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Lot Essay
From Winds, Lee Ufan’s epic abstraction from 1986, belongs to an important series of paintings the artist began in the early 1980s and which went on to form the central pillar of his long and celebrated career. Works from this important series are included in major museum collections including the Tate, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and M+, Hong Kong, demonstrating the central role he has played in the global story of abstraction. Across this expanse of nearly ten feet wide canvas, Lee Ufan lays down a series of animated brushstrokes, not with any particular compositional system in mind, rather each stroke being an unpremeditated response to the preceding mark. Recently the subject of a retrospective exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia, the artist continues to be one of the most influential abstract artists working today.
The surface of this large-scale canvas is populated by a series of Lee Ufan’s characteristically animated marks. Laid down by his peripatetic hand, many of these brushstrokes traverse the canvas in one direction, before changing course radically, veering off in another direction. Realized in oil mixed with mineral pigment, the pale brushstrokes are interspersed with a series of black gestures, resulting in a complex intertwining of dark and light; of hard and soft; and of density and weightlessness. Thus, the complexity of Lee Ufan’s composition sits at odds with the simplicity of its realization. As Lee Ufan himself describes it, his arrangements are not the result of an overarching narrative, rather a series of individual responses to what has immediately gone before: “Regulating my breath and feeling a rhythm in my body, I bring my brush down at a certain place on the canvas. After this I naturally want to move the brush to another place in response to the first mark. Then inevitably, a different place calls to the brush… a tension-filled situation is gradually created” (quoted by S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Lee Ufan. Encounters with the Other, Göttingen, 2007, p. 142).
The artist studied philosophy at Nihon University in Tokyo after deciding it was essential to his future artistic endeavors. This decision would prove indispensable as his philosophical training would go on to inform not only his art but also his views on abstraction in general. After finishing his studies and starting to paint full-time, he would go on to become a key theorist and establishing member of the Mono-ha, an avant-garde materials-based art movement in 1960s Japan and the first Japanese contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. As part of this group Lee Ufan further developed his views on abstraction and established the notable style of his future works. However, this vision was vastly different from those coming from Western artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Instead of catalyzing his abstraction through expression and emotion, Lee and the Mono-ha practitioners focused on perception and the relationship with their materials. As art historian Silke von Berswordy-Wallrabe notes, like the Surrealists and their automatic drawings “[Lee Ufan] relinquishes rational control not in order to give free reign to personal expression, but in order to make his painting receptive towards factors outside his own subjectivity” (S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe, ibid., p. 137).
From Winds is an archetypal example of this practice. Building on the critical success of his earlier, From Line and From Point paintings, his From Winds paintings are freer and more dynamic, showcasing his newfound willingness to work in a less preconceived way. This reflects the artist’s interest in painting as a visible structure of the invisible, his brushstrokes activating what he referred to as the living composition of empty space.
The surface of this large-scale canvas is populated by a series of Lee Ufan’s characteristically animated marks. Laid down by his peripatetic hand, many of these brushstrokes traverse the canvas in one direction, before changing course radically, veering off in another direction. Realized in oil mixed with mineral pigment, the pale brushstrokes are interspersed with a series of black gestures, resulting in a complex intertwining of dark and light; of hard and soft; and of density and weightlessness. Thus, the complexity of Lee Ufan’s composition sits at odds with the simplicity of its realization. As Lee Ufan himself describes it, his arrangements are not the result of an overarching narrative, rather a series of individual responses to what has immediately gone before: “Regulating my breath and feeling a rhythm in my body, I bring my brush down at a certain place on the canvas. After this I naturally want to move the brush to another place in response to the first mark. Then inevitably, a different place calls to the brush… a tension-filled situation is gradually created” (quoted by S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe, Lee Ufan. Encounters with the Other, Göttingen, 2007, p. 142).
The artist studied philosophy at Nihon University in Tokyo after deciding it was essential to his future artistic endeavors. This decision would prove indispensable as his philosophical training would go on to inform not only his art but also his views on abstraction in general. After finishing his studies and starting to paint full-time, he would go on to become a key theorist and establishing member of the Mono-ha, an avant-garde materials-based art movement in 1960s Japan and the first Japanese contemporary art movement to gain international recognition. As part of this group Lee Ufan further developed his views on abstraction and established the notable style of his future works. However, this vision was vastly different from those coming from Western artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Instead of catalyzing his abstraction through expression and emotion, Lee and the Mono-ha practitioners focused on perception and the relationship with their materials. As art historian Silke von Berswordy-Wallrabe notes, like the Surrealists and their automatic drawings “[Lee Ufan] relinquishes rational control not in order to give free reign to personal expression, but in order to make his painting receptive towards factors outside his own subjectivity” (S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe, ibid., p. 137).
From Winds is an archetypal example of this practice. Building on the critical success of his earlier, From Line and From Point paintings, his From Winds paintings are freer and more dynamic, showcasing his newfound willingness to work in a less preconceived way. This reflects the artist’s interest in painting as a visible structure of the invisible, his brushstrokes activating what he referred to as the living composition of empty space.