![Lee Ufan at Guggenheim](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Lee_Ufan_at_Guggenheim.jpg)
Lee Ufan (
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
: 이우환,
Hanja
Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom.
(, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, ...
: 李禹煥, born 1936 in
Haman County
Haman County (''Haman-gun'') is a county in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. The local government is seated in Gaya-eup. The county magistrate is Seok Gyu Jin.
In the early Common Era, Haman was the seat of Ara Gaya, a leading state of ...
, in South Kyongsang province in Korea) is a
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
minimalist painter and sculptor
artist and
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
, honored by the government of Japan for having "contributed to the development of
contemporary art in Japan."
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The is an executive department of the Government of Japan, and is responsible for the country's foreign policy and international relations.
The ministry was established by the second term of the third article of the National Government Organi ...
"2009 Autumn Conferment of Decorations on Foreign Nationals," p. 9.
/ref> The art of this artist, who has long been based in Japan, is rooted in an Eastern appreciation of the nature of materials and also in modern European phenomenology. The origin of Mono-ha may be found in Lee's article "Sonzai to mu wo koete Sekine Nobuo ron (Beyond Being and Nothingness – A Thesis on Sekine Nobuo." Once this initial impetus given, Mono-ha congealed with the participation of the students of the sculptor Yoshishige Saitō, who was teaching at Tama University of Art at the time. One evidence may be found in the book a, so, toki(場 相 時, place phase time) (Spring, 1970). Lee, the main theorist of the Mono-ha ("School of Things") tendency in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was trained as a philosopher. As a painter, Lee contributed to 'Korean Monotone Art' (Dansaekjo Yesul, 單色調 藝術), the first artistic movement in 20th century Korea to be promoted in Japan. He advocates a methodology of de-westernization and demodernization in both theory and practice as an antidote to the Eurocentric
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western worl ...
thought of 1960s postwar
In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period ...
Japanese society. Lee divides his time between Kamakura, Japan and Paris, France.
Career
Born in Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do in 1936, Lee Ufan was raised by his parents and Confucian grandfather. Lee studied painting at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University for just two months and moved to Yokohama
is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...
, Japan in 1956, where he earned a degree in philosophy in 1961.[''Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity'', June 24 – September 28, 2011](_blank)
Guggenheim Museum, New York. Whilst studying philosophy Ufan painted in a restrained, traditional Japanese style, eschewing the expressive abstraction of the contemporary Japanese Gutai movement.[Lee Ufan](_blank)
Tate Collection. After graduating from the university in Japan, 1961, he threw himself against the South–North unification movement and the military regime. In 1964, Lee was arrested and tortured by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA).
Lee spent his early working years pursuing careers as an art critic, philosopher, and artist.[Benjamin Genocchio (May 15, 2011)]
Lee Ufan
''Blouinartinfo''. In Japan he became an active participant in the countercultural upheavals surrounding the Anpo Movement of the 1960s. He came to prominence in the late 1960s as one of the founders and theoretical leaders of the avant garde Mono-ha (School of Thing) group. Mono-Ha was related in Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and Japan's first contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. The Mono-Ha school of thought rejected Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
notions of representation, choosing to focus on the relationships of materials and perceptions rather than on expression or intervention. The movement's goal was to embrace the world at large and encourage the fluid coexistence of numerous beings, concepts, and experiences. Lee U-fan's position in the philosophy department at Nihon
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
University in Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
earned him a distinguished role as the movement's spokesman. In 1973, he was appointed Professor of Tama Art University
or is a private art university located in Tokyo, Japan. It is known as one of the top art schools in Japan.
History
The forerunner of Tamabi was Tama Imperial Art School (多摩帝国美術学校, Tama Teikoku Bijutsu Gakkō) founded in 1935. ...
in Tokyo and he stayed there until 2007. Yoshio Itagaki
is a Japanese artist and photographer. He has appeared on the American television program ''Nightline'' and on ''News 11'' on Japan's NHK.
Education
Itagaki received a B.A. in Studio Art from Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan) in 1991 and a ...
was one of his students in 1989–1991. He is Professor emeritus at Tama Art University
or is a private art university located in Tokyo, Japan. It is known as one of the top art schools in Japan.
History
The forerunner of Tamabi was Tama Imperial Art School (多摩帝国美術学校, Tama Teikoku Bijutsu Gakkō) founded in 1935. ...
.
