'Nothing Here Makes You Sad': Lee Dai-won story rewritten
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) is inviting visitors to look past the easy label of “the happiest painter in the world” with a major new retrospective of the work of Lee Dai-won (1921-2005) at MMCA Deoksugung. “Lee Daiwon: Nothing Here Makes You Sad” is the first large-scale museum survey of the artist's work, bringing together 122 paintings and about 100 archival items together with antiques and other items that shaped his visual language. The title borrows an observation by Lee's close friend, art historian Kim Won-ryong, who once wrote that Lee’s painting contains “nothing that makes one sad.” MMCA curator Bae Won-jung said she chose the line because “it most plainly and honestly sums up the world his paintings build — not because his life is without pain, but because he insisted on transforming that pain into color and light.” Organized in four chronological sections, the show traces roughly 70 years of Lee’s practice, from a 1933 still life painted at age 12 to monumental landscapes stretching up to seven meters across. Beyond 't
