We Have Been Naught We Shall Be All
Hung Liu (United States), We Have Been Naught We Shall Be All, 2007. Oil paint on canvas, 80 x 240 inches. Denver Art Museum: Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum, 2010.474A-C. © Hung Liu
Hung Liu based this painting on the 1949 propaganda film Daughters of China, in which Chinese women soldiers resist capture by the Japanese army by drowning themselves in a river. Liu memorializes this heroic yet tragic tale through veils of dripping linseed oil that evoke the haziness of memory. The title is a lyric from the political anthem “The Internationale,” which was sung by Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989.
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