Six Decades of Repose. Yun Gee and Five Blue Continents

 Odile Chen / Ravenel Quarterly No. 40 / issue of September 2022

During the Ravenel Spring Auction Preview in early June of this year, I received a call from a long-time client, informing me of his intention to register to bid by telephone; the item of interest is the pièce de résistance of the auction, Central Park (New York) by Yun Gee (1906-1963). On the day of the auction, the opening bid for this item started at NT$11 million, and with the multitude of in-person and telephone bidders all competing for auction lot no.232 at NT$1 million increment per bid, the price quickly rose to NT$20 million. After reaching NT$24 million, two telephone bidders remained; one of whom was the collector I was representing. Neither party would allow the process to end in stalemate, and the other bidder finally made the winning bid of NT$60 million. After three notices, the auctioneer brought down the gavel to end more than 10 minutes of a drawn-out tug-of-war at more than six times the minimum estimated value (the painting was sold for NT$69.76 million including buyer's service fee or US$2,374,404). What was the allure of this painting for the numerous collectors that longed to possess it? Let us learn some more about this artist!

World-Renowned Museum Collection 

In 1932, Yun Gee was invited to paint a large mural for Murals by American Painters and Photographers, the inaugural exhibition for the newly relocated Museum of Modern Art in New York; he was the first Chinese artist that MoMA had ever invited. His work in the exhibition that year was Wheels: Industrial New York , the largest painting created by the artist in his life. In the fall of 2017, the masterpiece that is Wheels: Industrial New York was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, fetching a new record price of HK$105,287,500 (approximately NT$400 million), elevating Yun Gee's market value to the next level. Following such luminaries as Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-Ki, and Sanyu, Yun Gee became the fourth Chinese oil painter to attain HK$100 million in the secondary market.

For this year's (2022) annual exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, senior curator Barbara Haskell has selected Yun Gee's 1926 oil painting, Street Scene , to be displayed alongside the works of other famous American artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), and Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938). The theme of the exhibition, "At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth Century American Modernism," explores the dynamic development of modernism in the early part of the last century. Forty-five featured artists reveal how the new aesthetics of the 1900s-1930s era respond with abstract styling to the rapid changes of the real world. The artworks are also part of the Whitney Museum's collection, and they are on display from May 7, 2022 to February 26, 2023.

To date, nine of the world's leading museums hold Yun Gee's #Yun Gee work, including Centre Georges Pompidou, France; Whitney Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Oakland Museum, California; Weatherspoon Gallery of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Wolfsonian Museum, Florida International University, Miami Beach; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, etc.

After Yun Gee's death, his former wife Helen Gee née Wimmer (1919-2004) and daughter Li-lan (b. 1943) wholly preserved the artist's works, manuscripts, photographs, poems, and exhibition documents and displayed them in many of the aforementioned American museums from the 1970s onward, so that the course of history would not forget the former magnificence of this artistic trailblazer. Their hard work was not in vain, as Yun Gee's legacy returned to the Chinese world nearly 30 years after his passing: In 1992, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum held "The Art of Yun Gee ," a major exhibition that is the largest scale ever for the artist in a retrospective showing. In 2007, the Guggenheim Museum in the United States curated an extensive touring exhibition, "Three Centuries of American Art ," at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai. Yun Gee was featured in the exhibition as a representative of Chinese-American artists and served as a focal point in the show's promotion.

Yun Gee was not a prolific artist, and opportunities for solo exhibitions were rare. After the artist's death, his former wife and only daughter took up his cause. Besides actively engaging with museums, they also collaborated with commercial spaces such as, in the 1990s, Lin & Keng Gallery and Tina Keng Gallery in Taipei; in the US, Jan Holloway Gallery in San Francisco, Chambers Fine Art and Marlborough Gallery in New York, and Double Vision Gallery in Los Angeles, and continued to share the artist's creations with collectors. Today, Yun Gee has become a blue-chip artist in the auction market; Besides his family's promotion, exhibitions in museums and galleries as well as the operations of auction houses have all helped to fan the flame of his acclaim.

