March POPS at Sotheby's

In anticipation of upcoming auctions at the end of the month — March is Hong Kong Art Month —Sotheby’s Salons in the Privately Owned Public Space that is Hongkong Land’s LANDMARK CHATER Podium corridor feature paintings, prints, and sculptures sure to delight and appeal to a variety of aesthetic tastes. As always, you don’t have to be a prospective “bidder” to enjoy the art — Sotheby’s doors are literally open to everyone. It is worth walking inside to see the works up close (not all can be seen from the hallways) and to discover artists/genres you may not be familiar with. Sotheby’s has organized the paintings, prints, and sculptures in such a way that even though the works span continents and styles, visitors enjoy a very cohesive, calm viewing experience. To entice you to make the LANDMARK CHATER Podium a destination this month (or if you cannot visit), here is a sampling of the paintings, prints, and sculptures on offer with some details about the works or the artists:

Two Indonesian paintings delight. On the left is Indonesian artist Hendra Gunawan’s Penjual Pisang (meaning banana seller, a popular subject). In a recent Instagram post describing another of the artist's Banana Seller paintings, Global Auction. Asia which has had auctions in Malaysia, Jakarta (Indonesia), Singapore, and Hong Kong, wrote, “[r]ecognized as one of Indonesia’s great maestros, Hendra Gunawan’s works beautifully capture the richness of local culture.” artnet notes that he was “best known for his combining of Western painting techniques and traditional Indonesian aesthetics.” The artist, who was born in 1918, “fought against Dutch colonial rule as a guerilla fighter, and later as an activist against the ruling government, for which he was incarcerated from 1965–1978,” the site explains, adding that he continued to paint on ”scraps of rough canvas” in prison. Museums displaying his work include the Singapore Art Museum and Bali’s Neka Art Museum.

On the right, you can sense the movement of the dancers in Lee Man Fong’s Legong Dancers. As Bali.com explains, Legong is a traditional Balinese dance that tells the story of “Rangkesari, a beautiful woman who flees into the forest to avoid being married to King Lasem.” Dancers always wear “a gold sabuk or tight brocade with gold trimmings,” yet remain incredibly ”grace[ful] and agil[e]”.

Asia Art Archive shares in its biography of the artist that the Guangzhou-born Lee Man Fong grew up in Singapore, where he studied art before moving to Jakarta when he was about 19. It was in Jakarta that he was exposed to Dutch artists. Later he also traveled to Europe and lived in the Netherlands for “a few years.” artnet describes his work this way: “Fong’s work fuses qualities of traditional Chinese ink painting with narrative and compositional qualities reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch genre-scene paintings.” 

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”Don’t imitate anyone.” Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (Hong Kong Gallery WHITESTONE)

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Displayed adjacent to one another are (on the left) Henri Matisse’s Jeune Fille En Noir and (in the center) Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita’s Portrait of De Jeune Femme, both from the Kawamura Family Collection. Close by in the Sotheby’s gallery, but on the right here, is Foujita’s Oshima Girl, painted the same year as Portrait De Jeune Femme. Oshima refers to a type of Japanese silk textile.

Tsuguharu Foujita was a Japanese painter who studied at Tokyo's School of Fine Arts and moved to France at about age 27. “Upon arriving from Tokyo, it is said that the very next day he threw himself into Picasso’s studio and into the heart of the bubbling School of Paris. His neighbours [sic]were Modigliani, Soutine, Gris, Léger, Matisse… and they became his friends,” wrote Sotheby’s in 2017. Foujita became a citizen of France in 1955 and converted to Catholicism in 1959.  Christie’s said of him, “[i]n great contrast to his physical separation from his motherland throughout his life, his paintings explicitly prove that spiritually he was more Japanese than any Japanese who never left their nation.” He adopted the name Léonard with its French accent as a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci.

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“‘[T]o paint a landscape well, I first need to discover its geological foundations.’” Paul Cézanne to a friend as quoted by John Elderfield, curator of Princeton University’s 2020 The Rock and Quarry Paintings Exhibition.

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Two very different approaches to representing the earth's landscape are on display at Sotheby’s in the form of Paul Cézanne's Rochers meaning Rocks (top), and Yayoi Kusama’s Mt. Fuji in Seven Colours (Set of 7 Works) (bottom).

Cézanne had “a profound interest in rock formations,” notes the Brooklyn (USA) Museum’s Head of Publications and Editorial Services James Leggio. Art historian John Elderfield, curator of Princeton University’s 2020 The Rock and Quarry Paintings exhibition, writes that Cézanne’s focus on rocks arose from his belief that “‘to paint a landscape well, I first need to discover its geological foundations.’”

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“For [Kusama], the polka dot pattern symbolizes self-obliteration as she becomes immersed in the endlessly multiplying polka dots. Chikura Kishi is the young Adachi carver whose task was to carve the 14,685 polka dots that make up the sky [in the woodblock print].” Adachi Institute Contemporary Ukiyo-e

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Kusama's Mt. Fuji in Seven Colours “depict[s] Mt. Fuji's exceptional life force and its majestic solo summit by highlighting the mountain's broad base and soaring peak,” according to Japan's Adachi Institute Contemporary Ukiyo-e (traditional woodblock prints). In 2015, Kusama, whose work was the subject of a 6-month exhibition at Hong Kong’s M+ museum and whose pumpkins and flowers are much-loved, collaborated with the Institute to create the series of seven Mt. Fuji prints. According to MYARTBROKER, this was Kusama's “first ever ukiyo-e, a traditional Japanese woodcut, and was initiated by the Institute to modernise traditional mediums by showcasing the fusion of Kusama’s avant-garde style with traditional Japanese woodcutting techniques.” The Institute explains the seven “are based on a painting [Kusama] created in a moment of inspiration when, during her first encounter with Mt. Fuji at close range, she was totally captivated by the mountain.”