In the mid-1970s Lee introduced Korean five artists whom called later ''Dansaekzo Whehwa'' (Monotone Painting) school to Japan, which offered a fresh approach to abstraction by presenting repetitive gestural marks as bodily records of time's perpetual passage. In his early painting series, ''From Point'' and ''From Line'' (1972–84), Lee combines ground mineral pigment with animal-skin glue, characteristic of nihonga painting in which he was trained. Each brushstroke is applied slowly and is composed of several layers. Where the brush first makes contact with the canvas, the paint is thick, forming a 'ridge' that gradually becomes lighter. Rarely does his brush touch the surface more than three times. The artist refers to this as ''yohaku'' or the art of emptiness. In the ''From Point'' works he adopted a similar method in order to produce a fading series of small, discrete, rectangular brushstrokes. In 1991 Lee began his series of ''Correspondance'' paintings, which consist of just one or two grey-blue brushstrokes, made of a mixture of oil and crushed stone pigment, applied onto a large white surface. On average it takes Lee about a month to finish a painting, on canvases that typically measure about 60 by 90 inches, although they can vary in size from a few inches to 10 feet per side. He completes no more than 25 works a year.
Lee's sculptures, presenting dispersed arrangements of stones together with industrial materials like steel plates, rubber sheets, and glass panes, recast the discrete object as a network of relations based on parity between the viewer, materials, and site. In his sculptural series ''Relatum'', each work consists of one or more light-colored round stones and dark, rectangular iron plates.
Exhibitions
From his first solo exhibition in Japan in 1967, Lee Ufan was invited by Manfred Schneckenburger
Manfred Schneckenburger (1 December 1938 – 2 December 2019) was a German art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art. He was the curator of the ''documenta'' art exhibition twice, documenta 6 in 1977 and documenta 8 in 1987. He was ...
to participate in Documenta VI (1977) in Kassel, and in 1969 and 1973 he represented Korea in the Bienal de São Paulo. His work was included in the 1992 Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development C ...
exhibition, "Working With Nature: Traditional Thought in Contemporary Art from Korea", the first major survey of Korean art shown in Britain. In 1997 he had a solo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume
''Jeu de paume'' (, ; originally spelled ; ), nowadays known as real tennis, (US) court tennis or (in France) ''courte paume'', is a ball-and-court game that originated in France. It was an indoor precursor of tennis played without racquets, a ...
, Paris and in 2001 the Kunstmuseum Bonn
The Kunstmuseum Bonn or Bonn Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Bonn, Germany, founded in 1947. The Kunstmuseum exhibits both temporary exhibitions and its collection. Its collection is focused on Rhenish Expressionism and post-war German ...
held a major retrospective of his work. Major exhibitions of Lee's painting and sculpture were later held at the Yokohama Museum of Art
, founded in 1989, is located in the futuristic Minato Mirai 21 district of the Japanese city Yokohama, next to the Yokohama Landmark Tower.
The collections
The museum has works by many influential and well-known modern artists including Consta ...
in 2005 and the Musée d'art Moderne Saint-Etienne in France in December 2005. The Situation Kunst (für Max Imdahl), a museum associated with Ruhr University Bochum
The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...
in Germany, opened in 2006 with a gallery devoted to a permanent installation of Lee Ufan's paintings and a garden of his sculpture. However, it was Lee's "Resonance" exhibition at Palazzo Palumbo Fossati during the 2007 Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
that won him critical acclaim and a wider audience.
In 2011, ''Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity'' was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, organized by curator Alexandra Munroe, with over 90 works, from the 1960s to the present. Art critic Robert C. Morgan
Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist.
Biography
Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education f ...
writes in The Brooklyn Rail
''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...
: "What makes Lee Ufan's work exhilarating is the structure—not in the pragmatic sense, but in the virtual/tactile sense; that is, the manner in which the 'weight' comes down to the gravity of seeing: we see and touch the work, less in actuality than conceptually." “Young Sook Park and Lee Ufan: Pure Clay,” at TH Gallery in New York commemorated the collaboration between Lee and cermacist, Young Sook Park.
In 2014, Lee was the seventh guest artist selected for the contemporary art program of the Palace of Versailles. after Jeff Koons in 2008, Xavier Veilhan in 2009, Takashi Murakami in 2010, Bernar Venet in 2011, Joana Vasconcelos in 2012 and Giuseppe Penone en 2013.
In 2019, Lee became the first single-artist to take over the entire plaza of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...
in the museum's 44-year existence. A site-specific commission,
Lee Ufan: Open Dimension
' features 10 new sculptures that will activate the museum's plaza through September 13, 2020.
In 2020, Lee's work will be displayed at the ''STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World'' exhibition in Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. In the exhibition it will feature one of Lee's earlier works, "Relatum" along with the three-dimensional work, "Relatum - Dissonance" and two large-scale new works, "Dialogue" paintings.
Collections
Lee is represented in major museum collections including: MoMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum
The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Museums in this group include:
Locations
Americas
* The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London; Kröller-Müller Museum
The Kröller-Müller Museum () is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of ...
