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THE PROPERTY OF A LADY`When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection’ - Agnes Martin As Lin Show-Yu entered Millfield School in England, his privileged and carefully curated life was unfolding to his family’s judiciously formulated plan. A top English Public School, up to Oxford or Cambridge to study engineering, returning home to help build Taiwan into a strong and powerful country, thus cementing the Wufeng Lin’s position as one of the most influential families in the country. Regent Street Polytechnic, a western marriage and a precarious career as an artist and teacher could not have been further from his father’s masterplan. Following the birth of his first child he was duly disinherited and replaced by his younger brother, Philip, as the heir apparent. What happened? What compelled Lin Show-Yu to turn his back on the security, privilege and power that he was assured in order to pursue a life of financial insecurity and possible obscurity? It was almost certain that his interest in art and architecture was sparked at school and once in London he voraciously consumed the exhibitions and gallery shows that were on offer. This was a time of ground breaking exhibitions such as Nine Abstract Artists at the Redfern Gallery in 1955, This is Tomorrow in 1956 and Jackson Pollock in 1958, both at the Whitechapel Gallery and The New American Painting at the Tate Gallery in 1959. Britain was looking to America but also finding its own expression and voice in vital arenas such as the ICA. During his studies at Regent Street Polytechnic Lin met Charles and Peter Gimpel and assisted in the hanging of their latest exhibitions at their Gimpel Fils Gallery. Showing the gallerists his own paintings he persuaded them to give him his first selling exhibition. In 1958 the ICA also put on a one-man show of his latest abstract work. As he became more widely exhibited, Lin Show-Yu made the decision to adopt the western name of Richard. He never fully explained why he specifically chose this name but he recognised that to build a career as an artist in 1960s London he needed to Anglicise his name but without losing his original identity. This fusion of Eastern and Western names occurred around the same time that his work dramatically shifted in style. The use of colour, tone and texture were bleached from his paintings as they took on a minimalist purity. ‘White is the most mundane of colours, and the greatest of all colours; it is the most colourless and the most colourful; it is the most noble colour and the most common colour; it is the most tranquil colour, and the saddest colour too. White in and of itself is many colours; it can be thicker, thinner, heavier, lighter, transparent, semi-transparent … which means that with white and white, you can construct many strange and wonderful relationships of shapes and shapes, or spaces and spaces’. Although this change in his work seemed sudden and dramatic it had actually been gestating for some time as he absorbed the maelstrom of movements and manifestos that whirled around London’s artistic community. Drawing on his interest in the great Modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, that he had studied at Regent Street Polytechnic, and the contemporary western art movements, that he had experienced in the galleries and museums of London, Lin distilled this into the beautiful white canvases of his work in the 1960s by drawing on his Taiwanese upbringing and the teachings of Eastern philosophy. Plus (2), painted in 1968, and Feb 63-65 Painting Relief (lot 2) show Lin’s painstakingly slow technique of building layer upon layer of paint to create subtle lines of varying thickness. Seemingly flat and uniform in colour on first glance the subtle textural and impasto variations emerge as the complexity of composition unfolds with closer inspection. These works are more architectural than sculptural, underlined by their use of aluminium “lintels” to support these delicate structures. The positive and negative spaces created on the canvas surface are constructed with an understanding that one cannot be present without the other. Like Yin and Yang, Lin explores these Taoist concepts within his painting but from a western art historical perspective. He draws on many contemporary influences of the time, be it Le Corbusier or Ben Nicholson, Donald Judd or Robert Ryman, however, his cultural background and education allows him to create a synergy between Western and Eastern teachings and it is this synergy that gives the work of Richard Lin/Lin Show-Yu a uniquely beautiful spirituality.
Richard Lin (Lin Show-Yu) (1933-2011)
Plus (2)
細節
Richard Lin (Lin Show-Yu) (1933-2011)
Plus (2)
signed ‘RICHARD LIN’ (on the canvas overlap) and inscribed and dated ‘“PLUS (2)” PAINTING RELIEF 1968’ (on the stretcher)
oil and aluminium on canvas
25 x 25 in (63.5 x 63.5 cm.)
Painted in 1968.
Plus (2)
signed ‘RICHARD LIN’ (on the canvas overlap) and inscribed and dated ‘“PLUS (2)” PAINTING RELIEF 1968’ (on the stretcher)
oil and aluminium on canvas
25 x 25 in (63.5 x 63.5 cm.)
Painted in 1968.
來源
with Marlborough Fine Art, London.
Acquired by the present owner in August 1973.
Acquired by the present owner in August 1973.
拍場告示
Please note that this lot is subject to Artist Resale Right and not as stated in the printed catalogue.
This work is signed ‘RICHARD LIN’ (on the canvas overlap) and inscribed and dated ‘“PLUS (2)” PAINTING RELIEF 1968’ (on the stretcher).
This work is signed ‘RICHARD LIN’ (on the canvas overlap) and inscribed and dated ‘“PLUS (2)” PAINTING RELIEF 1968’ (on the stretcher).
榮譽呈獻
William Porter