"As marcas mais famosas do mundo", dos irmãos Luo

Como tantas outras coisas, descobri os três irmãos Luo / Luo Brothers na Harper's Magazine.
Criadores da série "The World's Famous Brands", fazem parte da nova vaga de artistas chineses. Porque este tem sido um início de milénio chinês e porque o ocidente se fascinou, de repente, com a nova arte. Todos os principais museus de arte contemporânea têm feito exposições dedicadas ao "tema China", ou "artistas chineses emergentes". Os irmãos Luo, líderes da "Political Pop" ou "Gaudy Art", no início de uma carreira intensa nos museus de arte contemporânea ocidentais, a rir de quem lhes compra a arte...











"The Luo Brothers are perhaps the finest example of an artistic movement that overtook the post-1989 Chinese art scene. Dubbed ‘gaudy’ or ‘kitsch’ art, the theory sprung from the pop culture bombardment China suffered in the last decade of the twentieth-century. Besieged with emblems of consumerism – in the form of MacDonalds, Coca-Cola, Motorola and a host of other Western manufacturers – this form of painting was a reaction to the capitalist consumerism Asians were suddenly faced with and a way of critiquing its negative influences on traditional Eastern culture.

In the hands of the Luo Brothers – Luo Weidon, Luo Weiguo, and Luo Weibing (born 1962, 1964 and 1972 respectively), this influence was ironically recommoditized into both painting and sculpture that acutely caught the psychological and social implications of China’s transformation. In their trademark series, ‘The Worlds Most Famous Brand,’ the Luo brothers create a canvas -- on visual overload. Their template is the Chinese New Year poster – and its ubiquitous chubby-cheeked toddler, springing forth from a background of pink, yellow, and red rays, cradling the slogans and consumer goods of a Western consumer market. In the place of fireworks, flowers and other emblems traditional to the posters, the babies clutch cell phones, coke cans, and hamburgers. As one critic noted, ‘these emblems constitute only one element of the Luo Brothers’ carnivalesque fantasies, where distortions of scale, extravagant colour, and absurd juxtapositions of iconography class in both celebration and mourning of an anarchic utopia. The paintings could not convey more vividly the dizzying dislocation and anomic afflicting Chinese society today." (texto na Artnet, aqui)

"After Warhol's Mao wallpaper and Komar and Melamid's socialist-realism send-ups of Lenin and Stalin, you'd think campy Communist icons were passé. But this trio of brothers from China's Guangxi Province bring a Jeff Koonsian polish to their resin statues of cherubic, pigtailed infants happily gurgling over mammoth hamburgers and six-packs of Coke, each tableau rendered in high-gloss silver, gold, red, or blue....", a crítica de R. C. Baker para a Village Voice em Novembro do ano passado.

"Avant-garde artists emerge from hiding with blessing from Beijing", no "The Independent".