HUNG LIU Memory and Revolution

by Tonya Turner Carroll

Hung Liu’s impact on contemporary art is immense, and since the censoring of her 2019 Beijing exhibition, her passing and subsequent Smithsonian retrospective in 2021, the international art world has been anticipating the next deep dive into her work. Turner Carroll is proud to offer a glimpse into Liu’s revolutionary feminism in its exhibition of works from its own and private collections, seldom exhibited in public in recent years. Much of Hung Liu’s incredible body of work reflects the widely-shared, near-universal experience of immigrating to a new culture. Born in northern China in a time of famine, her first migration was as a six-month-old child in her mother’s arms, as her family fled what was known as “the city of bones” on foot for their survival.

While visions of travel and immigration in popular culture typically skew romantic, Hung Liu’s work reflects the realities of displacement, including the internal conflicts and loss of identity that often result from leaving home. Her work Travelogue is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of our culture’s idealization of immigration: its title referencing the concept of a travel diary, a common narrative theme in movies and books.

Liu’s life in China was a tumultuous one. The daughter of scholars and a member of the Nationalist Army, her father was taken away to a labor camp when Hung was a baby. She saw him only once when she was an adult of fifty years, shortly before his death. To avoid retaliation by the government, her family destroyed photographs that included her father. Liu’s lack of photos documenting her own family was foundational in her reverence for historic photographs as the inspiration for her paintings. Equally formative for Hung Liu was her upbringing by very strong women: her grandmother, and her mother, both of whom inspired in Liu the resilience that would take her across the ocean and into the cannon of art history.

When Hung Liu was a youth, she was removed from school and sent to the Chinese countryside to labor as part of her “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution. In the painting Golden Lotus, Red Flag diptych is a painted version of one of Liu’s few photographs of her young self. Carrying a bayonet and standing in the fields, this image became a touchstone for Liu as the warrior she would become. In an often-recounted story, Liu remembered answering a fellow student’s question about why she was carrying a gun, saying, “I was fighting American Impressionism!” She obviously meant “American Imperialism,” but this type of double entendre became a trademark of Liu’s lucid style.

In contrast to the warrior panel, the other panel of the diptych depicts a woman whose feet had been bound. A common practice in historic China, foot binding essentially hobbled women to the extent that they had no ability to move quickly to defend themselves or to escape aggression. While the revolutionary ballerinas in the left panel might seem strong, their feet were bound in another way. Their toe shoes hobbled them, to an extent, as well, Liu said to art historian Tonya Turner Carroll. Liu presented her opinion that even though China seemed to be offering “modernization” to women, there were still gender handicaps placed upon even the most “modernized.”

Liu came to realize that these women, who endured so much subjugation during their young lives, were at risk of being forgotten to history. She saw history as a verb, one in which we must work to remember the people and occurrences that others tried to wash away. She created a series of oil paintings in the early 2000s, based on historic photographs of Chinese prostitutes. The prostitutes’ names were changed to names of flowers and gemstones, allowing those who consumed them euphemistic pleasure. Liu, however, brought these otherwise forgotten women back in her paintings, giving their spirits a beautiful place to rest for eternity.

Relic VIII is a painting from Hung Liu’s series of prostitute paintings. On a return trip to China several years after she immigrated to the United States, Liu found a box of photographs of Chinese prostitutes at the Beijing Film Archive. The women were often quite young, posed in formal settings and displayed as if in an advertisement. Liu felt great empathy for these young women, as they had likely been sold by their families and would be forgotten by all who knew them. Her signature weeping realism style of drips, combined with the circle and Chinese character representing both “broom” and “woman,” urges us to remember these women. Liu paints the grasshopper, representing good fortune and hope, in the foreground.

When the artist was a young woman, she herself idealized the notion of immigration, specifically of journeying to the West, a place she imagined rife with opportunity, hope, and modern attitudes compared to her native China. She later represented this vision in her work Modern Time which depicts a Chinese cafeteria worker daydreaming about the modern art and political attitudes of the West. When she arrived in the country in 1984, she saw that her new homeland was not as progressive as she dreamed.

Liu came to the United States in 1984 with the expectation that women occupied a better social position than they did in China, but found that her attitudes toward gender equality were ahead of American beliefs, especially as regards immigrants. She also saw that Chinese immigrants and those of Asian descent were often marginalized in American culture, expected to occupy certain roles and do certain jobs such as working in laundromats or restaurants. This realization is reflected in works such as Laundry Lady, which shows a Chinese woman seated in front of a laundromat, placed in an occupation that was stereotypical for the subject’s inter-sectional status as both a woman and a person of Asian descent.