, Otterlo Holland; the National Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka; the Yokohama Museum of Art
, founded in 1989, is located in the futuristic Minato Mirai 21 district of the Japanese city Yokohama, next to the Yokohama Landmark Tower.
The collections
The museum has works by many influential and well-known modern artists including Consta ...
and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...
. His work is also held in the permanent collection of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
The is an art museum founded in 1989. It is in Hijiyama Park in Hiroshima, Japan. The building was designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa.
Representative collections
Access
*Hiroden
is a Japanese transportation company established on ...
and the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major c ...
.
Recognition
In 1997, Lee was invited to serve as visiting professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The Beaux-Arts de Paris is a French ''grande école'' whose primary mission is to provide high-level arts education and training. This is classical and historical School of Fine Arts in France. The art school, which is part of the Paris Science ...
in Paris. He received the UNESCO Prize at the Shanghai Biennale in 2000; the Ho-Am Prize of the Samsung Foundation in Korea in 2001; and the 13th Praemium Imperiale
Prince Takamatsu
The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugur ...
for painting in 2001. In 2010, the Lee Ufan Museum, a building designed by Tadao Ando and operated by Benesse
is a Japanese company which focuses on correspondence education and publishing. Based in Okayama-City, it is the parent company of Berlitz Language Schools, which in turn is the parent company of ELS Language Centers. Benesse is listed on the ...
, opened on the island of Naoshima
is an island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, part of Kagawa Prefecture. The island is best known for its many contemporary art installations and museums. The administers Naoshima and 26 smaller islands nearby. As of 2020, the town has an estimated ...
, Japan.
Art market
Lee's paintings regularly fetch six-figure dollar sums at auction. A 1980 canvas with a series of vertical blue lines, for example, went for $410,000 at Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
in New York in 2010. Lee's primary dealers are Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is an American contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong ...
, in New York and Seoul; Scai the Bathhouse, in Tokyo; and Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in London and New York, founded by Nicholas Logsdail in 1967. The gallery represents over 50 artists such as Art & Language, Ryan Gander, Carmen Herrera, Richard Long, John Latham, So ...
, in London, New York and Shanghai.
Honors
* Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, 2009.
* Ho-Am Prize in the Arts
The Ho-Am Prize was established in 1990 by Lee Kun-hee, Kun-Hee Lee, the Chairman of Samsung, with a vision to create a new corporate culture that continues the noble spirit of public service espoused by the late Chairman Byung-chull Lee, founder ...
, 2001
* Praemium Imperiale
Prince Takamatsu
The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugur ...
, 2001. "Cultural Highlights; From the Japanese Press (August 1–October 31, 2001),"
''Japan Foundation Newsletter,'' Vol. XXIX, No. 2, p. 7.
*
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
, 2007
* Geumgwan (Gold Crown)
Order of Cultural Merit (South Korea), 2013
Publications
* 《양의의 표현》, 2022
* 《멈춰 서서》, 2004
* 《여백의 예술》, 2002
* 《시간의 여울》, 1994
References
Bibliography
* Kee Joan, Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method, University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
*
* Lee Ufan: ''The Art of Encounter'', London 2008.
* S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe: ''Lee Ufan. Encounters with the Other'', Steidl, Goettingen, 2008.
* Kim Mi Kyung, ''Encountering Lee Ufan on the path of Mono-ha'', Gonggansa, Seoul: Korea, 18.5x24cm, 440 pages, 200
External links
Situation Kunst (for Max Imdahl), Art Collections of Ruhr-University BochumThe Pace GalleryLee Ufan: Marking Infinity Exhibition Overview
*
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The is an executive department of the Government of Japan, and is responsible for the country's foreign policy and international relations.
The ministry was established by the second term of the third article of the National Government Organi ...
"2009 Autumn Conferment of Decorations on Foreign Nationals," p. 9.* LG Williams,
Tokyo weekender
''Tokyo Weekender'' magazine is the oldest English publication in Japan.
Founded in 1970 by Corky Alexander and Susan Scully, ''Tokyo Weekender'' was first published bi-monthly. Now ''Tokyo Weekender'' is published monthly and is distributed in ...
"Lee Ufan: A single stroke is not enough" February 9, 2011.
Lee Ufan at the Galerie m BochumKamakura Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Ufan
Korean artists
Ufan
Japanese sculptors
Korean sculptors
People from South Gyeongsang Province
Nihon University alumni
Recipients of the Legion of Honour
Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun
Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale
1936 births
Living people
South Korean contemporary artists
Recipients of the Ho-Am Prize in the Arts
Tama Art University faculty