Wonsook Kim Linton

seven paintings

 

A good many years ago,
Seized by surging solitude
I wandered lonely
Into the countryside where
I carefully gathered wild flowers
Into a bouquet, which I handed
To a boy playing by the roadside.
That roadside boy
Must be grown up by now.
I wonder if he knows
How to give the flowers
He collected by way of
Relieving the loneliness.
Again some generations hence
Will a flower-gift pass round
To a boy in another time?
And then one day at dusk-fall
In a thousand years or more,
In a hollow of wilderness,
In an out-of-the-way spot
Somewhere on a rugged hill,
Will there be another wanderer,
A flower in hand, and
Another child waiting for the gift?

So, Chongju, "Flower Gift"

An artist whose work bears comparison with that of Wonsook Kim Linton is Marc Chagall. Like Chagall, Wonsook Kim Linton has made art that reflects on complex and fundamental issues with a child-like sensibility. There is a playfulness and simplicity to her work that is decidedly out of character with most "serious" contemporary art. In fact, other than a brief initial period, the work of Wonsook Kim Linton has been decidedly out of sync with the critically favored movements of art in our time. This is perhaps closer to the reason why a comparison between artists such as herself and Marc Chagall seems so appropriate: both artists present a body of work which in its straight forward pursuit of a type of spiritual humanism seems to have little or no regard for being au courant with the rest of the art world. 20th century art has typically reflected the spirits of the age: doubt, alienation, cynicism, and irony. Through the eyeglasses of this world-view the art of Marc Chagall and Wonsook Kim Linton seems simplistic, naive, sentimental and out of touch with reality.

"It [art] needs withinness. An artist is tied to his mother's apron strings, humanly and formally obsessed by her closeness. Form derives not from academic teaching, but from withinness."
Marc Chagall

Perhaps part of what suggests comparison with Chagall is the fact that, like him, Wonsook Kim Linton was an emigre after a youth spent in her homeland. When she came to the United States to study, Wonsook Kim Linton seems to have spent much time considering and in some ways absorbing the art that was popular here at the time. But even before completing her studies she was already employing a style or "voice" which was decidedly her own.
Much like Chagall the art she began to make was largely based on an interiorized vision of the land of her youth. Beyond the visual language, which certainly alludes to a Korea of her childhood (or earlier) there is in Wonsook Kim Linton's, work a pervasive longing or nostalgia. It is this carrying of, or perhaps more accurately, the carrying of the absence of that which is loved -- whether parent or country -- within which Chagall speaks of as defining "form" in art.

It is tempting to think Rene Magritte might have made a painting like this. Like Wonsook he employed a dream-like language of odd juxtapositions, image plays and scale shifts which some might characterize as "surrealist". However neither of these artists seems to share the classic surrealists' anti-rational intent. While Magritte's work, like that of Wonsook Kim Linton, might be characterized by its clarity and seeming simplicity, it is always marked by an ironic detachment. In this regard Wonsook Kim Linton's work is significantly different: While her work rarely makes specifically personal references, the way it is painted embodies a pervasive personalism. The intimacy of the hand's touch characterizes her smaller work as does the more expressive gesture in her larger pieces.

 

How my soul
Swings
On the endless flow;
swings
on the endless flow!

Sick for the sea
Where there is no sea I fetch the sea
Into my mind, eyes closed,
Sitting quietly
Forgetful of ticking time.

Tiptoeing on the cold castle-top
I watch the far-off sea
Barely visible beyond the hills and ridges
Forgetful of the flush of sunset.

When I gaze on the sea
Rolling in the mind
The deep sound of the sea
Sobs in my blood vessels.

The endless savannah of the sea
Opens onto my mind's eye;
The mist-like scent of the sea
Lingers in my nose.

