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Lot Essay
What matters to me is that it should be a painting all my own. I wish to search for, discover and pursue all human values truthfully and translate them into my canvases. My freedom is there.
-Kim Heung-Sou
Kim Heung-Soo's life, spanning across Japan, France and America, is an epitome of Korean Diaspora characterizing a part of Korean Modern Art history. Kim majored in painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts, earning his BFA in 1944. Under Japanese academicism, Kim intensively probed a wide range of European oil paintings, seeking his own visual language. Kim's early work was executed in a realistic style in between Impressionism and Cubism - a style which was soon thwarted by the savage Korean War, the brutality of which spurred him on to explore other creative forms. As the war ended in 1955, Kim set off for Paris and stayed until 1961, resuming his study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and regularly exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne. Exposed to the international contemporary art scene, the artist sought avidly for freshened expression of his art. In this Paris period, Kim developed his signature nude, a life-long theme for him. Une Pose featured here (Lot 3354) is a representative example that demonstrates his mature technique and evolved styles in nude. The heavy layering of vibrant colour pigments brightens the canvas with bold red. Black brushes and colour blocks intertwine with the red draperies - as if those ancient symbols that leap across the prehistoric cave walls against flickering flashes of fire - to unfold a primeval vigor, inviting the viewer to unveil the mystery of time.
It was about 20 years later after Une Pose that Kim put together his revolutionary ideas on aesthetics and issued the "Harmonism Manifesto." The term "Harmonism" was coined by Kim in 1977 during his residence in the United States (1968-1979) to synthesize the two polar yet interconnected aesthetic narratives, abstraction and figuration, on the basis of the Eastern complementary opposites of Yin and Yang. Une Pose embodies already the primary idea of Harmonism; sharp lines, which resemble seal inscriptions, scatter all over the canvas; the abstract distribution, at once structured and arbitrary, is entangled with the figure of a buxom female body to array the force of Yin and Yang. The distinct Eastern concept of Yin and Yang describes what the ancient Chinese saw within the greater whole of the natural world. The relationship between different natural forces and their regularity were regarded, spontaneously, as being both oppositional and congruent. It was the philosophical reflection on such natural phenomenon as the heaven and earth, days and nights, summers and winters and males and females that the concept of Yin and Yang was induced. Kim Heung Sou contends that art, like nature, manifests the balance of Yin-Yang. While Yin represents the invisible, unutterable motifs of abstraction, Yang embodies the visible, palpable figurative world. They are the polar opposites of artistic expression within the greater, single unit of art. As Une Pose exemplifies, the state of perfection relies upon the interaction and integration of these two elements.
-Kim Heung-Sou
Kim Heung-Soo's life, spanning across Japan, France and America, is an epitome of Korean Diaspora characterizing a part of Korean Modern Art history. Kim majored in painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts, earning his BFA in 1944. Under Japanese academicism, Kim intensively probed a wide range of European oil paintings, seeking his own visual language. Kim's early work was executed in a realistic style in between Impressionism and Cubism - a style which was soon thwarted by the savage Korean War, the brutality of which spurred him on to explore other creative forms. As the war ended in 1955, Kim set off for Paris and stayed until 1961, resuming his study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and regularly exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne. Exposed to the international contemporary art scene, the artist sought avidly for freshened expression of his art. In this Paris period, Kim developed his signature nude, a life-long theme for him. Une Pose featured here (Lot 3354) is a representative example that demonstrates his mature technique and evolved styles in nude. The heavy layering of vibrant colour pigments brightens the canvas with bold red. Black brushes and colour blocks intertwine with the red draperies - as if those ancient symbols that leap across the prehistoric cave walls against flickering flashes of fire - to unfold a primeval vigor, inviting the viewer to unveil the mystery of time.
It was about 20 years later after Une Pose that Kim put together his revolutionary ideas on aesthetics and issued the "Harmonism Manifesto." The term "Harmonism" was coined by Kim in 1977 during his residence in the United States (1968-1979) to synthesize the two polar yet interconnected aesthetic narratives, abstraction and figuration, on the basis of the Eastern complementary opposites of Yin and Yang. Une Pose embodies already the primary idea of Harmonism; sharp lines, which resemble seal inscriptions, scatter all over the canvas; the abstract distribution, at once structured and arbitrary, is entangled with the figure of a buxom female body to array the force of Yin and Yang. The distinct Eastern concept of Yin and Yang describes what the ancient Chinese saw within the greater whole of the natural world. The relationship between different natural forces and their regularity were regarded, spontaneously, as being both oppositional and congruent. It was the philosophical reflection on such natural phenomenon as the heaven and earth, days and nights, summers and winters and males and females that the concept of Yin and Yang was induced. Kim Heung Sou contends that art, like nature, manifests the balance of Yin-Yang. While Yin represents the invisible, unutterable motifs of abstraction, Yang embodies the visible, palpable figurative world. They are the polar opposites of artistic expression within the greater, single unit of art. As Une Pose exemplifies, the state of perfection relies upon the interaction and integration of these two elements.