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拍品专文
"One should hear songs in art. Many great works possess powerful songs. I finally got to know the song I have been singing all these years, just as I got to know the bright sun in Paris."
- Kim Whan-ki
Like many other modern Korean artists, Kim Whanki first studied Western Modernism and Abstraction in Japan, where he reflected upon a range of movements from Cubism to Neo-plasticism. During that time he felt, however, a sense of urgency to free himself from rigidity of Japanese academicism and the pronounced European influence prevalent at that time. After his return from Tokyo in 1937, Kim began expanding his knowledge of traditional Korean art and started to collect Korean ceramics and furniture, though it was not until 1953 that Kim seriously began to delve into the issue of expressing a uniquely Korean aesthetic in his own work. To propel the development of his work forward, he looked to the past, extracting motifs from Joseon Dynasty white porcelains, Goryeo Dynasty celadons and traditional literati paintings, to use in his painting. From this vantage point, he found boundless inspiration and took a deep interest in capturing the poetic emotion and spirit imbued in both the naturalism and actual nature of Korea. As described in his poetic notation, “round sky, round jar/blue sky, white jar they are surely one pair.” To Kim, nature and tradition were one in the same.
In 1956 Kim departed for Paris with the intention of gaining direct exposure to Western art, which up until this point he and most of his peers had only experienced second hand. Kim’s time in Paris was a short yet prodigious period which saw the advent of a newly flourishing artistic ingenuity. Perhaps as a result of seeing his own Korean identity with more clarity while abroad, his affection for indigenous motifs grew even stronger abroad in France. In this period, Kim continued to explore in depth various classical Korean motifs and landscapes, eventually schematizing them with simplified outlines atop vibrant color fields. In the realm of diaspora where subjectivity and the experience of being the cultural "other" underlies many interactions, Kim devoted himself to the very difficult question of how to accommodate or embrace mainstream culture, while still adhering to his own subjectivity.
It was during his first year in Paris that Kim painted Fleur de Lotus (Lotus Flower) (Lot 43), a work which illustrates the way in which Kim brought together quintessential Korean motifs, rendering them in their most simplified form. A flying crane soars past the full and heavy moon, with scroll-like cloud drifting below; it is not difficult to see how he deftly extracted and adapted these motifs from a Goryeo dynasty vase such as the one shown here. (Fig. 1) The positioning of the bird in flight is a nearly mirror image of the crane in in Kim’s painting; meanwhile the small wisp of a cloud that drifts just below is a clear but abbreviated impression of the scrolling clouds the wind their way up the body of the celadon. Further below in the composition, an unopened lotus bud basks in the gentle moonlight. The lotus is the ultimate symbol of purity in Buddhism, a blossom rising from murky tainted waters to reveal unmarred petals-yet here it is the only burst of rosy color breaking the purity of the nearly monochromatic palette of blues.
The carefully imbalanced yet harmonious placement of each of these elements, against the infinite and all-encompassing backdrop of blue, appears to reference the composition of Korean literati paintings in their shifting perspective and ambiguous negative space. (Fig. 2) Around the entire composition wraps a muted grayish-blue border, as if to emulate the silk matting on which vertical scrolls are mounted. Or perhaps, this simple frame could indicate the sill of a window, a portal into the heart of his country through which a homesick Kim wished he could peer, simultaneously giving us a view into his own internal dialogue.
Though it was relatively new to his work at the time, the predominance of the color blue eventually became a signature of Kim’s paintings. Evoking the sea and the sky, it is easy to see why Kim, with his profound desire to marry art and nature, developed such a strong affinity towards the color. Similarly, Sanyu, a Chinese born artist who was also working in Paris in the 1950s, was also deeply interested in the way in which the color blue could evoke boundless space as well as define it. In his painting Chrysanthemums in a Glass Vase , Sanyu uses a carefully modulated palette of blue ranging from the deep, inky background to the meticulous silvery strokes that delineate the chrysanthemum blossoms. (Fig. 3) Both works express an ambiguity in space, while both artists represent a unique voice and aesthetic for their generation.
