Ma Yanhong’s first nudes were of three of her fellow artists, bare-breasted but clad in knickers, socks and shoes, as they stood against the wall of one of the art studios in the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
‘When I was 25, I painted my female friends nude to show how proud and confident these young women were,’ she says. There is a clear intimacy between the viewer and the subjects; one of them looks straight out of the canvas at us. While the girls are mostly confident and daring, they are also squirming a little at the idea of being so exposed.
Ten years later, Ma Yanhong’s attitude to her portraits has developed significantly. ‘I’m not worried about beauty in the same way that I was when I was that age. Superficial things were much more important back then. Now I look at beauty a little differently. And I have more spatial concerns in my work.’
Hanging behind her are a series of paintings she made from pictures taken by her husband in their home. In the central painting, Ma looks up at the viewer, her face flushed with laughter as she rolls around on their living room’s wooden floor. It’s a bit kinky – she’s swathed in a few pieces of sheer fabric that she has pulled up around her bare shoulders, the rest of her entirely naked and painted in considerable detail. She’s seen from above, an angle that traps her in another plane.
But if you think Ma Yanhong’s works are all about cutesy kinkiness, then think again. None of her portraits shy away from being sexy, but these works are more about intimacy and the body. She does provide her subjects with props, but this is something portrait artists have always done, and she also paints these subjects from pictures she takes in their own home. She is careful to capture a certain look or gesture that makes the works more complex, set in private spaces.
This, her first solo exhibition in several years, is a collection of the recent portraits she has created of herself and fellow artists. ‘They are the people around me, so, of course, many of the other people I paint are artists,’ she shrugs. ‘The decision to just pick out pictures of artists was the curator’s.’
Ma has created several portraits of prominent young artist Song Kun, one of which shows her pregnant, holding a plastic toy ray gun and wearing a revealing sequined top. There is also one of her earliest subjects, another female artist who lies on her sofa, her head resting on her husband’s lap.
There are even some male nudes – a surprise, because so much of Ma’s work has focused on womanliness and femininity. A handsome young blonde smiles nervously out of the painting, his eyes betraying a slight awkwardness that is wholly endearing. A more senior artist sits towards the back of the room, his legs splayed a little, more relaxed. She smiles as she looks at the work, which she painted from some pictures she took in Denmark a few years ago.
‘These are the first men I ever painted,’ she says, eyes twinkling. ‘I always thought that men really aren’t that good-looking. But I thought this one [the blond] in particular was very good-looking, so I asked if I could take some photos of him. After I took the photos, I thought: How could I not paint such a good picture?’
Ma makes extensive use of photography for her paintings, and has done since that first portrait of her three friends. ‘It affects the light in my pictures. I like to use a bright flash. It means you don’t get the imperfections on people’s skin,’ Ma explains. ‘It also changes the colours.’
Ma also builds up her complex compositions from the photos. One of the earliest influences on her painting style, she says, is Yu Hong, her old teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Art, who is known for her realist portraits. Recently Yu’s works have also begun to explore space and depict subjects from various angles, but, Ma says, as time goes on the influence of other artists on her work, including Yu, is waning.
In the painting of the couple laid out on their black leather sofa, the image is once again one taken from above. ‘I usually want to paint them in their homes, so if they agree, I first go to their homes to see what they’re like. I’ll take pictures until I know that I’ve got images I want to work from – I want to capture a lot of angles and subsections so that I can really express the setting, the personal setting that belongs to these people, around them.’
In the painting of the German nude, whom she calls ‘Eric’, a sofa sits in the middle of the space and a bonsai tree decorates a corridor, seemingly extending the space depicted in the paintings into the gallery. But these settings are really all about the person within them. It’s about creating a space for them. ‘In my own self-portrait, there are things that I collected the first time I went abroad to Europe to travel. They are all strewn about, and I wanted to show how much messier life is for people than the impression of order I got from Europe. It was about how I felt.’
Ma aims to ‘take portraiture itself a step further’, she says, ‘although I’m still thinking about how I can succeed in this.’ And all the time she is trying to find new avenues, not only in her styles and compositions, but ultimately in expressing something about her subject. ‘I mostly paint people I know well or have a connection with because I can interact with them much better when taking pictures. I know what I can do with them, what their limits are, and what I can do to bring out something about who they are in my eyes.' Clare Pennington
Artists’ Portraits by Ma Yanhong shows at Boers-Li Gallery until February 2.
Originally posted in Time Out Beijing
Originally posted in Time Out Beijing
