MFA Member Lectures: Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances

- Welcome and thank you for being here. I am Kimberly Hokanson, Director of Annual Membership Programs and Operations at MFA. We are delighted that so many members could join us for tonight's lecture. We appreciate your support and your participation in the MFA's Virtual Member Lecture series. Before I introduce our speaker, a few logistical notes. A transcript and closed captions for this program are available during the program. To enable closed captions, go to the bottom of the Zoom window, c

lick the up arrow button next to closed captions and then click on Show Subtitle to start displaying captions. During the presentation, please use Zoom's Q&A function to ask questions and share comments. Please note that this lecture is being recorded and will be available through the MFA website for members to view next month. This program is coming to you virtually from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Founded in 1870, the MFA stands on a site which has long served as a place of meeting and exc

hange among different Algonquian nations, including the Massachusett. As a museum, we seek to acknowledge the long histories of the land we occupy today and seek ways to make Indigenous narratives more prominent in our galleries and programming. We can all learn more about the Massachusett people, who continue to be stewards of this land, by visiting massachusetttribe.org. And now I am pleased to introduce tonight's speaker, Dr. Vivian Li, Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas

Museum of Art. Since joining the DMA in 2019, Dr. Li has realized ambitious commissioned projects with artists such as Mel Chin and Guadalupe Rosales, and co-organized "Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia," as well as curated the retrospective "Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances." Prior to coming to the Dallas, she worked at the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Worcester Art Museum. A specialist in postwar and contemporary a

rt in Asia, Li received her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Li, thank you for joining us tonight. - Thank you so much, Kimberly. And good evening, everybody. I'm thrilled to be here with you today to share and celebrate the life and work of artist Matthew Wong. I first wanted to start out too, by thanking the MFA Boston and special thanks to Christina Yu Yu, the Chair of the Art of Asia, Reto Thuring, the former chair of Contemporary Art, for their incredible support and enth

usiasm for this exhibition and for bringing it to Boston. Thank you also to the amazing MFA team that brought the show to life, led by Exhibitions Director Angie Morrow and Exhibitions Manager Kat Bossi. It was truly a wonderful collaboration. My deep gratitude also to the generosity of the lenders to the show, many of whom knew Matthew personally. And Matthew Wong Foundation and his family, particularly his extraordinary mother and my close collaborator on this exhibition, Monita Wong and John

Cheim, as well as his gallery's intrepid team led by Maria Bueno at Cheim & Read. I'll start by talking a little bit about the genesis of the show and then as organization and themes, along with some of the countless artists who inspired Matthew Wong before we invite you to join us for the Q&A discussion. So if I can have the next slide. Six years ago in 2017, when Wong just started being represented by the New York Gallery, Karma, the gallery brought him to his first US Art Fair in which he par

ticipated, the Dallas Art Fair. At the time, he was utterly unknown. A self-taught painter, he had just moved from Hong Kong to Canada the year before and had no significant exhibition history to speak of, except for a summer group exhibition a few months before, curated by Matthew Higgs, the Director of the New York nonprofit art space, White Columns. Although Wong was a relative normally then by art world standards for, one, being self-taught; two, living in Hong Kong and now Canada; and three

, having no substantial exhibition history to speak of, the Dallas Museum of Art acquired Wong's painting, "The West," as you can see here, thus totally on the strength of the painting. Two years later, Wong died at the age of 35. Over those two years though, he rapidly built remarkable exhibition history, gaining increasing critical attention as he did, and his art developed at an astonishing rate. He painted at least a painting a day, if not more. Though it was brief, his painting career was a

lso compact and intense, as this exhibition, "The Realm of Appearances," captures in the two galleries of the show. One gallery representing his first three years of painting while in Hong Kong and the other gallery portrayed his last three years once he moved back to Canada. Next slide. You can visit the exhibition website, matthewwong@dma.org, and read some of the critics' early writings about his art, such as from his New York debut show at Karma Gallery in 2018 that is now famously lauded by

the art critic Jerry Saltz as, quote, "One of the most impressive solo New York debuts I've seen in a while." And then you can also read critics about his second show at Karma in 2019. And in the next slide. You can also see which Sally turned into his first Patmos show. When I began at the Dallas Museum of Art in the fall of 2019, right around when Matthew Wong died in October that year, I was intrigued to find his painting "The West" in our collection. Next slide, please. I was blown away by

the artist's acute ability to permeate canvas with such evocative emotion. This painting is a experimental landscape portraying a solitary figure staring out over a barren road, under a richly concentrated blanket of stars. As I learned more about his earlier works in Hong Kong and his multiple creative sources, not just of other artists, but also poets and film directors, I was inspired to organize the survey of Wong's works that explores the yet untold story of its unprecedented artistic journ

ey, his experimentation, body of inspiration, and distinctive visual language. Next slide. If you have ever googled Matthew Wong, it is easy to see, there has been significant discourse to date around his tragic death by suicide. Since he was a teenager, he had been managing lifelong depression and had Tourette's and autism as well. You can see here on the screen the shift in his narrative from his work in the last two years of his life to his death. Since his death, the emergence of his seconda

ry market at auction has also come to overshadow his art. The narrative of his early death and suicide further fed into the romanticized image of him as a tortured genius. While we felt it was incredibly important to honor his life and legacy by providing mental health resources at the end of the exhibition for visitors to take as they exit, "The Realm of Appearances" is really an opportunity to recenter the narrative around Matthew Wong, an incredible gift he gave to this world through his arti