Hung Liu centered women’s experiences in her work throughout her career. The linseed oil drips she created on her paintings’ surfaces were meant to symbolize a “weeping veil” that reflected the blurring of historic memory over time. Her paintings weep for the forgotten women of history, yet her representation of these women is not mournful. She gave them dignity in her paintings they might not have had during their lifetimes. In her Comrade in Arms, two women support their wounded comrade, embodying an eloquent double entendre of “arms” as vehicle for both war and harm as well as nurturing.

In 2007, Liu was preparing for an exhibition of her paintings in conjunction with the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This would be the first major exhibition of her work since she had immigrated to the United States in 1984, and she created some of the most striking paintings of her career for her return. Trained in China as a muralist in the Social Realist style, Liu began a series of monumental paintings based on the 1949 Chinese propaganda film Daughters of China which she saw as a child. It depicts a 1938 event in which eight female soldiers fought the Japanese occupiers. The female soldiers staged a rear-guard action that allowed the Chinese army to escape. The Japanese wanted the female Chinese soldiers to surrender, but rather than doing so, the young women—ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-eight— carried their dead and dying comrades into the Wusihun River where the entire group drowned. Liu created a series of paintings, each one composed as if it was a giant film still, and she named each painting in her series after a lyric in The Internationale, further amplifying her message of female power with intentional scale and historic association.

The bravery and resolve of these women soldiers was a fitting theme for Liu’s return to China as an accomplished female artist. Her paintings were by that time in the collections of nearly every major museum in the United States, and she would go back triumphantly, the embodiment of the resilience of the women in her paintings.

The sundial in the foreground of this oil painting is from one of the many remaining statues that lived at The Old Summer Palace, a complex of palaces and gardens in present-day Haidian District, Beijing, China.

The Old Summer Palace was known as the “Versailles of the East”, but its glory and magnificence ceased in 1860. During the Second Opium War British and French troops invaded Beijing and ransacked The Old Summer Palace. Those looted treasures are now displayed in museums around the world.

Some of the ruins and statues remained, such as the sundial.

Sundial, 1999, oil on canvas, 54 x 54”

Musicians is a landmark early work by Hung Liu that features three dimensional objects. In 1984, Liu traveled from China to the United States to attend The University of California San Diego MFA program. Her mentor was Allan Kaprow the originator of Happenings. Kaprow encouraged Liu to break free of her Socialist Realist training, in order to invent new ways of art making. She began breaking through the picture plane incorporating three dimensional objects placed on shelves and inside boxes in her artworks. Musicians is one of her quintessential works in this genre as it represents a breakthrough in Liu’s journey of artistic discovery upon her arrival in the United States.

Travelogue was recently highlighted in the Honolulu Museum of Art’s exhibition Reveries: The Art of Hung Liu

It is a quintessential work in that it embodies multiple layers of Hung Liu’s personal symbolism. The Buddhist goddess-like figure of Tara, who represents mercy and safe passage, holds the migrating family as they make their journey. The red bovine figures reinforce the perseverance that will be necessary for their success. The painting embodies signature aspects of her style, such as her “weeping realism” drips and circles, as well as issues of migration, humanism, and references to the achievements of China’s past.

Chinese Profile, Gold, 2021, archival pigment print, metal leaf and handwork, 30 x 31” paper, 26 x 26” plate, edition of 9

Hung Liu’s skills and innovation in printmaking won her the lifetime achievement award from the Southern Graphics Council. We are proud to announce that the Williams College Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University have both acquired a substantial collection of Hung Liu’s prints, gifting scholars and curators in future years with the opportunity to learn about Hung Liu as they produce exhibitions at their respective universities. Dirge is a collaboration between visual art and music.

Witnesses exemplifies Liu’s skill as a printmaker. Here, she places multiple layers of color to separate foreground from background and enhance the dimensionality of the work. Liu’s imagery was often compassionate to the youth she witnessed lose their childhood years to the Cultural Revolution.

Mu Nu, or mother daughter, is one of Hung Liu’s most iconic images. It features a mother and daughter pulling a boat through a shallow river, illustrating the toil and labor she and her country-people had to endure during the Cultural Revolution as well as before. This rare print is not often seen on the market and is highly collectible.

