Krisanamis positions his identity distinctively, which can be apprehended in contrast to the traditional positioning of modern artists. As to the self-positioning of Chinese artist Yue Minjun, more lies in the identification and personality cult. In the reflection on the position of contemporary artists, Yu Minjun is imbued with the same passion as Krisanamis who has a clear knowledge of the material and historic values of one’s occupation while Yue Minjun has forever been entangled in displaying the status of human beings in certain cultural environments. Though Yue Minjun paints with individual characteristics of the artist’s self-image, accumulation of increasing “self-images” has conversely resulted in the need for works to define the personal image of the artist. Thus, the artist becomes super important and turns out to be an idol that needs worshiping. His works are just like commercial promotional materials, not a type of spiritual home but a counterpoint to artists working with realism. For many realist artists have already become idolized, and as idols they already have become public icons.

The exaggerated and distorted poses of many public sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s in China are employed unconsciously in Yue Minjun’s works, so the “self-image” becomes a national “self-image” and voice of the masses. The narcissistic description of “self-image” by Chinese contemporary artists that appeared in the 1990s was a new variety of love for authority under new economic conditions rather than the need for personality by society.

Definition of “self-image” has been the theme of China’s contemporary art since 1990s. For individual Chinese artists, approval of the worship for “self-image” has become kind of trademark recognized internationally and nationally. The image of Yue Minjun (the new idol) has been widely accepted by the media and the public, and has met the need for creating new heroes today by magazines with his extraordinary self-knowledge of contemporary times. Exhibitions of Yue Minjun’s “self-image” are, at the same time, a display of market strategies and development of public communication skills. The altering of the occasion does not shift people’s attention to these events or to the understanding of events’ instead, it concentrates on promoting the image more widely, deeply and persistently. Even in Yue Minjun’s sculptures, the special combination of forms is an outstanding technique in publicizing his image.

“Contemporary Terracotta Warriors” began in 2000 “strives to incorporate certain historic energy into the creation of ‘self-image’ “. Against this, the value in terms of culture and tourism embodied in the “terracotta warriors” arouses a general expectation from the outside that the maker should be a follower of individual cultural heroism. This differs from the approach of artists such as Damien Hirst or Marc Quinn who have found particular ways of dealing with feelings through their personal, concrete and crazy understanding of today’s material world. The outside regards their insight and feelings as symbolic of personal cultural heroism, whereas for Yue Minjun, “tradition” has become an important method of perceiving personal cultural heroism of contemporary Chinese artists.

Artists of Yue Minjun’s age are living in a period of global prosperity under which China’s market economy system has been implemented and accelerated. The international art market seems to have been well prepared to offer
a warm welcome to these artists who develop their own market strategies and public communication skills. They have almost become the embodiment of trademarks invented by themselves, among whom Yue Minjun is undoubtedly a rather successful one.