"Shake the Coat"
"Shake the Coat", 1984, watercolor on Korean rice paper, (approximately) 28" x 40"
In 1983-84 Sherrie and I spent a year in South Korea (where I had spent much of my youth as the child of medical missionaries). Subsequently we travelled through Europe for six weeks looking at a lot of art. That trip was very important for me in clarifying the direction of my art. When I was in Korea I had decided to work with watercolor on rice paper. I did that as a way to challenge myself technically. At the end of that time in Korea I started this large watercolor painting, but I finished it after that mind-altering trip through museums in Europe. Like my work prior to going to Europe this piece has a "primitive" quality, but that trip through Europe led to a shift in how I was making the painting: still child-like / awkward, but more "realistic" and engaged in conversation with Renaissance and Baroque art.
The painting is set in Korea and depicts a crowd in the mid-ground, soccer playing boys in the background (sky?) and a large figure on the right in the foreground. The title of the painting "Shake the Coat" alludes to the figure on the roof who is (according to an ancient Korean custom) shaking out the coat of a dead person (suggesting the crowd is actually a funeral gathering) as a way of warding off evil spirits. If you look closely at the background of the crowd you can barely make out the words "St. Lazare" on the green sweatshirt of one of the figures. That obscure allusion to the Biblical story of the raising of Lazarus perhaps shifts the reading of the image.
While in Korea I had met the artist Lim Ok Sang who was (and still is) one of the key members of the Minjung art movement . The core idea of that movement (as I understand it) is to make art that in some way intends to give agency to the poor and others on the margins of culture. If there is any art movement I feel a particular kinship with it is that one. Perhaps for me this painting was a kind of statement of alliance with the Minjung art movement.
"Shake the Coat"
"Shake the Coat", 1984, watercolor on Korean rice paper, (approximately) 28" x 40"
In 1983-84 Sherrie and I spent a year in South Korea (where I had spent much of my youth as the child of medical missionaries). Subsequently we travelled through Europe for six weeks looking at a lot of art. That trip was very important for me in clarifying the direction of my art. When I was in Korea I had decided to work with watercolor on rice paper. I did that as a way to challenge myself technically. At the end of that time in Korea I started this large watercolor painting, but I finished it after that mind-altering trip through museums in Europe. Like my work prior to going to Europe this piece has a "primitive" quality, but that trip through Europe led to a shift in how I was making the painting: still child-like / awkward, but more "realistic" and engaged in conversation with Renaissance and Baroque art.
The painting is set in Korea and depicts a crowd in the mid-ground, soccer playing boys in the background (sky?) and a large figure on the right in the foreground. The title of the painting "Shake the Coat" alludes to the figure on the roof who is (according to an ancient Korean custom) shaking out the coat of a dead person (suggesting the crowd is actually a funeral gathering) as a way of warding off evil spirits. If you look closely at the background of the crowd you can barely make out the words "St. Lazare" on the green sweatshirt of one of the figures. That obscure allusion to the Biblical story of the raising of Lazarus perhaps shifts the reading of the image.
While in Korea I had met the artist Lim Ok Sang who was (and still is) one of the key members of the Minjung art movement . The core idea of that movement (as I understand it) is to make art that in some way intends to give agency to the poor and others on the margins of culture. If there is any art movement I feel a particular kinship with it is that one. Perhaps for me this painting was a kind of statement of alliance with the Minjung art movement.