Rat Year 2020 II: The Last Dandelion

In this, her final self-portrait before her death in August 2021, Hung Liu depicted herself wearing a mask, a common face covering in the age of Covid. Look carefully, however, and you will see that the “mask” is the nearly unpainted linen beneath the picture itself. Vulnerability—the lack of any real covering at all—is implied.

Meanwhile, the adjacent rusty bronze panel shows a dandelion, one of Liu’s favorite subjects, plucked down to its final seed (or pappus). Countless other pappi have drifted away in the winds of life. It is unlikely the artist knew she was ill when painting this work, but she did know her strength was declining. Thus, the phrase “last dandelion” suggests an underlying awareness of the end. Still, to look at those bright and living eyes, like orbs in a deep endless night, is to remember that Hung Liu lived her dramatic, epical life as a painter, which remains alive, and whose last dandelion will never drift away.

                                                                                                             —Jeff Kelley, Hung Liu’s husband

On loan from Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Hung Liu’s Rat Year 2020 self-portraits are in the process of becoming part of the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection through the generosity of Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg / The Hearthland Foundation, Robert and Jane Clark, Roselyne Chroman Swig, Nancy Hoffman and Peter N. Greenwald; and Fred M. Levin, the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Hung Liu