“Through Masters’ Eyes”

 

 

Contemporary Projects 8:
Lee Mingwei’s “Through Masters’ Eyes”
May 15–August 1, 2004  

 

 

 

		LACMA PRESENTS CONCEPTUAL ARTIST LEE MINGWEI’S FIRST EXHIBITION on WEST COAST Includes work by artists trained in eastern and western traditions
		Yuan Jai (Taiwan) Untitled (after Shitao), 2004 Ink and color on paper/collage

 

 

LOS ANGELES—For the past ten years, conceptual artist Lee Mingwei has been creating art installations that depend on the exchange of intimate experiences between artist and viewer. Opening May 15 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Contemporary Projects 8: Lee Mingwei’s “Through Masters’ Eyes” adds a new dimension to the artist’s work. This project, his first museum exhibition on the West Coast, is a collaboration between Lee and the 17th-century Chinese master Shitao, between Lee and other international artists, and between those artists and the museum audience.

Born in Taiwan and currently living in the United States, Lee maintains a lifelong interest in traditional Chinese painting. From a young age he spent summers at a monastery, where he lived with his master, practicing Chan Buddhism, tending the grounds and following daily rituals. As a teenager, he attended a California school run by Benedictine monks. After studying at the California College of Arts, Lee earned a master’s degree in sculpture from Yale University. Recently, he has had exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and has been featured in the Venice Biennale and the current Whitney Biennial.

In "Through Master’s Eyes", Lee transports the refined focus, intimate nature, and contemplative intent of traditional Chinese albums to the globalized democratic world of today. The artist invited two sets of artists, one in Taiwan and the other based primarily in New York, to emulate a single image from the 17-century Landscapes album of eight paintings by master Shitao. The joined issues of reproduction and transformation through copying, or emulating, are critically important in the history of Chinese painting. Lee sent an image of one of the paintings to two skilled artist-copiers who each made a copy of the work. Those copies were then sent on to two additional artist-copiers, who subsequently made their own copies, and so on. This process produced two different lineages of copies each containing five or six paintings, with all but the last having an “ancestor” and a “descendant,” each an original in its own way, and each displaying subtle and not so subtle differences from the others.

The internationally based emulators come from diverse backgrounds. The five artists in Taiwan were trained or are very familiar with classical Chinese painting—as artist, copyist, conservator, historian, or critic. Most of those from the United States and Europe are trained in Western art practices, working in the media of photography, painting, and video and installation art.

The emulators from Taiwan are Victoria Yung-Chih Lu, a professor at Shih-Chien University in Taipei; Lin Chuan-Chu, one of the most well-known contemporary landscape painters and writers in Taiwan; Yuan Jai, originally trained in traditional Chinese painting, now Research Fellow at the National Palace Museum in Taipei; Hsu Yujen, a painter in the small fishing village of Jiali, Taiwan; and Hong Shunhsin, a classical Chinese brush painter currently working in the National Palace Museum.

The emulators in the West are Arnold Chang, an American-born Chinese artist, scholar, and art dealer; Sergio Teran, originally from Los Angeles and a first-generation Mexican-American painter; Cristian Alexa of Bucharest, Romania, now living in New York; Jason Varone, a video and mixed-media artist from New York; Su-Mei Tse, a video artist and classical cellist originally from Luxembourg; and Shahzia Sikander, originally from Pakistan, trained in Indian and Persian miniature painting.

The eleven emulations are presented adjacent to the original 17th-century album. At a nearby viewing station, visitors are able to view a high-quality bound reproduction of all the emulations, one page at a time, while being able to view both the “original emulations” and the original Shitao album. As Lee described it: “I chose this method of display because Shitao’s original album was created as a gift for a friend, and therefore, intended to be viewed privately.”  "Through Masters’ Eyes" introduces questions of originality, copying, and reproduction.

 

 

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Curator:
Stephanie Barron, Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, LACMA, and J. Keith Wilson, Chief Curator of Asian Art, LACMA.

Credit:
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible by the Contemporary Projects Endowment Fund. Contributors to the fund include Mr. and Mrs. Eric Lidow, Ronnie and Vidal Sassoon, Steve Martin, The Broad Art Foundation, Bob Crewe, Tony and Gail Ganz, Ansley I. Graham Trust, Peter Norton Family Foundation, Barry and Julie Smooke, and Sandra and Jacob Y. Terner.

 

 

About LACMA:
Established as an independent institution in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences. LACMA also offers lectures, classes, family activities, film programs, and world-class musical events.

 

 

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