"Pure as the Angelica, Noble as the Orchid": Perspective of Eastern Philosophy

The number of Chinese artists who lived abroad in the early twentieth century was in truth quite small, and most of them had now been forgotten in the course of history. How did the Chinese people of that generation, bearing the economic depression and displacement from their home brought about by World War II, gain a foothold in a foreign land? Modern artists with aspirations from all over the world flocked to Paris, the "City of Light," yearning for the romantic freedom of Bohemia, or had their path diverted to New York by the war to try a taste of the Big Apple instead. For the first generation of Chinese artists to tour Europe, all born before the founding of the Republic, such as Xu Beihong (1895-1953), Liu Haisu (1896-1994), Lin Fengmian (1900- 1991), and Wu Dayu (1903-1988), most of them returned to China around the 1920s after several years of studying in Europe. Those who returned devoted themselves to art education and advocated for refinement in Chinese painting. Only a handful remained abroad until the end of their lives. Sanyu (1895-1966) was one of the most well-known, permanently residing in Paris and even flying to New York to further his craft; meanwhile, Yun Gee was most often compared with Sanyu, having flown to Paris twice in the years between 1920 and 1940. Their lives had once spanned three continents, and both had struggled with frustration and depression born from thwarted ambition.

Yun Gee, whose birth name was Wing Yun Gee, was born on February 22, 1906, in Gee Village, Kaiping County, Guangdong Province, to Quong On Gee and See Huang. Wing Yun was the third son of the Gee family, with older siblings Wing Dit and Wing Zoeng and younger sister Seoi Laan. His father conducted business in the United States for many years, sending money home or occasionally returning to visit the family, thus the Gee household was fairly well-off. Born in the Qing Dynasty, Wing Yun received a private education at an early age and was extremely intelligent, learning how to read and write as well as critique and recognize art. As a teenager, he studied painting with Lingnan School masters Gao Jianfu and Gao Qifeng. The Gao brothers had studied abroad in Japan and joined Sun Wen's Chinese United League then; their school's style was new with revolutionary ideas. The concepts of liberalism and artistic innovation also had a quiet effect on Wing Yun, leading to his later founding of the Chinese Revolutionary Artists Club in the United States.

In 1921, the 15-year-old Wing Yun joined his father in San Francisco while his mother remained in their hometown. Since the United States' "Chinese Exclusion Act" at the time prohibited legal immigration by Asian women and Wing Yun never returned to China for the rest of his life, he suffered the lifelong anguish of being permanently separated from his mother. His father settled him on the edge of Chinatown and promptly supported him financially upon his enrollment at the California School of Fine Arts, where he studied Western painting and drawing. Highly intelligent, he did not squander his father's care. At the school, he studied landscape painting with Gottardo Fidele Piazzoni (1872-1945), a Swissborn landscape painter from Northern California. With experience from previous study in Paris, Otis Oldfield (1890-1969) taught him drawing and oil painting of still life and the human body. The two teachers were significant influences upon the formation of Gee's artistic expression.

When Wing Yun Gee obtained his U.S. citizenship, his name was simplified to "Yun Gee," and the Cantonese pronunciation for both characters of his birth name, "Wing" and "Yun," are similar to the word "Yun," while the pronunciation "Yun Gee" sounds even closer to the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters for "Yuan Zhi." Later on, both "Yun Gee"/"Yuan Zhi" and "Gee Yun"/"Zhi Yuan" were favorite signatures of the artist. Yun Gee had a deep love for classical poetry and Daoist philosophy, and his name was inspired by the phrase "The Yuan has its angelica, the Li its orchids," originally from "Chuci. Nine Songs. The Lady of the Hsiang," which refers to the fragrant grasses that grow on the shorelines of the Yuan and the Li. People eventually come to use "yuan zhi li lan" to describe "a noble and pure person or thing." After many years, he named his only daughter "Li-lan." Perhaps due to the economic hardship of World War II that made life difficult, he changed his daughter's name to " 禮銀 " in chinese which has a "gold" radical.

