In 1958, Li was born in Tianjin. His parents were classmates at the Beijing Normal University. They were against Kuomintang and joined the communist party. His father was a leader member. Since the liberation in 1949, the family stayed in Tianjin. They have three sons and one daughter. Li is their third son. His grandmother and the sister of his grandmother brought up the boy. His grandmother who later became his first model especially influenced him.

In 1962, Li performed on the stage and recited Chairman Mao’s poem “Long March”.

In 1964, Li refused to kill a big mouse due to fear. But this disappointed his mother who forced him to throw away the dying mouse in a rubbish bin, which directly resulted his irrepressible fear for mouse afterwards.

In 1966, he studied at a primary school in Tianjin. At the same year, the “cultural revolution” started, His parents were severely attacked and his home was confiscated. The boy’s little tender heart was hurt. His self-humiliation resulted in depression. He started to pity himself and refused to eat fat meat.

In 1967, he went to his uncle’s home with his brother to escape the turmoil in his family.

In 1968, his brother was assigned to work in Inner Mongolia and his parents were out of the punishment.

In 1970, his mother was remitted. He together with his brother visited his mother. They boys ran in the field, but he mistook the
midden as a soil mound. He had to wash himself in the river.

In 1971, he started to draw sketches and water-color paintings under the guidance of Zhang Runqing, his art teacher at the school who appreciated his talents. He also met his alumni Kong Qian and Wu Zuguang. They drew propaganda paintings. At his classmate’s home, he first saw the album of Lepin and was greatly impressed. At the same year, Lin Biao, China’s former vice president fled to Russia but died in an air crash. Li was shocked by the event and puzzled by those political issues.

In 1974, he was admitted to a fine art academy in Tianjin. He first met his aunt, Zhou Sicong, a famouse ink-wash painter there. He admired his aunt’s artworks and was interested in traditional Chinese paintings. Since then, he often received her help and guidance in the area. His aunt was a person that influenced him strong.

In 1977, he graduated from the academy and was assigned to work at Tianjin Art Institute. Under the influence and guidance of his aunt, he started to draw some small ink-wash paintings and read many foreign and Chinese albums at the institute’s library.

In 1978, Li went with Shi Guoliang and Wang Yanping to Beijing suburbs for sketches. He learned ink-wash figure paintings under the guidance of Shi Guoliang and explored deeply the peasants’ life.

In 1979, he was admitted to painting department of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. He began to focus on the new wave art movement. His style switched from realistic to distortion. In the beginning, he admired Jiang Zhaohe but later Modigliani became his icon. At the same year, his grandmother died. For the first time in his life, the man experienced the pain of death.

In 1980, he went to the mountain area in Hebei province with Song Yongping and drew many sketches. He was moved by the pureness of the peasants there. On his way back, he stayed at his aunt’s home at Handan where he first encountered Fang Lijun.

In 1981, he went to Dunhuang to copy the mural paintings for three months and visited the historical sites during his trip. Those days were rich and fabulous for him. He first saw a lama temple, lama, pious Tibetan pilgrims and herd that all amazed his eyes. He began to dream of Tibet.

In 1982, he re-visited Dunhuang, Gansu with Yan Binghui.

In 1983, he created an art piece based on Tibetan life. He worked as a teacher after his graduation. His application to work in
Tibet was approved.

In 1984, he went to Tibetan Art Institute as a teacher for one year. He frequented many temples and even saw the Tibetan funeral. He was deeply moved by its natural surroundings and religious aura. His recognition towards life altered dramatically. His laughing face replaced his former locked eyebrows. He created a series of ink-wash paintings. He and Li Yanping co-operated “Moon River” that was selected in a national art exhibition. His favorite book was Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. He loved drinking rice wine and eating meat.

In 1985, he went back and was introduced to Yu Qiping by He Jiaying. Yu’s magazine wrote a feature story on him that was later discovered by Li Shinan. The man invited him to join an exhibition that was one of the most important exhibitions of the 1980s in China. At the same year, he furthered his study in Nanjing. Because of the environment there, his art style changed. He no longer painted Tibetan cows, but instead the fair ladies of the southern part. Zhu Xinjian was the person that influenced him.

In 1986, he curated and joined a joint show that aroused the attention of the Tianjin art community. At the opening, he and Yan

Binhui’s dormitory was on fire and burnt some of their artworks. Please refer to details on this exhibition in “Chinese Contemporary Art History” written by Gao Minglu.

In 1987, he created copperplate “Women and Flower” and started to work on “Aureole,” a piece of delicate strokes in deep and bright colors.

In 1988, he participated a modern art seminar held at the Yellow Mountain.

In 1989, he joined “Chinese Modern Art Exhibition” held at China National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing.

