Man in Middle Age is a novella of Chen Rong published in the first issue of Harvest in 1980. After reading the novella, the painter You Jindong deeply sympathized with the hero and heroine who led a hard life as ordinary people in the changing society, and decided to draw a comic strip as his undergraduate graduation creation in the Printmaking Department of Luxun Academy of Fine Arts. Once this series of comic strips were completed and published, it immediately aroused strong response and resonance among a wide range of readers in the society.

The comic strips Man in Middle Age depict the living situation of the intellectual couple of Lu Wenting and Fu Jiajie in a special era with a focused style. Especially in the portrayal of the heroine Lu Wenting, great success has been achieved. In You Jindong’s works, Lu Wenting’s image subverts the usual image mode used since the Cultural Revolution, but is more like an ordinary woman we feel close to in real life. When portraying characters, the painter looked for an image of a female intellectual who was neither too plain nor too beautiful. Finally, he found a female editor in the sports publishing house as a model for creating the image of Lu Wenting. The painter’s capture and expression of the heroine’s subtle movements not only reflects his ability as a comic book artist in observing and summarizing life, but also directly conveys the characteristics of the life of middle-aged intellectuals in the 1980s.

This group of works has formed the basic tendency for You Jindong to create the “artistic truth” which reflects “real truth”. The painter’s description of the bitter real life of middle-aged people runs through his 73 works with different scenes, which convey the painter’s endless inspiration accompanied with the flow of the couple’s emotions.

(Edited by Li Hanning & Yang Zhige, 2021)