Studio: Liu Ye | Viewing Room

Liu Ye

Banned Book No. 5 (Balthus Variation), 2019-2020

Acrylic on canvas mounted on wooden panel

31 1/2 x 39 3/8 inches (80 x 100 cm)

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Liu Ye, Banned Book No. 2, 2008. Private Collection

A study and reference images for Banned Book No. 5 (Balthus Variation), 2020

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Balthus, The Blanchard Children, 1937, Musée national Picasso-Paris. Photo: Mathieu Rabeau
© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

Balthus, The Blanchard Children , 1937, Musée national Picasso-Paris. Photo: Mathieu Rabeau
© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

In this secular religious painting by Rogier van der weyden, a contemplative Mary Magdalen meditates on the scriptures. The combination of the worldly and the spiritual co-mingling, and the refinement and attention to detail are both qualities which appeal to Liu Ye.

Rogier van der weyden, The Magdalen Reading , before 1438.
© The National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY

A central idea of Brancusi’s sculptures has also become a through line of Liu Ye’s paintings: namely, the constant duality of abstraction and figuration—the “secret tension” of Liu Ye’s work since the 1990s.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1955

Photo: Shen Siyuan

All quotes excerpted from Zhu Zhu’s essay “Reading at the Limit,” to be published by David Zwirner Books
in a forthcoming catalogue on Liu Ye’s paintings.

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