In 1990, he was invited to hold an exhibition in Philadelphia in the US. But because of the mistakes filled in the application
form, his visa request was turned down. He was unable to attend the exhibition in April in the US. Later he participated the
exhibition curated by art critic Li Xianting in Tokyo in Japan. At the same year, he together with photographer Mo Yi passed by
Qinghai and crossed over Tanggula Mountain and finally reached Tibet. In Tibet, he created nearly 50 paintings. During this period, his favorite music was Chopin’s piano piece.

In 1991, he lived and worked in an old residence in Beijing. Grasses were all over its roof and the windows were covered by paper. There was a jujube in the yard. He created a series of paintings with a strong Beijing flavor. During this period, he had close connection with Fang Lijun and Liu Wei and other artists living in the old Summer Palace. He held a joint show with Chang Gong at the Beijing Music Hall Gallery.

In 1992, he returned Tibet. During his stay in Lhasa, he had two dogs. There was flowers and grass in the yard. His studio was filled with abundant suns light. His life there was casual. His often walk along the river in the dusk. He and Yao Yuzhong went into the depopulated area in the northern part of Tibet in the autumn. They slept outdoor. They were impressed by the amazing scenery, as they had never seen the water was so azure and the sky so rouge.

In 1993, he created ink-wash painting “Practice in the tableland” in Lhasa on canvas.

In 1994, he together with Chang Gong rented an apartment in Beijing. They frequented Hou Hai after work.. The days at that time were relaxed and comfy. He participated an exhibition at the Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Arts in October.

In 1995, he went back to Tianjin and created “Eating” series and joined a joint show hosted by Cai Simin in Singapore.

In 1996, his aunt died suddenly. He was so grieved. Soon the news that Li Laoshi committed suicide took over him. He jointed an exhibition hosted by China Academy of Art in April. He was invited to have a solo exhibition in Vienna hosted by Chen Qingqing. He participated a joint show that toured in Berlin Museum, Haler Museum and TTT Art Center, while at the same time his solo exhibition was held in a gallery in Beijing.

In 1997, he went to Singapore for an exhibition in January. In May, he held his solo exhibition at the Hanmo Gallery in Beijing. He joined a modern Chinese ink-wash painting exhibition hosted by a Hong Kong gallery and a New York Gallery. In July, he participated a Chinese contemporary painting exhibition hosted by China’s Cultural Ministry at the Shanghai Library. In October, he joined an exhibition at the Shanghai Art Fair.

In 1998, he participated “Traditional Chinese Painter” invitational exhibition hosted by China National Museum of Fine Arts. In

February, his father died. In March, he received an interview given by CCTV. He joined the Chinese Art Biennale at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada. He had an joint show with Lei Zi at Hanmo Gallery in Beijing.

In 1999, he attended “Surviving and Expressing” seminar. In June, he joined the second round show with Chang Gong at the Beijing Music Hall Gallery. In September, he curated and participated the first round show of “Dialogue 1999” at International Art Palace in Beijing. In November, he curated and participated the second round show of “Dialogue 1999” at Tai Da Contemporary Art Museum in Tianjin. At the end of the year, his first album was published.

In 2000, he and Chang Gong attended his solo exhibition in Sweden. During their stay there, they two were impressed by its tranquil surrounding, clean streets, mysterious woods, limpid lake and bizarre bars. He had an affair with a Swedish female artist at Stockholm, and they lived for a while in Denmark. He participated “All about Dreams: Exhibition of Chinese Art for the 21st Century” in London and started to work with the Courtyard Gallery in Beijing.

In 2001, The director of Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney visited him. At the same year, his solo exhibition was held at Ray Hughes Gallery, all his artworks were sold out. In autumn, his first solo exhibition was held at the Courtyard Gallery in Beijing and started to collaborate with Meg Maggio.

In 2002, he joined “ChinArt” exhibition held at Museum Küppersmühle. During the World Cup held in Seoul, he joined “Chinese – Korean Contemporary Art” at Contemporary Art Museum in Korea and his solo exhibition was held in Li Dongzai Gallery in Seoul. He went to Chengdu with Ma Junqing for the biennale there. He only slept for three hours every day and spent most of his time relaxing. His 18-meter long scroll “Banquet” was first on display.

In 2003, he went to the US with Meg Maggio, he held his solo exhibition at the Asian Hall in the Seattle Museum. He visited several renowned collectors and held a seminar at the museum. He also gave lectures at the art department in Washington University. In the warehouse of Seattle Museum, he saw the original pieces of Shi Tao, Wen Zhengming, Badashanren, Song Huizong and Ma Yuan in a close distance. During his show, his brother and sister flew from Philadelphia to Seattle to extend their congratulations to him. They got together at the sea garden in Seattle. His “Banquet” was collected by Seattle Museum. At the same year, China National Museum of Fine Arts collected another of his piece “Eat Drink Man Woman” .

