Page 79 - The Pioneers, November 26, 2016 Hong Kong

Kim furthered his experimentation of Korean motifs
during his study in Paris from 1956 to 1959. His
affection for indigenous motifs grew even stronger after
arriving in Paris. During this period, Kim continued to
explore in depth various classical Korean motifs and
landscapes, eventually schematizing them with simplified
outlines and vibrant colour fields. In the realm of diaspora entering a meditative state while standing in front of the
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. In this lifelong journey of artistic and
personal development, Kim consistently set his identity
in Korean traditional culture and natural landscapes.
After Kim arrived in New York in 1963, his brushwork
swiftly evolved from the textured and well-worked
surfaces of his earlier canvases to flat, smooth, ink-like
expanses of color. Kim’s letters to his family and his
journal entries from these early days in New York describe
the artist’s sense of being overwhelmed by everything
from Manhattan’s sky scrapers, which blocked out the
light of the sun, to the voluminous Sunday edition of
the New York Times. It is no wonder that Kim felt the
need to bring what order and simplicity he could to his
painting. In his journal on December 12, 1963 Kim wrote:
"I can’t work very well today because it’s overcast.
It was snowing, but now it’s raining, which makes
me feel terribly homesick for Korea. I can’t seem to
separate my art from Seoul. I don’t like a single work
I’ve done so far. I like the work I’ll be painting from now
on. Simple composition, the subtle color of blue-only
I can create my world. It’s getting darker outside"
4-X-69 #121 (Lot 2509) represents a mature work
from Kim Whanki’s New York Period. Composed of
a pristine turquoise field flanked by cerulean banks,
the painting presents a complete departure from last
Kim Whan-Ki, New York Studio, 1968
© Whanki Foundation·Whanki Museum
19 6 8 年，金 煥 基 於 紐 約 的 畫 室
1 Kim Hyang-an, "Seoul Period: 1940-56, 1959-1963," Man is Gone But Art Remains, Dosuh Publishing, 1989, p. 30
Fig. 2 Paul Klee, Fermata, 1932-1933, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA
圖2 保羅・克利《Fermata》1932-1933年作 美國 費城 費城美術博物館
vestiges of concrete figuration that Kim had held on to
until this point. Despite its simplicity, the composition
has a distinct luminosity and rhythm. One can imagine
work—being submerged in the bottomless expanses of
blue, contained on each end by a grey line and orderly
row of multicolored island-like dots bobbing in an
endless sea, bringing regulation to an otherwise vast
and incomprehensible abyss. The delicate balance and
modulation of color and shape calls to mind the seminal
work of painter and Zen Buddhist monk, Muqi (Muqi
Fachang, circa 1210-1269), Six Persimmons. (Fig. 3)
The process of 4-X-69 #121’s creation must have been
therapeutic for Kim, the perfect antidote to crowded
city life and a refuge from his crammed New York
studio, barely 100 square feet in size. While the artist’s
move to New York was largely motivated by his self-
consciousness about his own insularity, it is hard to
imagine that Kim’s deep-rooted longing for Seoul did
not permeate these compositions which epitomize
abstraction within his oeuvre. In 1970 Kim writes,
“Do the lines I draw go beyond the limit of the sky?
Do the dots shine as brightly as the stars? When
I close my eyes I see the rivers and mountains of
my country more clearly than the rainbows.”
Despite traveling to the other side of the world to
shed the restrictions of concrete figuration, perhaps
Kim Whanki never truly released his grasp on the
landscapes of his youth, continuing to draw inspiration
from emblems of his homeland’s cultural history
and forging a new path forward for Korean modern
art with these tokens of his heritage in hand.
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