Bamboo

The starting point of Lee Ungno’s artistic world was bamboo, one of the “Four Gracious Plants (Sagunja),” and it was also bamboo that he favored most as a subject throughout his life. That he used “Juksa,” meaning “bamboo scholar,” as his courtesy name before he chose “Goam” is just another indicator of his love for bamboo.

After Lee went to France, his bamboo paintings underwent significant change, resulting in greater variety of form. One of the most noticeable changes that occurred in this period is that the bamboo leaves were made more prominent and the stems given less attention. No one knows exactly when this new tendency began, but it was around 1969 that the bamboo in Lee’s artworks began to have more profuse leaves. In the tradition of East Asian bamboo paintings, the stem was supposed to rise straight upwards to represent the unwavering will of the noble Confucian elite. Lee’s bamboo paintings, however, show that he was more interested in the leaves, which he viewed as being more easily affected by the surrounding environment. It was Bamboo in Wind (Pungjuk), which Lee painted after seeing a bamboo grove being shaken violently by a storm and sent to the 10th Joseon Art Fair in 1931, where it received a Critic’s Special Choice (Teukseon) award, that led to his decision to lead the life of an artist. One may conclude, then, that the change that occurred in his paintings in the late 1960s was rooted in the strong impression and influence that those troubled bamboo trees had on him in those early days.