In 2004, “Asian Art New” published in Hong Kong introduced Li Jin. The Courtyard Gallery hosted an exhibition featuring his new artworks and published his album.

In 2005, he started to create “Big Garden” series and had his solo exhibition in Los Angeles. He also had his solo shows in

Thailand, Germany and Singapore. His memoir written by his classmate Song Yongping was published. He started to enter the auction market in China. The album of “23 Chinese Artists, Li Jin’s Scroll” was published.

In 2006, he together with Wu Yi had a joint show at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His solo exhibition was held in Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney and Art Scene Gallery in Shanghai. His album titled “Good Artists Series, Li Jin” was published. At the end of the autumn, he went to Germany with his friends to attend the opening of his solo exhibition there. During his stay, his created the scroll on his German trip. At the end of December, he joined “2006 Chinese Art Today” hosted by China National Museum of Fine Arts.

In 2007, he joined an exhibition titled “Consumption Junction” at Haines Gallery in San Francisco in January. In March, his solo exhibition was opened in Seoul. In April, he received the interview given by Australian Television Station, In May and July, he went to Hunan province for two times. He lived at the suburbs in Changsha and worked on his pieces. Every morning, he walked leisurely before the pond in front of his house. Every dusk, he meandered through a small road to a peasant’s home for dinner and experienced the local pure folkway.

Li Jin, as a new literati painter, evolved a style of his own in the early 1990s. Though he appeared late on the stage, he remarkably stands alone among his peers. Li Jin was born indolent, indifferent and humorous and he loves playing, eating, drinking and women, in addition, he is a bit cynical. Most of his works focus on erotic themes, food and drink, which is, as the works on display, an innovation created by Li Jin. As the old saying goes, “Appetite for food and sex is nature”. However, the sentence originates from Mencius and this viewpoint was borrowed from Gao Zi, an opponent to Mencius. Mencius inherited Confucius’ doctrine and emphasized on the self-cultivation of morals. Another great scholar influential in China, Zhu Xi, put forward the supremacy of “the laws of heaven over the desires of men”. Therefore, the emotions expressed by literati paintings through all ages are not profane emotions between drinking men and eating women but a kind of spiritual character gradually formed after the Song dynasty, i.e., the highest realm lies in ethical self-discipline of the Confucian school, in quietistic philosophy and effortless action of Taoism and in surpassing this life of Buddhism. Thus, a famous remark, “read extensively and travel widely” said by Dong Qichang in the Ming dynasty, came into existence. A large number of new literati painters, Li Jin in particular, created different images in their works from traditional quietistic images, impressed modern men with a type of new “pleasure-seeking sense” and led them “to eat all the delicacies and enjoy all the beauties under the sun” in art. For modern consumption-oriented society, to enjoy this life is commonly taken as an illusive slogan. As a conspiracy of monopoly capital, to enjoy this life actually becomes a new social alien force and casts those pleasure-seeking men into a living environment full of ever-expanding desires and fierce competitions, which makes them suffer a lot from nervous tension. From this perspective, the artistic “pleasure-seeking sense” may be a new therapeutic agent for human pneuma.

With his life experience, Li Jin created a series of completely-muddled men modeled on himself, like a tipsy man indulging in the feeling of forgetting life, whose eyes do not focus and the expressions are in ecstasy, without earthly wisdom, and leisurely as well as carefree. As a matter of fact, the aesthetic feel which was not created by Chinese literati paintings can be found everywhere in another clue of words by Chinese literati, as recorded in Shi Shuo Xin Yu/ New Anecdotes of Social Talk in Wei and Jin dynasties, most scholars were “indulgent in wine and unconventional”. That type of works is more common in lyric songs of Yuan Dynasty. Guan Hanqing composed, “I am a leader of libertines…frequently visit the brothels for half a lifetime and sleep with prostitutes there all the time…God provided me with those bad faults and I won’t stop at all”. Zhou Zhongbin also said, “why ask to call the deer as horse and phoenix as chicken? Let’s lift the gourd and don’t make a clear distinction between right and wrong”. Examples can also be found in plays and novels in Ming and Qing dynasties, in erotic novels in particular, such as Jin Ping Mei/The Golden Lotus and Rou Pu Tuan/ The Carnal Prayer Mat etc. The male images created by Li Jin inherit and develop another aesthetic tradition of Chinese literati.

