Collection Online
Medium
porcelain
Measurements
36.5 × 41.4 × 12.8 cm
Place/s of Execution
China
Inscription
painted (vertically) in red on base c.: 李立宏. 2008. / LiLihong (underlined)
Accession Number
2023.731
Department
Asian Art
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Connie Kimberley and Craig Kimberley OAM, 2023
© Li Lihong
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work

McDonald’s takes the form of the Golden Arches logo of American multinational fast food chain McDonald’s Corporation. McDonalds’s restaurants entered China in the early 1990s, and quickly came to represent the American lifestyle and a new age of modernisation. Today, there are more than 4500 McDonald’s restaurants in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Li Lihong shrewdly combines the instantly recognisable yellow branding with historical Chinese symbolism of the colour yellow, which was exclusively reserved for imperial purposes, as well as five-clawed dragons, which were recognised as a symbol of power and heavenly authority.