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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, © Huang Rui
Huang Rui 黃銳
Yuanmingyuan: Rebirth 圓明園 : 新生
1979
In this painting, towering stone structures and rocks stand on a grassy hill against a cloudy backdrop. The stones resemble human figures. They seem to stretch their arms, gaze into the distance, look up towards the sky, and embrace. As the title of the work implies, the scene refers to Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, which was looted and reduced to ruins by British and French forces during the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The ruins became a meeting place for artists and writers during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Huang Rui made many sketches of the ruins and gardens, and produced three oil paintings. He considered the ruins to be a metaphor for the death and rebirth of China after the social and economic upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, and the anthropomorphic stone figures in this work act as symbols of this rejuvenation. Yuanmingyuan: Rebirth is one of Huang’s early paintings, which reflect his experiments with ideas drawn from Western art movements. It was included in the first exhibition of work by the Stars Group of artists, outside the National Art Museum of China in 1979.
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