O, Sangsun "Wanderlust"

In Wonsook Kim Linton's paintings one will often find the primary character is situated with their back to the picture's viewer. This person, usually anonymous, seems to play the role of the viewer, suggesting the actual viewer's involvement in the world of the painting. This pictorial strategy is one that was also frequently used by the 19th century German painter Caspar David Friedrich. The painting above is reminiscent of a particular Friedrich painting, "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" in which a man stands at a pinnacle over-looking mountains appearing out of the fog. The difference is that the figure in Wonsook Kim Linton's painting seems absorbed in an act of self-liberation. Friedrich's man looks out at, marveling at nature. The Romanticism of Friedrich's almost pantheistic view of nature does not seem foreign to sentiments one might find in some Korean art. But in Wonsook Kim's painting the roiling stretch of "nature" seems to have much more to do with a spiritual state of being, looking towards the world behind this world, rather than towards actual nature.

Another curious similarity between these two painters is the way they represent people; that is, there is often an awkwardness to the figures in their work . In Friedrich this awkwardness added to the typically small scale of the figures in the vastness of nature contributes to a sense of awed differentiation, if not alienation, of humans from nature. While a sense of loneliness, perhaps even alienation, is sometimes present in Wonsook Kim Linton's paintings the awkwardness of her figures seems "earthy", ultimately connoting a connection to the earth, to nature. One has the sense that, whatever the oddness, this figure belongs in the world of this painting.

 

With the spring hills on fire
all the buds burn unflowered.
We have the water
to quench this fire.
But the smokeless fire blazing in my heart
no water can extinguish.

Kim, Toknyong

 

It is perhaps questionable to compare an artist who is a Korean woman with western male artists. Yet Wonsook Kim Linton, both in her art and in her life, straddles the disparate worlds of east and west. It is telling that Korean audiences comment on the "American-ness" of her work and American audiences on the "Korean-ness". By virtue of her personality, her relative success as an artist and particularly her faith, she bears a relationship to "culture" (Korean, American and mainstream Art culture) that is far from conventional.
One might easily mistake her for a feminist...and in a rather essential way she is. Observed in a Korean context it is quite evident that she commands the respect of men in a way that is exceptional for a Korean woman. Yet ultimately, as suggested previously, this breaking with conventional/traditional expectations seems to be born of faith rather than a political agenda. One might anticipate that a faith commitment would contribute to a narrowing of vision. But Wonsook Kim Linton seems to have, intentionally or not, known a grace which enables her work to flow from the totality of her being: as a woman, a Korean, an American and a Christian. Perhaps this sounds paradoxical, given what has been stated as her distance from cultural convention. But there is a kind of deflection which prevents her work from being exclusively driven (as one might understand much "Feminist" or "Christian" art to be), while expressing a largeness that holds all. Like a river ("whose streams make glad").

 

Last night I heard the stream
sobbing sadly as it flowed past.
Now that I think of it,
my lord must have wept for me to hear.
Would that the stream rushed backward
carrying my sorrow to him.

Won, Ho (classic #63 p20)

Where body and spirit meet. The subtle, earthy eroticism of this painting is in keeping with Woonsook Kim Linton's characteristic practice of integration. A child-like sensibility is wed with a knowing sensuality. Something about this way of seeing, particularly as it is manifested here in color, is curiously reminiscent of the work of late-Gothic Italian painter Fra Angelico. Giulio Carlo Argon writes,

"For Cennino Cennini, painting was the art of eliciting unseen things hidden in the shadow of natural ones...and serving to demonstrate as real the things that are not. For Leon Battista Alberti, on the contrary, invisible things cannot be said to come within the painter's compass and he only seeks to depict what he sees. Fra Angelico stands midway between the two opposites... His allegory could not exist apart from nature, his ideas being channeled into the tangible stuff that gave them form or sublimated them into the impalpable substance that is light. This, after all, was but a way of suspending the things he painted between heaven and earth, a way of idealizing what is natural and materializing the supernatural."

In the world of Wonsook Kim Linton's paintings there is a similar coming together, although the act seems to have less with a "suspending" between than in an embrace of that which is typically relegated to separate spheres. Fantasy, myth, faith and experience sift easily together as in the images of a child.