Weaver, 1999, color softground and spitbite, aquatint etching with scrape and burnish, 40.75 x 50” paper, 32 x 42” plate

When Hung Liu worked in rural Chinese fields during the Cultural Revolution, it was Romaine Rollands novel Jean Christophe that gave her hope. In the story a man symbolizing St. Christopher who is the protector of travelers, carries a young child across the river. He asks the child who he is, and he replies, ”I am the hope for a new day.”

Hung Liu created a series of Official Portraits in which she incorporated her own official documents as “stamps.” Here, she depicts herself defined as an immigrant, with her own Chinese astrological sign—the rat— as her guiding symbol.

Official Portraits, Immigrant, 2006, color lithograph with collage, 30.25 x 30” paper, edition of 30

Spring Day depicts two Chinese women reclining in a pose reminiscent of The Odalisque. Her aspirational vision of young China prostitutes confronting the male gaze is her attempt to help them reclaim their identities and their agency. Liu places the women on fields of silver and gold leaf, analogous to saints in religious icons.

Spring Day, 2007, mixed media on panel, 30 x 41 x 2.5”

Liu often referred to her artistic process as “summoning ghosts” who history had forgotten. Inspired by historic photographs of Chinese young women sold into prostitution. She offered these young women gifts to “summon” them to remain present in her works.

La Ran Butterfly shows Liu’s mastery of printmaking. Allan Kaprov, Liu’s mentor and the inventor of Happenings, encouraged her to break the norms of artistic rules. Here, she incorporates actual porcelain objects into her print, mounted to tiny shelves within the work. This type of radical experimentation won Liu a national award in printmaking. The objects themselves evoke the Chinese literati tradition, linking this young woman to the world of scholarship and the arts.

La Ran Butterfly, 2003, color etching, aquatint, and spitbite with attached glass and porcelain figures, 33 x 27.75 x 3” framed, 31 x 25” unframed, edition of 20

Relic VIII is a painting from Hung Liu’s series of prostitute paintings. On a return trip to China several years after she had immigrated to the United States, Liu found a box of photographs of Chinese prostitutes at the Beijing Film Archive. The women, who were often quite young, posed in formal settings to be displayed as if in an advertisement. Liu felt great empathy for these young women, as they had likely been sold by their families and would be forgotten by all who knew them. Her signature “weeping realism” style of drips, combine with the circle. Liu paints the grasshopper, representing good fortune and hope, in the foreground. The red lacquer box in the center of the painting acts as an exclamation point. The red color emphasizes the meaning of the Chinese character for wife, and broom, simultaneously.

Hung Liu described Da Fan Che as a “tipping cart.” The title refers to the large hat worn by the entertainer depicted, who had to balance the heavy head piece precariously to prevent it from tipping over. This image inspired the entire body of work involving layers of paint between resin. In these works Liu attempted to bring her subjects to life via the light that bounced off the gold leaf ground, back through the layers of the paint and shadows.

This small painting embodies important aspects of Liu’s iconography. The Buddha’s hand fruit intrigued Liu because, when it dried it resembles the bound feet of subjugated Chinese women. When women were “modernized” under Mao, they were still hobbled, according to Liu. She used the point shoe in the revolutionary ballets orchestrated by Mao’s wife as a metaphor for the age old practice of limiting female mobility.

When Hung Liu was a child, she was removed from school and sent to the Chinese countryside to labor as part of her “re-education” during the Cultural Revolution. The small image in the viewer’s left panel of the Golden Lotus, Red Flag diptych is a painted version of one of Liu’s few photographs of her young self. Carrying a gun and standing in the fields, this aspirational image foreshadowed the social justice warrior Liu would become.

In contrast to the warrior panel in the right panel of the diptych depicts a woman whose feet were bound. A common practice in historic China, foot binding essentially hobbled women to the extent that they had no ability to move quickly to defend themselves or escape aggression. While the revolutionary ballerinas in the left panel might seem strong, their feet were bound in another way. The ballerinas look like “modern” women, yet their shoes hobbled them and limit their movement.

Hung Liu’s Happy and Gay series was inspired by the small graphic novels she read in street libraries as a child in her native China. Their imagery depicted the false happiness of socialist society.