- Kim Whan-ki
Like many other modern Korean artists, Kim Whanki first studied Western Modernism and Abstraction in Japan, where he reflected upon a range of movements from Cubism to Neo-plasticism. During that time he felt, however, a sense of urgency to free himself from rigidity of Japanese academicism and the pronounced European influence prevalent at that time. After his return from Tokyo in 1937, Kim began expanding his knowledge of traditional Korean art and started to collect Korean ceramics and furniture, though it was not until 1953 that Kim seriously began to delve into the issue of expressing a uniquely Korean aesthetic in his own work. To propel the development of his work forward, he looked to the past, extracting motifs from Joseon Dynasty white porcelains, Goryeo Dynasty celadons and traditional literati paintings, to use in his painting. From this vantage point, he found boundless inspiration and took a deep interest in capturing the poetic emotion and spirit imbued in both the naturalism and actual nature of Korea. As described in his poetic notation, “round sky, round jar/blue sky, white jar they are surely one pair.” To Kim, nature and tradition were one in the same.
In 1956 Kim departed for Paris with the intention of gaining direct exposure to Western art, which up until this point he and most of his peers had only experienced second hand. Kim’s time in Paris was a short yet prodigious period which saw the advent of a newly flourishing artistic ingenuity. Perhaps as a result of seeing his own Korean identity with more clarity while abroad, his affection for indigenous motifs grew even stronger abroad in France. In this period, Kim continued to explore in depth various classical Korean motifs and landscapes, eventually schematizing them with simplified outlines atop vibrant color fields. In the realm of diaspora where subjectivity and the experience of being the cultural "other" underlies many interactions, Kim devoted himself to the very difficult question of how to accommodate or embrace mainstream culture, while still adhering to his own subjectivity.
It was during his first year in Paris that Kim painted Fleur de Lotus (Lotus Flower) (Lot 43), a work which illustrates the way in which Kim brought together quintessential Korean motifs, rendering them in their most simplified form. A flying crane soars past the full and heavy moon, with scroll-like cloud drifting below; it is not difficult to see how he deftly extracted and adapted these motifs from a Goryeo dynasty vase such as the one shown here. (Fig. 1) The positioning of the bird in flight is a nearly mirror image of the crane in in Kim’s painting; meanwhile the small wisp of a cloud that drifts just below is a clear but abbreviated impression of the scrolling clouds the wind their way up the body of the celadon. Further below in the composition, an unopened lotus bud basks in the gentle moonlight. The lotus is the ultimate symbol of purity in Buddhism, a blossom rising from murky tainted waters to reveal unmarred petals-yet here it is the only burst of rosy color breaking the purity of the nearly monochromatic palette of blues.
The carefully imbalanced yet harmonious placement of each of these elements, against the infinite and all-encompassing backdrop of blue, appears to reference the composition of Korean literati paintings in their shifting perspective and ambiguous negative space. (Fig. 2) Around the entire composition wraps a muted grayish-blue border, as if to emulate the silk matting on which vertical scrolls are mounted. Or perhaps, this simple frame could indicate the sill of a window, a portal into the heart of his country through which a homesick Kim wished he could peer, simultaneously giving us a view into his own internal dialogue.
Though it was relatively new to his work at the time, the predominance of the color blue eventually became a signature of Kim’s paintings. Evoking the sea and the sky, it is easy to see why Kim, with his profound desire to marry art and nature, developed such a strong affinity towards the color. Similarly, Sanyu, a Chinese born artist who was also working in Paris in the 1950s, was also deeply interested in the way in which the color blue could evoke boundless space as well as define it. In his painting Chrysanthemums in a Glass Vase , Sanyu uses a carefully modulated palette of blue ranging from the deep, inky background to the meticulous silvery strokes that delineate the chrysanthemum blossoms. (Fig. 3) Both works express an ambiguity in space, while both artists represent a unique voice and aesthetic for their generation.