Full Description
This volume presents a selection of paintings, poetry, essays, and ephemeral writings by the Chinese American modernist Yun Gee (1906-1963), together with essays about the artist.
Yun Gee arrived in San Francisco from Guangdong Province at the age of fifteen and within a few years established himself as one of the city's most daring avant-garde painters. But all of his astonishing efforts with the brush and palette ran up against an intense anti-Chinese sentiment. He seemed never to escape the high social price of being Chinese—not in San Francisco, Paris, or New York, where he ended his days. This collection of writings and images represents the eclectic interests and disappointed hopes of a man who was by turns a political revolutionary, cultural radical, social visionary, teacher, inventor, painter, and poet.
As a unique collection of materials documenting the expressions of an Asian American artist of the first half of the 20th century, this book illuminates not only the life and work of the multifaceted Yun Gee, but also the experiences of Chinese immigrants who came of age in America during the Exclusion Era. Anthony Lee's essays and the materials he has gathered here reveal the utopianism, anger, and anxiety that were the traces of an entire generation's racialized existence.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I
A Modernist Painter's Journey in America--Paul Karlstrom
Part II
Solitary Proposals--Anthony W. Lee
A Selection of Poetry by Yun Gee
Part III
Revolution in Art and Life--Anthony W. Lee
The Chinese Artist and the World of Tomorrow (c. 1926)--Yun Gee
Confucius (c. 1927)--Yun Gee
On French Art (c. 1929)--Yun Gee
Chinese Artist Charms Paris (1930)--R. Harrison Wolcott
Chinese Painter Back to Show His New Art (1931)--Jean Piper
Yun Gee, Chinese Interpreter of East to West (1931)--Arthur A. Young
Apostle of the New Cubism Teaches Art in a Tenement (1932)--Joseph Mitchell
Yun Gee (1939)--Pierre Mille
Diamondism At Last! Or, What It Takes to Make a Good Picture (1937; 1939)--Yun Gee
How to Life a Fuller and Longer Life: Philosophy of Taoism in the 20th Century (c. 1940)--Yun Gee
Letter of Invitation to Study (c. 1941)--Yun Gee
Part IV
The World Yesterday--Anthony W. Lee
Yun Gee, American Chinese Artist (1930)--Reuben H. Menken
East and West Meet in Paris (1944)--Yun Gee
Letter to Paul Bird (1951)--Yun Gee
Yun Gee Speaks His Mind (c. 1954)--Yun Gee
Memories of Uncle Yun (2002)--Nancy Bing
Memories of My Father (2002)--Li-Lan
Notes