Yue Minjun

Life and work

Yue Minjun was born in 1962 in Daqing, in Heilongjiang province in the north east of China, into a family that worked the oil fields. He trained in oil painting at Hebei Normal University, spent a period as an electrician, and painted portraits of his co-workers while employed on deep sea drilling. In 1989 he saw a painting by Geng Jianyi of the artist's own laughing face, and in 1990 he moved to the artists' village at Hongmiao in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. From that point the laughing figure, based on his own likeness, mouth wide and eyes shut, became effectively his whole subject. Critics grouped him with Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi and Zhang Xiaogang under the label Cynical Realism, coined by Li Xianting. He has never accepted the term and does not argue about it. He still works in Beijing.

Disciplines and how they differ

One image, several carriers, and they do not price alike. The oil paintings are the primary market and the only part of the output that has ever reached headline levels. From 1999, when he was invited to the Venice Biennale, he began casting the same figure in bronze, and the sculptures form a second market. Watercolours and drawings sit below those. Then come the editions, and that is where LLB Auction operates. All three lots handled here have come from Smile-ism, a series of lithographs published in 2006 in editions of forty five, printed in the United States by Museum Collections Editions and issued through Art Issue Editions in New York. Three were offered here and three sold.

What a specialist examines

The signature is in Latin script, Yue Minjun or yueminjun run together, normally at the lower right, with the edition number in pencil at the lower left. The Smile-ism sheets run to roughly ninety by one hundred and ten centimetres, and the series is numbered up to twenty eight, so the plate number and the subtitle that goes with it need to be read off the sheet rather than guessed from the image. Because the editions are small and the sheets large and usually framed, condition questions are the ones that follow large unglazed paper: cockling, light staining at the edges of an old mount, and fading, since these are colour lithographs that have often hung in daylight. Check the publisher's and printer's credit, which distinguishes an edition sheet from an exhibition poster carrying the same laughing head. No body reviews works under this name for sellers, so the paperwork a consignor holds carries the weight.

Market position

The distance between the paintings and the paper is the thing to hold in mind. At Bonhams in San Francisco in November 2006 the oil on canvas Great Solidarity of 1992, two metres square, made USD 309,750. The editions are another order entirely. At Bonhams in Hong Kong in May 2014 an impression of Untitled (Smile-ism No. 15), numbered 29 of 45, made HKD 36,250. A colour lithograph of 1993, Happiness, signed and numbered from an edition of one hundred, printed by Idem in Paris and published by the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, made GBP 1,024 at Bonhams in London in November 2025. An impression of Smile-ism No. 20 offered at Bonhams in Hong Kong in May 2013 found no buyer at all. The Smile-ism sheets sold here in 2026 landed below that 2014 Hong Kong level, which is worth knowing before a reserve is set. Each figure includes the buyer's premium as the house prints it.

What a seller should have ready

The sheet photographed complete with all four margins, and the signature and edition number in close detail, since both are in pencil and both are easy to lose in a framed shot taken through glass. The plate number within the series and its subtitle if one is printed. Sheet and image measurements in centimetres. The publisher's or printer's credit line and any blindstamp, photographed in raking light. If the work is a painting or a bronze rather than a sheet, the purchase history matters far more, and anything from a named gallery should be produced in full.