States.
Johnson Chang is a curator and dealer of contemporary Chinese art. He is a co-founder of the Asia Art Archive (AAA) in Hong Kong and a guest professor of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. The New York Times described him as "a force in contemporary Chinese art since the 1980s", and Sotheby's described him as "the godfather of contemporary Chinese art".
Shen Jingdong is a contemporary Chinese artist known for his paintings and sculptures of Chinese iconography. He currently lives in Beijing.
David Bowie owned an extensive private art collection which included paintings, sculpture and furniture. He started collecting art in the mid-1970s and continued through the end of his life. His collection included paintings that he himself painted.
Love is in the Bin is a 2018 art intervention by Banksy at Sotheby's London. According to Sotheby's, it is "the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction." His 2006 painting of Girl with Balloon unexpectedly self-destructed immediately after it was sold at auction. The damaged painting was later renamed Love is in the Bin. It has been on permanent loan to the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart since March 2019. In October 2021, it sold at auction for £18,582,000, a record for the artist.
Warrior is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. It is interpreted as "a semi-autobiographical work championing his creative vision as a black artist." In March 2021, the painting sold for $41.8 million at Christie's in Hong Kong, becoming the most expensive Western artwork sold at auction in Asia.
Untitled (One Eyed Man or Xerox Face) is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. In May 2021, it sold for $30.2 million at Christie's in Hong Kong.