Figure: Liuhai

A very fine and scarce Chinese boxwood carving of non-traditional Liuhai - as a young man, adorned with lavish pants and jacket in ancient military fashion, standing with his right leg on a toad (3-legged toad), his left leg raised, and he holds a spear in his right hand. Dating is Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. The unusual drum carved base is part of the carving, 1 3/4” h., and the height to top of his raised hand which holds the spear 10 5/8”.
Boxwood (Buxus michrophylia) is termed a ‘hardwood’ from an angiospermous tree. It is a very close grained dense yellowish-brown hardwood.
Liuhai: An immortal. He was a 10th century minister of state, a Daoist scholar, who retired to a monastery and was given the recipe for making the pills of immortality by Lu Tung-pin. He was the owner of a three-legged toad which would carry him wherever he wished to go and which, if it escaped, he could recapture with gold coins on the end of a line. He was said to have lured a venomous toad, which killed people out of its pond, and killed it. As a deity, he is regarded as a god of the earth and patron of needle-makers.

In the last 10 years, fine art and sculptures produced during the Cultural Revolution have been sold at auctions held in Asia; due to the rarity and scarcity of Cultural Revolution art, prices for it have gone up over the last 10 years, and have equaled, and often out-performed the fine art and sculptures dating from the Republic of China and Early People’s Republic.

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) had a unique Chinese genre of revolutionary art known as “revolutionary romanticism” or “socialist idealism.” Art for art’s sake was condemned and only art that idealized the workers, peasants, and the military was sanctioned. Themes included international socialist solidarity, industrialization, and land reform that focused attention on the revolutionary transformation underway in China. The aforementioned explains the appearance of a non-traditional carving. The subject carving carries a spear, is a young boy, adorned with military looking attire and very untraditional, for a figure of Liuhai.

Lot 1288, A Boxwood Huangyangmu figure of Liuhai. 18th/19th century. Christie’s New York sale 2648: Auspicious Treasures for Scholars and Emperors: Selections from the Robert H. Blumenfield Collection. March 22, 2012. Lot 46, Good large bamboo carving of Liu hai, Qing Dynasty, 18th century. Sotheby’s New York sale 8420: Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art.