iMMCA DeoksugungJeong-dong, Jung-gu
Lee Daiwon: Nothing Here Makes You Sad
This exhibition has ended.
The first retrospective of landscape painter Lee Daiwon (1921-2005), tracing the disciplined technique behind his vivid orchards, mountains and fields.
Museum websiteMore in Seoul
The first painting you meet is The Wall (Secret Garden), from 1986: more than five metres of trees behind a white fence. Up close, the white turns out to be cream, pink and blue dots sitting side by side like embroidery threads, never blending.
Lee Daiwon (1921-2005) is sold as the happiest painter in Korea, and this first large retrospective argues the brightness took discipline. Four rooms run through 122 paintings and about 100 archive items. Room 2 hangs his canvases beside the embroidery, mother-of-pearl and ox-horn pieces he collected. Room 4 is the payoff: orchard paintings five to seven metres wide face each other across a floor of steel mirrors, so you walk on the orchard as well as past it. Three of the paintings are lent by BTS's RM, which is your argument for getting a fan friend through Daehanmun Gate.
Entry is 2,000 won plus 1,000 won for the palace. It stays open until 21:00 on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and closes 8 November.
Look for
The Wall (Secret Garden), 1986
Look for it at the entrance: over five metres of trees and a white fence, where the white is really separate dots of cream, pink and blue.
The mirrored orchard room
Look down in Room 4: orchard canvases five to seven metres wide face each other over steel mirrors laid on the floor.
The 1938 folding screen
Look for a wax-resist dyed screen, never shown publicly before, in the room where Lee's paintings hang among the embroidery, mother-of-pearl inlay and ox-horn pieces he collected.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want contemporary art: this is 70 years of one modern painter's orchards, mountains and fields.
Also at MMCA Deoksugung
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Image credits
8
- MMCA DeoksugungKimhs5400 (블루시티), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- GanaArt Collection: Beneath Technology — Scenes at the ThresholdCourtesy of Seoul Museum of Art
- SeMA Public Space Project: Dance of Eternal PolaritiesCourtesy of Seoul Museum of Art
- Lynn Hershman Leeson: First Person PluralCourtesy of Seoul Museum of Art
- Seoul Museum of Artgypsycrystal, CC BY 2.0
- Seoul Museum of HistoryJjw / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Museum of Korean Contemporary HistoryTrace84 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Palace Museum of KoreaJinho Jung, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0