Happy and Gay: The Flag, 2012, color aquatint etching, 24 x 20”, edition of 20

Part of Liu’s Daughters of China series, No Saviour From on High Delivers II presents a heavily-painted adaptation of a scene from the film Daughters of China. The heroic image portrays a Chinese female soldier carrying the body of her dead comrade into the Wusihun River, where she will join her in death rather than allow her body to remain for advancing Japanese. The film was one of the most pivotal artistic influences in Liu’s early life in China, and it is painted in the style of a film still, with a horizontal bar at the bottom of the painting. The title is from the Communist anthem, The Internationale. Liu turns the communist words toward a goal she considered integral to survival in those difficult times—women supporting each other when no other “saviour” appears to help them.

Comrade in Arms depicts a topic monumental to Hung Liu: the bravery and heroism of the women who stood by each other during the wars in the China of her childhood. As is the case with all of Liu’s paintings, this composition uses a historic photograph as its inspiration. Liu notes, “This interweaving of images from the ancient and modern past continues my interest in a contemporary form of history painting in which the subjects from one era witness and comment upon those of another, keeping the idea of history open and fluid.” Comrade in Arms is an exquisite example of the best attributes of Liu’s artistic style: powerful gesture, “weeping realism” consisting of drips and poignant historic subject matter, and transcendent beauty. The women in this painting are fighters, and Liu’s title refers to their determination to use “arms” to both protect and to nurture each other.

Based on a 1960s photograph of a daydreaming cafeteria worker, Modern Time presents a double image of two very different dreams. On the right, a worker is momentarily lost in a reverie, yet caught in the modern dream of a socialist utopia, whose pantheon of theorists and politicians (Marx, Engles, Lenin, and Stalin) hangs above her on a wall of Chinese red. On the left, that same worker—now taking on the musings of the artist—dreams of a different modernity, one less rational, more fluid and expressionistic, than political ideology might allow. The portraits above her are by—and in one case of—Vincent Van Gogh, whose tragic alienation from modern society suggests individual nightmares as much as collective dreaming. Meanwhile, the Mao-era clocks on the shelves around the painting tick away as modern time unwinds its revolutionary inevitability.

Hung Liu’s Official Portrait series of prints has been widely exhibited in museums. Here, she incorporates her own historic identity document from her youth with her image as an American citizen.

Official Portraits: Citizen, 2006, color lithograph with collage, 30.25 x 30”, edition of 30

Hung Liu created a series of shaped canvas paintings in the early 1990s shortly after her arrival in the United States from China. She based these paintings on photographic images of Chinese people, typically in a mode of work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art collected one such shaped canvas, a self portrait of Liu titled Daughter of the Revolution. The Kemper Art Museum holds another shaped canvas in its permanent collection, as do the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and other institutions.

Hung Liu’s 2013 tapestry edition September depicts a Manchurian bride in formal marriage attire, including an elaborate embroidered headdress which the artist has overlaid with the stylized image of a wild duck. September translates Liu’s kaleidoscopic vision into five hundred colors of woven thread; beneath its eyecatching surface lies a compassionate link, connecting a moment experienced by millions on 911 with a single instant in the life of a woman whose story has been lost to history. The tapestry’s composition presents an intoxicating bouquet of symbol and color, combining a figurative, photographic portrait with the cascading rivulets and washes that Liu uses to dissolve the viewer’s sense of photography—and by extension, history—as a complete or trustworthy record continuing dialogue between past and present.

Late one night in 2016 as Hung Liu worked in her studio, she ran out of the charcoal she used to draw the contour lines on her paintings. She picked up colored oil pastels and used them instead. The result was an electrifying topography of color, adding so much vitality to her compositions that she chose to leave the contour lines visible.

While Liu had delved deeply into historic Chinese photographs, by 2015 she turned an eye to the similarities of her own experiences toiling in Chinese wheat fields during the Cultural Revolution to experiences of American farming workers during the Depression. As with her Chinese subjects, she dignifies her downtrodden American subjects by placing them on a bed of silver leaf, as in a religious icon.

Hung Liu first discovered the Dorothea Lange photographic archive at the Oakland Museum in 2015. She immediately became fascinated by the struggles of the migrants in Lange’s Dust Bowl Era photographs. Liu is empathetic because like them, she was forced to leave her home during the Cultural Revolution in China. And ironically, like Dorothea Lange, Hung Liu used a camera she smuggled into the Chinese countryside to document the struggles of the people she encountered during that time. This painting shows Liu’s fascination with the way we care for one another, even when we can barely care for ourselves. Inspired by Catcher in the Rye, in which the Holden Caulfield character is the child who tries desperately to keep civilization from falling into an abyss, Liu paints children as resilient guides to show humanity a positive way forward.