What’s so funny?
“What is it about Asians and smiling?” asks the stranger in the Land of Smiles. The famed Thai welcome gets some decent (though not definitive) scrutiny from both sides of the International Date Line in the inaugural exhibition at the new Bangkok Arts Centre, “Traces of the Siamese Smile: Art + Faith + Politics + Love”.
That impressively big show, continuing through November 26, has Chatchai Puipia’s “Siamese Smile” both on the wall and at its heart. It’s certainly a favourite at Dali House, also on view here.
This one’s not a smile at all, of course, but a grimace. Chatchai isn’t too keen on his fellow Thais kowtowing to foreigners. Thailand is so hospitable, however, that its new health minister, a well-connected but completely unhealthy thug named Chalerm Yoobamrung, last week asked the press not to say anything about tainted milk products that might upset the Chinese.
When the Chinese get upset, they tend to keep smiling, or at least they bare their teeth, much like Chatchai. It’s difficult for many Westerners to tell whether Asians are happy or in the throes of indigestion, which is why they used to refer to Orientals using the politically incorrect term “inscrutable”.
At the top of the post, side by leering side, are two paintings on sale on October 20 at Sotheby’s London. Ravinder Reddy’s untitled, undated oil can’t beat Yue Minjun’s “Hat No 2″ in terms of grinsmanship, which is perhaps why the young Indian’s work is expected to fetch no more than 100,000, which is 50,000 less than the even younger Chinese artist’s four-year-old hat.
In fact the hat guy seems to like Reddy’s piece better. He’s having a good belly laugh at seeing the very surprised look on a gilded idol’s face. Together they look like an excellent stand-up comedy team.
Toothy grins are Yue Minjun’s stock in trade, and you’d be smiling too if one of your paintings was about to earn between four and six million Hong Kong dollars at the October 4 Sotheby’s auction in that former British colony, as is the case with “Sea of the Brain”, shown below.
Cynical Realism, it’s called; a bit too obvious a term if you ask me. Laughter is equated with rebelliousness. The individual perseveres in a totalitarian society, smiles even though amusement is discouraged because there’s work to be done.
In this 2001 self-portrait — for all of Yue’s chucklers are allegedly him — Chairman Mao enjoys another of his iconic swims, his vigour a symbol of the motherland’s wellbeing. It’s not in the Yangtse River this time, though, but the collective mind of his worshipful subjects.
An allusion to brainwashing? Possibly, but that smile can only widen, and the laughter become more louder, at the thought that such an image can reap such a financial typhoon in Hong Kong, a city that held out for so long against the mainland communists.
