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| Yang Yanping, Black Mother, 1998. Fondation INK Collection, promised to LACMA |
In 2018 Geneva dermatologist Gérard Cognié and tech exec wife Dora promised a 400-piece art collection to LACMA. The Cogniés had assembled a smart, adventurous trove of contemporary art building on the legacy of traditional Chinese ink painting. LACMA showed a large sample of the gift in 2021, and now it's following up with all-new selection, "Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection." With over 60 works by 34 artists, it's nearly as big as the first show and every bit as engaging.
The new exhibition focuses on calligraphy, usually a tough sell for Western audiences. The labels here provide helpful context and translations. The works vary in scale, color, and technique (belaying concerns that calligraphy shows are monotonous). An enduring cliché connects calligraphy to Western "action painting." Many of the works here could just as well be called conceptual, and that provides another point of approach for American audiences.
"Line, Form, Qi" is in the Resnick Pavilion through Oct. 19, 2025.
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| Wei Ligang, Lanxi Stone, Jade Pavilion, 2010 |
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| Installation view, "Line, Form, Qi" |
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| Qiu Zhijie, Monuments: Revolutionary Slogan of Successive Dynasties, 2007 |
Qiu Zhijie selected 16 mottos from Chinese history, each on the theme of wealth inequality. Qiu carved the mottos in the historical styles of their time, then made ink rubbings of them, after the best antiquarian practice. The mottos, as translated in a gallery label, are a mixture of Marxism and
noblesse oblige. Examples: "Allow a few people to get rich first" / "I hate the uneven wealth shared by the poor and the rich. Now I will even it out for you."
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Lee In, Black, Something 2 (painting), 2018, and Black, Something 3 (ceramic jars), 2018-19
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An installation by Lee In may recall the late Joe Goode. The painted poem is by Yi Sang (1910-1937), the avant-garde Korean poet who used dots, numbers, and equations as well as words.
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| Li Jin, Food and Dishes #1, 2008 |
Food and Dishes #1 is a long-form caricature of foodie culture, with texts taken from recipes.
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| Joey Leung Ka-yin, Daisy Asks, 2012 |
Hong Kong artist Joey Leung Ka-yin is an outlier in this company. She studied
gongbi, a meticulous realism often treating nature subjects. Leung has reinvented the technique, taking inspiration from comics, animation, and pop culture. A rhyming poem above the mosquito-bitten girl's head is written in an imitation of a Song Dynasty script: "…So unbearable is the itchy feeling / I cannot hold my elegance anymore."
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| Qin Feng, West Wind East Water 065, 2004 |
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| Hong Zhu An, Fish and Willow, 2013 |
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| Lê Quốc Việt, This is what I heard #10, 2007 |
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| Chiba Sogen, Snow Falling Over the Sea, 2013 |
Chiba collaborated with poet Wada Toshinori to document the 2011 tsunami that devastated their hometown of Ishinomaki. The inscription reads: "My town is gone, crushed by waves / The sun is also setting, and snow falling over the sea."
Comments
But nothing annoys me more than when LACMA will install art like in "Line, Form, Qi" next to older forms of Chinese artwork, originally in the Ahmanson/Hammer building and who knows how things will be managed in the Geffen Galleries.
Grouping newer styles and recent periods of artwork not based on style and period but on racial, ethnic or national boundaries is oddly divisive or we-mean-well-don't-we?-type segregation.
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Per Princeton Museum of Art...
Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, was long considered the supreme art form in China, Japan, and Korea.
The writing of Chinese characters-which was then widely adopted in Korea around the fourth century and in Japan in the mid-sixth century-was thought to be the purest visual manifestation of the writer's inner character and level of cultivation. It was the medium through which a person's thoughts, feelings, and artistry were best conveyed. In looking at a piece of calligraphy, we may admire the way a calligrapher manipulated the brush to create an object of beauty in which rhythmic energy is conveyed through strokes and dots done with ink. Changes in ink gradation, the relationship between characters, and the elegance of a single line can entice viewers regardless of the legibility of the text.