Masterpiece-Immortal Beloved

2020.05.06 ~ 05.31

Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea

“Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal”

Mari Kim

All the works in this exhibition are my homages to some of the world’s most famous paintings. The viewers may be reminded of Picasso’s famous quote: “good artists copy, great artists steal.” If the works viewed in light of the quote, I may be a little bit closer to a stealer than a copier, for I focused on getting as close as possible to the original paintings in appropriating its images and techniques. Here, a question arises: What is it that I, the artist Mari Kim, stole? I did not steal physical pieces, that is, works of art. (Needless to say, I am not as a big thief as Lupin was.)

According to Heidegger, the origin of artworks is art, the artist, and the artwork. Because I did not steal artworks, and because you cannot steal an artist, the conclusion would be that what I stole was art. 

However, it makes me wonder whether it is right that what was stolen was really art. Let us take an example of my homage to Portrait of a Young Woman by Botticelli. If I stole here the ‘art’ of Botticelli, what does it mean? Here, his art, or his artistic practice, is to depict a real woman who existed on the canvas. My artistic behavior is to google the image of the painting Botticelli painted hundreds of years ago and then reproduced it by putting my signature face on it. I think these two are entirely different forms of art, or artistic behaviors. If so, I can insist that I did not steal Botticelli’s ‘art.’

While researching paintings to which I would pay homage in my works for this exhibition in Korea, I found it difficult topick up the images of Korean masterpieces. Most of the Buddhist paintings in the Goyreo Dynasty when art flourishedhave been stolen, sold abroad, or severely damaged, so that there are few materials relating to them. So I referred to them in a way different from the case of Botticelli’s painting, reproduced and finished. In this way, my works were produced through different but similar processes. Considering these processes, I would like to ask another question: Can my practice, that is, reproducing stolen or damaged works and exhibiting them in Korea, be interpreted to have a meaning opposite to stealing art? 

The passage from the age of mechanical reproduction to the postmodern era marked by constructed photography of, for example, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, created a popular saying that “painting is dead.” However, I dare to say that I revived painting; that through present-day technology and imagination, I made the masterpieces of artists who passed away long ago, that can be met only in museums, reborn here and now. This does not mean that my works have nothing to do with the original works, of course. I, the artist Mari Kim, owe my homages to them to their images and aura, which was reflected in my works. I hope that viewers would find my debt of gratitude for the original works hidden in my works with pleasure. And I am also expecting that they would interpret this attempt as an effort to try a new form of art, rather than to continue the convention of Pop art.