Untitled, 1985

Born in Korea, Lee came into his own as an artist in Japan where he was based for many years. Combining the artistic traditions of both cultures, he also looked toward Western developments in painting and conceptual art. In the late 1960s, he established the basis for what would become the Mono-ha (School of Things) movement in Japan. The overriding theory behind this group of artists and their works was to present objects as they are, unprocessed and unrefined according to the strictures of Modernism. Indeed, Lee wanted to go beyond what his modernist colleagues had done in the West and often problematized the role of the artist as author. He also endeavored to combine the object with the subject, negating the divide between the two. From this series of principles came four discrete series: Relatum, From Point, Correspondence, and From Line. The present example belongs to the latter grouping and exhibits a distillation of techniques that Lee learned at the beginning of his career as he was studying nihonga (Japanese-style) painting techniques.