The females painted by Li Jin, as males, are depicted as those who wear muddled facial expression, silly but cute, ugly but humorous, with attractive fatness. As Li Jin’s psychological imago and ideal women, they are full of carnal desires and erotic feelings. The tight clothes, bulgy jacket front, hardly-concealed and prominent corpulent beauty and fleshy attraction all belong to a special sense of beauty － carnal desire with a bit sense of evil and embraced beauty, which is not the bony beauty of fashionable females who serve as clothes hangers and are beautiful for fashions and for watching. Then, the sexy and fleshy female images drawn by Li Jin show a sense of touching. It seems that the process when Li Jin drawing females is not on the paper but a process of touching females.

Traditional literati painters pursue uprightness and elegance and most of them do not paint articles for daily use. To fall in love with seclusion promoted landscape paintings. To pay homage to lofty thoughts and great nobleness enabled bamboo, chrysanthemum, plum and orchid to be the four gentlemen. In the early 20th century, Qi Baishi painted vegetables, melons, fruits and common insects in farmhouses, which changed literati’s simple elegance and created a fresh natural scent. Li Jin takes delicious food as his subject matter, which is a great innovation. Each type of food, such as braised pig head, braised prawns, steamed salmon and stir-fried flowering stalk, plays similar roles as that of the four gentlemen in literati paintings. One chicken leg, two carrots, three crab claws and four garlic seem to be able to have a spiritual talk with Li Jin. All delicious food is accompanied with beautiful containers. The cup, mug, plate, tray, bowl, basin, spoon and chopsticks as well as hotpot, soup earthen bowl, tea pot and goblet painted by Li Jin are both food containers and treasured articles cherished by collectors. Both delicious food eaten and watched daily and beautiful containers used daily become a part in Li Jin’s paintings. They make a dialogue with the tipsy and innocent Li Jin, wordless, face to face and showing respect and affection to each other.

Mei Lanfang, the great Beijing Opera artist in modern history, said, “When the popular taste reaches the extreme, it will turn into the refined taste.” It is so-called great earthliness to be great elegance. The great earthliness lies in changing daily life into an aesthetic interest during surpassing mundane affairs － the everyday life, fame, gain and disturbance. Then, the earthiness becomes elegance. Li Jin takes his love to food, drinking, cooking and women to be a necessity of life and aesthetics. He doesn’t build an artistic pyramid beyond life. He knows that to enjoy life can bring pleasure to life. Then pleasure becomes a major theme for Li Jin’s art and then painting turns into a kind of enjoyment of life. Therefore, all images created by Li Jin, whatever males, females, delicious food, food containers, flowers and grass they are, are full of temperament and interest in life. They are all humorous and amusing and the audience cannot help laughing after seeing them.

Taking vernacular as the inscription was first initiated by Zhu Xinjian, a new literati painter. Later, most new literati painters adopt the method. It is no wonder at all but it is unheard that Li Jin inscribes the whole menu onto his paintings. Meanwhile, He writes a dense inscription, which goes against the blank space left by traditional literati painters and enabled the whole painting to be with a sense of “book edition” of ancient times. Li Jin’s style of calligraphy benefits a lot from the feelings of book-edition carving in ancient China. His slender horizontal strokes, thick vertical strokes, dots, corners, left-slanting strokes and right-falling strokes are all endowed with the modeling scent of print forms in book edition. However, his way of using brush is relaxed. Therefore, between carving and chopping impression of modeling strokes and relaxed brush usage and between questing for clumsiness in characters and pursuing charms in brush using, there is a kind of coexistence of looseness and tightness, clumsiness and charms.

The traditional literati paintings pay attention to the classification of ink into five colors in China. They emphasize on the enrichment of ink itself and meanwhile they pinpoint on major themes based on black, white and gray because the literati are in pursuit of a simple life. However, colors for “enjoying sense of beauty” emphasized by Li Jin are of paramount importance. Nonetheless, Li Jin’s using colors lies in two aspects. One is featured with all-around brush strokes, i.e. colors are stressed with calligraphic techniques. One brushstroke down, full of twists and turns as in calligraphy, is not only the form of natural phenomenon but also the shape of brushwork. The other is that most works are not colored in according to previous outlines. The ink and colors are used together. Outlines naturally integrate with ink blocks in various styles of drawings. Outlining, dotting and coloring follow his feelings while lines, ink and colors come with his temperament, which not only shows a free command but also manifests a clear rhythm. As a large number of delicious food paintings drawn by Li Jin, different delicious food and containers are a feast for the eyes and are embedded into dense characters which looks like printed form in book edition. The ink and colors vie with each other for glamour. The Chinese characters and paintings enhance each other’s beauty. They are multicoloured, loud and steaming hot.

Text by Li Xianting