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The cynical realism style of Yue Minjun has made its name both at home and abroad since as early as the 90s. Most of his work are the self-portraits where the image laughs foolishly and nervously with a mouth wide open and makes various strange and absurd gestures, presenting a kind of self mockery and lifeless living status. The works usually feature simple but gaudy and showy colors and for his many years of engagement in repeating his self-portraits, his works carry a strong symbolism and concise visual strength responding to the mixture of pop culture and handbill art. "He said one is most blank and expressionless when laughing. Therefore, his repeated and continuous depiction of laughs is simply an attempt to imply the dull empty spirit world of the current generation which has lost its belief and value support. In this sense, laugh, a disguise of spiritual emptiness, is rather a real release and the only release when no other choice is available. The same exaggerating and even deformed image repeatedly depicted with strong and warm colors gives a powerful impact beyond words." (Lu Peng, Contemporary Chinese Art History)

The earlier works of Yue Minjun, mostly depiction of his close friends, a group of companions with certain spiritual pursuance and not reconciled to mediocrity, possessed no significant individualized features and personal art language remained at a transfer period of relative ambiguity. What is important for Yue Minjun is luckily he successfully got the common feature of the group of persons and presents it in his painting in a simple and convincing way. His work carries unconsciously the marked brand of the time. All these elements of "Gate of Heavenly Peace", "Golden-River Bridge", "Red Lantern" and "Red Wall" makes such a sharp contrast with the exciting, comic, indolent and listless close-up images in the foreground that it relieves the dominance of such traditional strong elements as greatness, nobleness and grandness. One might remain cheerful, conident and even heartless when in difficulties and hardships of life. The repeating and duplication of self-portraits has the so-called features of modern industrial civilization as its concept support. In life everything including commodity, building and publication media are included in a certain format while the human existence and social roles are also preplanned by the time. It is merely a result of mechanical repetitiveness and absurdness.

From the "Concentration Camp of Faces" to the summary refinery, the artist bravely holds up his self-image banner in a time of non-ideology by removing the complicated and following the simplified. In 1993, the symbolic "self-image" of Yue Minjun inally made its formal appearance in a real sense: shining head, big mouth taking up one half of the whole face and wide open to expose tiny and white teeth; protruding cheek bones and eyes narrowing into a slit due to over laughing; pink face typical of commercials and exaggerated features; the whole picture displays an extremely powerful sense of form with its ad-like concision, smoothness and brightness. The appearance of these free, independent, sarcastic, cheerful, frank and self-existence emphasizing artistic images is a pioneer for a crop of followers.

As for the earlier "self-image", the artist interprets it like this: "the key turning point is one piece of a line of figures; lining up is a frequent and common phenomenon in our life and it suggests the observation of rules and conventions but usually also indicates a loss of a deinite objective. I choose to depict the same figures with the same gestures and features just to expose the foolishness of such a line. Such an artistic means adopted for the depiction of the same image lends the latter a visual sense of a cartoon character; it is a special story mocking human nature as its inal purpose. I have found the social realistic story has more power than the experience of any concrete person for the latter is beyond identification to viewers. This "Enchanted Spring". (1994-1995) is one of the best representatives of originality by Yue Minjun in his early creation and remains a kind of milestone in his art life.

The "self-image" creation of the artist is rather a revolutionary start for the mockery of the rationality of "greatness" and the betrayal of the inexpressibleness of "convention". He places himself outside the threshold of respecting and being respected, educating and being educated and thus keeping all the so-called conventions at an arm's distance. "Laughing is a kind of trap for sure", he said "I just want to hide all negative moods and feelings behind the laughing". As the art critic Leng Lin comments on the "self-image" of Yue Minjun: "'It' comes alone sometimes and shows up in a group at other times. 'It' laughs with mouth wide open, eyes tightly closed and exaggerated gestures but with signiicant self-conidence at the same time. 'It' always turns up on some occasion and these occasions are all but the space and background of the survival and development of Chinese culture in the past decade, some of which is either related to the living status, the history of growth or the relationship between oriental and occidental cultures, gender and even the economic and political (violent) events with the current of globalization. And all these occasions seem to be transformed into one after another game with the exaggeration of the "self-image". "I" seem not to grow up here but happen to be here. The idolized "self-image", with its concrete and ampliied image, has found a culture-like property on the globalization stage."

Since the birth of his self-idol image, Yue Minjun starts the process of continuously afirming and then rationally denying and at last coming to a successful exploration. The duplication and reconstruction of a single image and the presentation of a cartoon character is the irony expression of being reconciled to the herd mentality. It exhibits unconsciously generated inner numbness, ignorance and foolishness but by no means the reconciliation to be absolutely obedient when facing hardships and difficulties. Borrowing the language of socialism posters and commercials in consumer times, the artist indulges in seeking multi kinds of survival and living experiences and constantly explores the imaginative space, transforming from the social pattern to natural pattern and then back to the focus of human relationship. The works of the artist take on even bigger step forward in thoughts concerning religion and philosophy. Just as precisely described by the art critic Feng Boyi: "His artistic creation carries a significant high-tune narrative ideal: loosen imagination and devoted to the self; he questions realistic survival in a sarcastic tone and interprets the nature of existence in an absurd manner, which lends to his works a seemingly contradictory property: both listless and agility, absurd and realistic, messy and orderly. It offers the viewer by no means a pleasant experience, however, when we focus our eyes and hearts on each seemingly absurd image and absorb our minds in the irony, the exaggerating and dramatic dialogue of each picture, we can, anyway, feel vividly the weirdness of human nature, the absurdness of human survival and the questioning of living status by the artist. Instead of simply deleting or removing the mark of individualism or strengthening the mechanical indifference of modern times, Yue Minjun repeats his attempts to display the self-image in the graphic picture to indicate that all the worries and disappointments resulting from our pursuance for everlasting and profound mode has been transformed into shallow graphics. It impresses viewers that the value and significance of life is gradually lost in the games and mechanical operations. Perhaps new arts were just born in an uncertain status but in an artistic manner by the artists who are sensitive to the time and keep abreast with the time. More than mere observers of a certain cultural scene, they are the participants to help explore and expand its possibilities."