Portrait of a Man,

2001

Drawn using a technique that recalls Renaissance and Baroque masters, this portrait was created as a tribute to the Chinese painter Mu Xin (1927–2011), who mixed Eastern and Western methods to depict glories of the past as protest against conditions of the present. This led to Mu Xin’s incarceration during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76). He relocated to New York in 1982, one year after Liu Dan’s arrival. Liu says that:

[Mu Xin] didn’t want a realistic portrait of himself. He belongs to a generation who really love to look like a Westerner instead of looking Chinese. He found in my drawings a kind of mélange of Western and Chinese technique and sensibility.. . . This portrait was based on a photograph taken when he was fifty years old. After I finished, I showed it to him, and he said . . . the figure doesn’t look Chinese. And . . . it doesn’t look like a Chinese artist did it.

Cary Liu, Nancy and Peter Lee Curator of Asian Art, Emeritus