In your eyes
the fresh green of May
unlooses a sweet scent of white wild roses.

In your eyes
the twinkling stars
spin out their tales.

In your eyes
the sound of a bell rings in waves
from far away.

In your eyes
the warm hands wave promising
a reunion in far-off days.

In your eyes
joyful days are coming
when we can share our happy tales.

Shin, Sokchong "In Your Eyes"

 

To say these paintings have a child-like simplicity, comparing them in this regard to those of Chagall and Fra Angelico, is perhaps misleading. This world is populated by figures that, while perhaps being rendered "simply" or "awkwardly", are for the most part adult. The initial charm of many of the images gives way to a sense of longing, loss and even sorrow which has little to do with a superficial sentimentality.
In this regard Wonsook Kim Lintonís aesthetic has a striking precedent in the traditional form of Korean poetry called "Sijo". Sijo, like the better known Japanese form Haiku, usually utilizes a brief form. A Sijo poem typically consists of three lines. Regarding Sijo petic form, Jaihun J. Kim writes,

"The theme is stated in the first line, developed in the second and an anti-theme or twist is introduced in the third, which rounds out the whole in terms of resolution. If the first two lines consist of a query or question, the concluding line will answer or resolve it."

In her painting Wonsook Kim Linton approaches content, composition, and manner of representation in ways that formally and conceptually parallels Sijo. Typically there are few primary thematic elements (in the painting above, the figure in the boat and the cane in the wind) set in a similarly reduced setting (above, the sea/sky background and the foreground). The composition, or arrangement of pictorial elements is also typically kept fairly spare. Likewise, the way this world and its inhabitants are depicted is reduced to essential elements.
The informal character of Sijo parallels its often-earthy content. Frequently there is a palpably rustic atmosphere that seems quite distinct from the relatively rarefied world of Haiku. Wonsook Kim Linton's work is similarly distinguished from the more common form of reduction found in minimalist painting.

Among others, no worries of the world
come to bother this fisherman's life.
A leaf of a boat set adrift
on the waves of the boundless sea,
I have washed my hands of the world.
Who will ever know of my whereabouts?

Yi, Hyonbo

The poem that concludes this essay contains an apt metapor for the work of this painter. What is being "said" in Wonsook Kim Linton's paintings is often, like the song of the flute, beyond verbal articulation. The artist once cut short an interview saying, "Too many words. Let the images speak." While her intentions and inspirations are occasionally suggested in texts she has written, more often than not, these, often personal, aspects are not elucidated. The meditations here, as the poems, are not meant to represent her thoughts. The movement of the Spirit is mysterious: one can only hope that one's work will open to this movement.

Down the long bank greening with grass,
herdboy riding backward on a yellow calf,
do you know of the noise and strifes
of the world outside, if I may ask?
The boy quietly smiles by way of an answer:
he just plays on his short flute.

Anonymous

 

All the paintings on this page are copyright of Wonsook Kim Linton.
Text copyright Tim Lowly 2000.

 

Tim Lowly index . Links main

Selected Bibliography

Koerner, Joseph Leo, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, Yale University Press, 1990
Kim, Jaihun J. (editor), Classical Korean Poetry, Asian Humanities Press, 1994
Kim, Jaihun J. (editor), Modern Korean Poetry, Asian Humanities Press, 1994
Argon, Giulo Carlo, Fra Angelico
Whitney-Schenck, Marci, Christianity and the Arts, Nov.-Jan. 1996-7
Kirov, Maximilian, Catalogue for Gallery Vitosha, 1994
Reuter, Laura, Exhibition catalogue, North Dakota Museum of Art, 1990
"Box Paintings", Exhibition catalogue, Park Ryu Sook Gallery, 1993
Exhibition catalogue, Hankuk Gallery, 1987
"A Man With A Cane", Exhibition catalogue, Yeh Gallery 1997
Exhibition brochure, Galerie Gana-Beaubourg, 1997