Artwork case Study

Review and research of an artwork from QAG / GOMA, that made between 1950 & the present.

Artwork Title: With Winds (1990)

Artist: Lee U-Fan (pronounced Lee Yuu – hwarn)

Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 227.5 x 182cm 

• Elements of design:

The artwork using minimal, free and dynamic brushstrokes on a large scale (227.5 x 182 cm) canvas; by leaving most part of the canvas blank, to create a sense of space - as he calls "the living composition of the empty spaces."

• Subject matter:

What you see in this image is less important than what you don’t see. 

The series of marks painted by the artist are designed to create a sense of space or emptiness. The artist refers to this as yohaku or ‘the art of emptiness’. It is an emptiness that

attempts to provoke your imagination into creating your own image and, in turn,
your own reality. The viewer’s imagination is encouraged to decide what happens in this space and to transform the ‘emptiness’ into something with meaning.

Lee U-fan’s painted marks and gestures act as a guide towards understanding how your inner self (your mind) creates its own reality through an encounter with the outer world.

• The presentation and display:

A large scale canvas hang on the gallery wall.

Lee says:  “This is a very complicated issue. If you look at the paintings closely, you can see that they are not something I painted with the wall in mind. Although they are meant to be hung on a wall, they convey the relationship they have with the floor and with the space. But if you look at that iron plate leaning against the wall, it doesn’t matter whether it is flat on the floor or stands upright, because the work is simply about making one aware of the space.”

• Genre:

Mono-ha, literally "School of things"

http://www.kamakura-g.com/KG-html/monoha-page/e-monoha-what.htm

(As refer to Korean Minimalism)

• The Code:

Traditional Chinese calligraphy; calligraphy views the act of painting as a form of contemplation or meditation.

The Zen philosophy or esoteric buddhism. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism

• Contemporary ideas and events that may have influenced the creation of the work:

An exhibition called “Tricks and Vision – Stolen Eyes,” held at Tokyo Gallery and Muramatsu Gallery in 1968. Organized by emerging critics Junzo Ishiko and Yusuke Nakahara, its display of 19 artists who used “tricky” visual effects in their work (“tricky” being a Japanese adaptation of the English to refer to trompe l’oeil optical illusions) encouraged Lee to consider how art could question the uncertainty of one’s perception of reality.

Abstract expressionism in mid-century America was influenced by the Buddhist teachings of Zen. In keeping with Zen Philosophy, expressionism valued the process of making, the non-material world and the importance of absence and spaces between solid objects.

Japanese contemporary art during the mid-1960s, happenings of the Gutai group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutai_group

 

Artist's biography and cultural background:

Lee U-fan was born in Seoul in 1936 and has lived in Japan since 1956. He is a

painter and sculptor.  During his university years, when he read literary giants such as Tanizaki and Mishima, forced him to relinquish his literary ambitions and turn to art criticism.

Lee hasd experiment with abstraction: works from this period included canvases marked with oil paint applied directly from the tube—an attempt to render visible the gradual absorption of the paint into the fabric.

At the end of the 1960s, Lee’s questioning of visual perception gradually began to encompass a broader concern with the interrelationships of space and matter.

Inspired by topology—a branch of mathematics that studies the structure of space—the simple displacement of soil in Phase---the material universe is finite and no humans can add or subtract from it.
Lee’s conception of space is related to yohaku, the unpainted spaces in classical Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting. Often translated as “margin”—as it was in the title of Lee’s retrospective at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2005, Yohaku no Geijutsu (Art of Margins)—the characters in yohaku signify “remainder” and “white,” implying a void. 

The artist’s philosophical perspective led to him becoming

a founding member of the important Mono-ha movement. 

The movement was formed in response to what was perceived as rampant consumerism emerging in Japan as it rapidly modernised after World War Two.

Mono-ha manifests Lee U-fan’s interest in developing a practice that deliberately

rejects this consumer-based materialism.

• The influence of internationalism. ( globalisation/ multi-culturalism, etc) and / or the legacy of colonialism in the work.

Globalisation: Lee works towards establishing a connection with the western philosophy and the Asian tradition. 

• Precedents for the artwork produced by other artists.

Joseph Beuys (German) 1931- 1986
Frau/Tierschädel (Woman/Animal Skull) 1956—1957
http://artnews.org/gallery.php?i=569&exi=14271
Yves Klein (French) 1928-1962
Anthropometry: Princess Helena 1960
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3137&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1
Jackson Pollock (American) 1921- 1956
Number  7, 1951
http://www.abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_grnfthrs_fldr/g007_pollock_no7,1951.html

• How electronic and information technologies have impacted on the presentation and/or creation of the artwork.

The electronic and information technologies have reduced the visual impact -- the sense of space, that the artwork had created, due to the size of the electronic displays (screens) are usually lot smaller compare to the actual painting.

• Consider the differing audiences and venues the artwork has had.

The artwork displayed in a western gallery, had fulfilled  the purpose of challenging the western ideology, the consumer-based materialism.

Source from:
Art Asia Pacific magazine interview:

http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/62/IllusionsAndInterrelationshipsLeeUfan

GOMA APT 2002:
http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Lee_Ufan