Gee enjoyed alluding to poems and inscribing words in his paintings, akin to the writings of Chinese paintings with order in the chaos so that the calligraphy and the picture become one. Around 1929, Yun Gee had a unique signature—Yun Gee "Blue Five Continents," which expressed his ambition to become an artist known throughout the five continents and the four seas i.e. the world. Regarding "blue," it may be a distinctive code for the artist. At that time, Yun Gee was developing his career in Paris, and perhaps he was echoing Picasso's blue period or depicting the melancholy blue of wounded spring or mournful autumn, or representing china blue porcelain, a symbol of Chinese identity. The inscription "Blue Five Continents" appears in two paintings, One Who Loves Himself Hundred Bathing Beauties, as well as in two illustrations in Le Voyageur de Nuit , a French novel published in 1930. Despite residing abroad for the majority of his life, Yun Gee was deeply influenced by Daoist philosophy; his passion for Eastern culture, lifestyle, and dress often resembled that of someone from ancient China. Encountering the serious racial discrimination and culture clash of the United States must have been incredibly jarring.

Diamondism–the Modernist's Ideal

At that time, Yun Gee adopted the hard-working spirit of southeast Asian immigrants, making his way abroad and growing roots wherever he stayed. As an overseas Chinese immigrant, he devoted himself to creating art for 30-40 years, and his name had made its way into the history of American modern art. He taught art theory and technique, and after years of repeated experimentation, he developed a style through his instructions. It drew its source from Cubism, based on the syncretism of his mentor in 1925-26 and fused with Parisian Surrealism, and Yun Gee gave it the term "Diamondism." He illustrated abstractions from a combination of small triangles, like a crystal-clear diamond cut. "Diamondism" is considered an original contribution to the history of modern painting.

In 1937, Yun Gee explained the significance of Diamondism in a brochure promoting his studio "the School of Diamondism." He wrote: "Every sincere painting tries to find an adequate expression of its time, in expressing how people look at things and at what⋯ Diamondism acts as a prism, a one-way glass. It is nothing but a medium, not a cause, but a power. It is up to the artist to use it. Up to the spectator as well. " He believes that the process of art creation is generated through factors that can be classified into three main categories and nine subcategories. The first category is "physical" (color, shape, light); the second category is "psychological" (emotion, desire, observation); and the third category is "cerebral" (time, morality i.e. political or philosophical, purpose).

The artist believed that Diamondism could reveal the inner message of the depicted object, i.e. the essence of life, the root of spirit, and the diligent practice by the body. The essence of Chinese philosophy is gradually integrated into the color theory of Western modern art. Diamondism can be said to be Yun Gee's way of observing and sharing the world.

Night Traveler–San Francisco, Paris, New York

Yun Gee's life was not one of longevity; he was in his prime from the 1920s to the 1930s, but due to post-war poverty and unfulfilled dreams after the 1940s, he was chronically depressed in later years. He seldom painted during the last stage of his life, or he would destroy his own paintings during unstable moods. The dual pressure of poverty and illness eventually led to his death from stomach cancer. Yun Gee's painting style can be divided into five periods based on the cities in which he lived: "San Francisco 1926-1927," "Paris I 1927-1930,"New York I 1930-1936," "Paris II 1936-1939," and "New York II 1939-1955." There are significant stylistic differences between the periods due to his exploration of artistic expression.

The majority of Yun Gee's works are figurative paintings; they carry the aesthetic style of social realism. The "San Francisco period" has the Color Zone theory and Orphisme as its foundation, creating a geometric style with bright and vivid colors that became a gateway to avant-garde artists. When collectors Prince & Princess Achille Murat first saw Yun Gee's art in a San Francisco exhibition, they were mesmerized by the bold colors and Asian essence of the paintings which felt so modern that they encouraged Gee to go to Paris to advance his career.

The "Paris period" was his period of maturation, with a palette of colors and brushwork that incorporates European Surrealism and slender, illusory figures that hold a poetic quality. His status as a Chinese painter did not hinder his artistic development, and he became close friends with the Parisian avant-garde; mega art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866- 1939), Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), and Paul Valéry (1871-1945) were all close friends of his. He even had a solo exhibition at the historic Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. His work was twice selected for the highly regarded Salon des Indépendants, and he also painted two illustrations for the 1930 reprint of Henry-Jacques's novel Le Voyageur de Nuit . He was regarded as an exceedingly talented master artist, philosopher, and precocious young man; this should have been the most successful period of his career. Unfortunately, the outbreak of World War II in Europe shattered all of his dreams, including his brief marriage and romance with the poetess Paule de Reuss (1904-1961). Gee's second trip to Paris was initially productive, and a solo exhibition was soon held in Paris. However, the social climate remained chaotic and many friends fled the war by retreating in the opposite direction to New York. After three years of bearing the rigorous challenges of the physical environment, Gee had no choice but to return to New York.

