Re: "Lasting laugh," July 27

As a locally based sculptor, I was very disappointed that such a significant amount of scarce funding for public art purchase would go toward this work. My reasons are as follows.

Yue Minjin is frequently described as a "Cynical Realist." According to the website Artspeak China, "Cynical Realism takes its name from Aldous Huxley's famous quotation: 'Cynical realism: it's the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.'"

Faced with a tumultuous and unstable environment, these artists created works that simultaneously exposed their suffering and masked it with irony, a glaze of "stylized ambivalence." In Minjun's case, this ambivalence is conveyed through the over-emphatic, insincere grin on the face of his figures. Yue's laughing portraits engage the viewer with a kind of grey humour that emphasizes the spiritual emptiness of the contemporary world.

A new book on contemporary Chinese art stated that initially the over-emphatic, insincere grin on the face of his figures was a parody of Western stereotypes about Chinese people. Whether the message is stereotyping or spiritual emptiness, it is highly negative, encouraging an apathetic acceptance of the status quo. This artwork and its message are embedded in the philosophy of post-modernism, which is suspicious and even intolerant of truths and values and believes human progress is an illusion. This stultifying viewpoint has sapped the energy artists have historically been able to contribute to political awareness and social activism.

Perhaps as a city it is time we began supporting artwork that engages with larger, humanist, even spiritual themes and makes an effort to find meaning and purpose within a radically secular world-to find powerful and grounding symbols of order. The Postmodern revolution has been like the Cultural Revolution in China in which traditions of craft, aesthetics and cultural values were destroyed in an effort to overthrow outdated approaches. In the aftermath of this intellectual and artistic demolition perhaps the future of art is to create a sense of home, rootedness and meaning in a fragmented postmodern world.