According to the Institute, the sky is made up of 14,685 polka dots. The carver “created the woodblock by immersing himself in the polka dots and merging with the painting as he felt Ms. Kusama's brushwork in the uniqueness of each dot.” The Institute shares that Kusama wrote the poem that accompanies the seven prints, which can also be read (in the Lot Details section) on the Sotheby's website.

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“The kind of art that we strive to create today must embody the middle way, in which the material and spiritual are merged into one…It must arise from realism (shajitsu) and yet transcend realism.” Zenzaburo Kojima, 1935 as quoted in Asia Art Archive in America

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Two prominent artists from the Yōga movement, Zenzaburo Kojima and Ryuzaburo Umehara, are also featured. The Yōga movement, which translates as Western style painting, developed during the Meiji period when Japan was emerging from the “‘self-imposed isolation’ of the Edo period,” explains The Art Story. In an exhibition essay entitled Yōga: How Japanese Artists Made the Traditional Modern, auction house Phillips, which this month also is offering works by Kojima and Umehara at its West Kowloon Hong Kong galleries, explains that “by blending foreign methods with Japanese and Eastern aesthetics, these artists reinvented subjects like the nude, landscape, and still life. Ultimately, the movement expressed both the poetry of daily life and the complexities of individuality within a modernizing Japan.”

On the left and in the center are Zenzaburo Kojima’s Early Spring in Izu (1957) and Camellias (1951). A self-taught artist, who was originally studying medicine, he spent three years in Europe in the mid-1920s. “[U]pon his return to Japan, he found a dynamic capacity to relate the Renaissance and Fauvist masters he studied abroad to traditional Japanese decorative forms,” notes Phillips. The auction house adds, “Zenzaburo Kojima’s unique ability to navigate Eastern and Western tensions and sensibilities was the result of the artist’s lifelong project to create a distinctly Japanese form of oil painting, a syncretism he called ‘Kojima style.’”

On the right is Ryuzaburo Umehara’s Three Ponds Mirroring the Moon (1929). When he was 15, Umehara left high school to study art and eventually travelled to Europe where he spent time with Renoir. Phillips explains that “[w]hile deeply influenced by Renoir, Umehara sought to develop a distinctly Japanese approach to oil painting, emerging by the 1930s as a leading figure in Japan’s Yōga scene.” When Umehara was about 64, the Emperor honored him with The Order of Culture, which recognizes those who have “remarkable accomplishments in the development and improvement of Japanese culture such as science, technology, academics and arts.” When he was about 85, “the French government made him a Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to Franco-Japanese exchange.”

South Korean artist Ha Chong-Hyun’s Conjunction 20-82 (oil on hemp cloth) absolutely stuns in a stand-alone display. The artist, “a prominent figure in the Dansaekhwa movement, which is often characterized by Korean monochrome painting … pushes thick oil paint from the reverse side of a plain, woven-hemp canvas,” explains an essay by New York's Tina Kim Gallery. “Ha’s [Conjunction series] paintings … expand space outwards in a direction perpendicular to the canvas. At the same time, the artist harmoniously unites paint with burlap by allowing the paint to penetrate through the coarse weave of the burlap,” observes the essay.

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“Ju composes sculptures with large surfaces and imbalanced shapes to illustrate a powerful bow or kick from Taichi.” Hong Kong's Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery.

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On the left is Taiwanese sculptor Ju Ming’s Taichi Series — Single Whip (in bronze) and on the right, a photo of his oversized Taichi —Single Whip, Dip that graces the outdoor sitting area between Hongkong Land’s The Forum and Hongkong Land's Exchange Square.

Ju Ming began his career at 15 as a wood carver. As an apprentice to Master Lee Chin-Chuan, he worked on temple restorations. He eventually expanded into abstract sculpture and other media, including iron and stone, shares Hong Kong’s Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery. Although at 38 he had a solo exhibition at Taiwan's National Museum of History and received the accolade one of the “Ten Outstanding Youths of 1976;” he “was not fully satisfied with his work.” It was then that he started “a daily practice in Taichi boxing for his health. He grew inspired by the art of Taichi and gradually developed his Taichi series to convey the practice's dynamic movement into his carvings,” writes the gallery.

To enjoy two massive Ju Ming Taichi series sculptures, you only have to walk a short distance from the Sotheby's Salons through Hongkong Land's CHATER Podium to the beautiful sitting out area between Hongkong Land's Exchange Square and its building The Forum. Here, among the fountains and sculptures by other artists, are the two Ju Ming works. The size and power of them will amaze you. The sculptures, like other Hongkong Land artworks on display in the company's Central business complex, have a QR code on their object boards to allow viewers to listen to the artist’s story.

Read more about how The Henderson, Hongkong Land, and Sotheby's offer museum-like experiences at their Privately Owned Public Spaces. Read how even during construction Sotheby’s, through its curated construction boards, offered a delightful art history experience for passersby. Discover more about Sotheby’s Maison’s Salons and learn about its other-worldly ground floor space/gallery.