A Rooster Answering Matisse

When I first saw Henri Matisse's La Danse, I was held for a long time by the joy of that circular dance. And I thought: could I answer this joy in my own language?

The Rooster's Ballet is that answer. Over a deep blue sky and a green earth, four roosters and a single white crane dance in a circle. It is a painting that answers Matisse's gesture, body for body.

The crane leads the dance because the literati tradition is finally walking into the room.

Korea held inside the bodies

Each rooster's silhouette is filled with a different Korean iconography. Inside one is a landscape painting; inside another, peonies; in another body, a tiger-pattern; and in the fourth, lotus-and-water. The central white crane carries the emblems of the Sipjangsaeng — mountains, water, crane, pine.

Over one of the founding images of European modernism, I layered the many branches of Korean folk painting. To answer, but not to imitate — that is what I wanted to do in this painting.

A note for learning

To study tradition is not to be trapped in the past. The deeper you learn a tradition, the further afield you can hold a conversation — with Matisse, with Kandinsky. And the language of that conversation is brush and ink.