The "New York period" revealed a style of deeply melancholic magic realism, with surreal dreams that echo Gee's repressed mental state. He resumed teaching after 1934 and taught the ideals of Chinese philosophers. The longest period of Yun Gee's life was spent in New York. He met the young Helen Wimmer in 1935 and married her seven years later, welcoming his daughter Li-ngan the very next year. Throughout the 1940s, he continuously held several small scale exhibitions. As New York's abstract art scene was taking shape, he kept to the style of Realism in his paintings and was met with a lukewarm response from the critics and the market; this greatly impacted him psychologically.

In 1947, Yun Gee's depression made it impossible for him and his wife to continue living together and they finally divorced. While still suffering physically and emotionally, Yun Gee met another woman, Velma Aydelott, in 1950. The two never married but were each other's companions until the end of Yun Gee's life. Yun Gee's later paintings and poems reveal his loneliness, insecurity, and the trauma of sensing that he was running out of time.

Auctions and Resales of Rare Art

Apart from European and American museums and private collections, there are few surviving paintings by Yun Gee; most remain in the hands of his widow Helen Gee and their daughter Li-lan. The paintings are circulated among family members, private collectors in Europe and the US, art dealers, auction houses, and collectors. After the retrospective exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 1992, Sotheby's Taipei started to sell the paintings at auction in the same year, and their tenure in the secondary market has now reached its 30th anniversary. According to Artprice, the number of recorded transactions at auction stands at only around 300, and the average number of lots offered for sale has only been about 10 a year, a relatively scarce quantity. Due to the low supply, most of the auction records are "resales" i.e. more than one sale transaction for one painting.

The artist's highest-priced sale to date is Wheels: Industrial New York , which sold for HK$105,287,500 (US$13,478,905) at the Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn 2017 auction; it is a museum-quality masterpiece of the New York period. That was the first appearance ever made by Gee's largest painting in the secondary market.

In second place was Old Broadway in Winter , which sold for HK$58.6 million (US$7,469,154) at Christie's Hong Kong Spring 2018 auction; it was the fourth appearance by this painting in the secondary market, preceded by its sale price of NT$6.65 million (US$229,424) in October 1997, HK$2.934 million (US$376,151) in April 2002, and HK$5.78 million (US$745,620) in November 2008, clearly showing a major upsurge in its recent market value.

In third place, Knights Combat , which fetched RMB$26.68 million (US$3,851,551) in Beijing in October 2018, was preceded by its first auction sale in Taipei in April 1999 at NT$5.55 million (US$168,720) and then resale in May 2013 at HK$10.84 million (US$1,472,184), with exponential growth in pricing.

Central Park (New York), the work mentioned at the beginning of this article, was also auctioned for the fourth time; it was originally sold for NT$1.8 million (US$65,400) in September 1995; HK$1.8 million (US$231,480) in November 2007; and NT$10.56 million (US$325,459) in 2010. Every change in ownership has been accompanied by an increase in value many times over. Clearly, new collectors are very willing to take on ownership of this painting.

The upcoming fall auction of Hundred Bathing Beauties will take place in December 2022. It is a work of the Paris period, first sold at auction in Hong Kong in November 2011 for HK$1.22 million (US$156,526). The original collector is parting with this painting after more than a decade to see how it will be received by the market this year. The painting contains the characters "Gee Yun Blue Five Continents," a rare signature unique to the artist during his time in Paris.

Yun Gee had once described Paris as "passionate and hospitable," a place where one could acquire a wonderful vision and where he was regarded and greatly honored as a philosopher, master, or prodigy. Yun Gee incorporated surreal dream-like fantasies into his paintings, including such classical Western subjects as nude women bathing, painting altogether a hundred women in every kind of pose; Matisse's dances; Picasso's Avignon girls. In Three Graces, there is frolicking within. The flute player in the bottom right corner of the painting seems to be a hint of the artist's self-portrait, as if the painting is a modern version of the classic "One Hundred Beauties" by Tang Yin and Qiu Ying of the Ming Dynasty.

Every encounter in this world is a long-awaited reunion. We cannot frequently see the works of American modern art master Yun Gee, therefore do not miss this singular opportunity. May those living today once again consider the beauty of this artist's legacy after his passing six decades ago.