Against this background, Yue Minjun situates himself in a double-battled state: on one hand, there is doubt about and a questioning of reality; and on the other hand, a questioning of the entire pattern and creative methodology of China’s contemporary art since the 1980s. However, unfortunately, since the 1990s, the real changes in the international, political and cultural layout have covered up the internal meaning of art, while those changes confer all kinds of blessings upon the arts. Yue Minjun’s art is frequently and narrowly understood as an attitude toward reality. What is neglected is the severing of the relationship between the old-style methods of creation and his own. Only when we recognize the breakthroughs in these methods can we understand the achievement Yue Minjun has made as an artist.

In Yue Minjun’s art, he thoroughly eliminates traditional aesthetic conceptions, such as grace, sublimity, tangibility and poetic quality. This is actually the essential meaning of his “abandonment”. The biggest difference between other contemporary artists and Yue Minjun is that while other artists make the boring moments “sublime” and “poetic”. This difference is subtle, yet significant in effect. His rewriting and degradation include cheerful scenes, significant historical moments and profound classical art. And this sort of degradation and adaptation is particularly critical to China’s contemporary art, because what Yue Minjun has established, in this process, is not a style but an artistic realms closely bound to contemporary life.

With the passage of time, the content of so-called “social reality” in China today differs greatly from the artistic reality of the early 1990s. At present, the clashes between diverse ideologies and values are not as in the past, but they have not yet vanished completely from our sight, being only temporarily concealed by the booming commercial economy. In this complicated reality, everything can be betrayed, or ceded even “spirituality” in art. Entering into the cycle of globalization, China like any place in the world is driven constantly by a desire for “novelty”. Under the motivation of this desire, people need to forget rapidly the old idols while at the same time continuously create new ones. Following this, “newness” or “contemporary” have become the greatest idol of this era. The culture characteristic of this era is the constant process of crating new idols.

Within this context, while degrading and rewriting, Yue Minjun achieves the goal of anti-idolization through constant “repetition”. He has said, “Using traditional modes of painting and sculpturing to unendingly clone the self-image is for the purpose of creating a new idol just like contemporary television and film modes. When an idol is constantly repeated, because of the increase in quantity, it acquires tremendous power. Once an idol is created, I can utilize and apply my idol. Using it continuously, Idols have life. They frequently influence our life, standardize our manners and behavior. Today’s society is a society of idols. Today’s culture is the culture of id