stic talent. Working tirelessly with his mother, the Matthew Wong Foundation established by his family and his countless friends, we endeavor to create an exhibition a portrait of the artist that he would be proud of. In "The Realm of Appearances," you will see an expansive selection of oil, ink, watercolor, and gouache paintings that underscore the breadth and depth of Wong's works. Not bound by any assumptions of material hierarchy, he experimented freely across mediums. The exhibition address

es a range of themes in Wong's short but of unmet career from the effective place in the maturation of his work to his unique cultivation of an international reputation through social media, and the influence of everything from the post-Impressionist to his contemporaries on his creative practice. Wong painted for a total of about six years, beginning in earnest in 2013. In the next slide, we can see before he began painting, Wong was a photographer as well as a poet. He got his MFA in photograp

hy in 2012 in Hong Kong, but was already drifting away from it since he found photography to be too mechanical as a form of self-expression. And here, you can see some of examples of his photography. If we can have the next slide. As you can see, his photography was mostly street photography, and he admired such artists like the Provoke photographer Daido Moriyama, who captured the ephemeral humanist and grittiness of post-war Japan. Wong was fascinated particularly by everyday people on the str

eets that he took quickly shooting from the hip to capture the mood of the moment, rather than consciously framing the image and shooting through the viewfinder. That is a self-portrait that you can see on the right, where we are offered this rare glimpse of the artist through his reflection on the merit facade of a supposedly high-rise building in Hong Kong. Through these photographs, he may appear vastly different from his acclaimed landscape paintings that we know him more by, but he always w

as looking at how to articulate his place in the world that I feel carries on into his landscape paintings where he's constantly in negotiating the relationship between the figure and the landscape. Next slide, please. Self-educated and painting through books and online reproductions, Wong worked in several mediums, simultaneously learning and testing their properties. He began with experimenting with the fluidity of ink and these action drawings of ink and water he swelled and mixed just over t

he sink. And next slide, please. And in oil, his initial... He was initially drawing inspiration from the physical gestures of abstract expressionists like Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, or Willem de Kooning. In 2014, early 2015, where our exhibition begins, he discovers landscapes. In an artist panel on contemporary landscape at the Whitney Museum in 2019, he recalled how he stumbled upon the Chinese landscape section of the Central Public Library that he frequented in Hong Kong. In his discov

ery, he started learning about the history and art of landscape paintings and became more intrigued by this, you could say, traditional longstanding genre. Next slide, please. He described this discovery saying, "What I like about landscape is of other genres, landscapes seem to accommodate the widest possible range of both painting methodologies but also emotional experiences and realms of perception." Next slide. In 2015, he then debuts his new landscape paintings in Hong Kong at a self-organi

zed show, "Pulse of the Land," five of which are in our exhibition. Works in the first gallery of the show demonstrates how the figure loomed largely in these early landscapes. Next slide. Here you can see how he transposes motifs and lessons he learned from each medium. We can also understand how he is not seeking to represent a figure per se since he is using the thick application of the paint itself to obscure them, but trying to create something more visceral and emotional that will connect

with imagined viewer standing right in front of the painting through that intimate relationship between the depicted subject and the physical material paint on canvas. Next slide. Many of these early landscape paintings with figures only showed suggestions of a figure. Here we can already see the wide range of artists he was looking at, such as Philip Guston. As you might remember, this Guston painting the line from the recent Guston show at the MFA and also that taking of his Guston's crude, ca

rtoon-like figuration. Wong, curiously though, inverts the pointing finger, making a mark in the ground from high above into a finger pointing up at a bag of stars of the waves of the sea, the dark night sky, and a moon in the background, leaving no doubt of sky and ground. In the next slide. In these early landscape paintings, you can feel the vibrant physical energy of Wong, such as here in "River at Dusk," where he starts to use the foreground, mid-ground, and background space of the landscap

e too to create a dynamic emotionally charged abstract surface. These also cause his beginning gestural abstractions and oil that aren't included in this exhibition. Next slide. Rather than just adding paint to the canvas, looking closely at this detail, you can see his use of the palette knife to reveal the dried yellow under painting. Subtraction or even the use of the bare canvas or white paper is just as important to him in these early works he created in Hong Kong and in his studio in South

China Guangdong Province. No one I interviewed knew if he had any printmaking interests, though it does seem like he must have some knowledge of it. But his striking use of subtraction and physical engagement with a painting canvas are similar to prints by German expressionists, such as Edvard Munch and Max Ernst who invented the automatic or unconscious painting techniques of scraping the paint or sizing into the wood to create these likewise evocative textures and raw images. Next slide, plea

se. At the same time, Wong was drawing on visual strategies from famous Chinese ink painters, such as the 20th century modernist painter Wu Guanzhong who was known for his use of almost stylized, near decorative patterns of line in creating his landscapes. Next slide. As well as we can see here, the 17th century master Shitao and his also varied use of line marks and patterns to create a spatially complex teaming landscape. In 2016, Wong travels with his mother to the US in the spring, and then

by the summer they settle in Edmonton, Canada where he lived for the remainder of his life. His transnational upbringing also colors his quick, open adoption of all styles, but also refusal to adopt or limit himself to just a few. He was born in Toronto to his immigrant parents from Hong Kong, then grew up in Hong Kong and finished high school in Toronto. Then, he went for college to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for his undergraduate studies before he moved back to Hong Kong. Now back

in North America after 10 years of living in Hong Kong, he visits shows, museums, and friends, both owed acquaintances, as well as once he only knew on social media. One of the people he reached out to was the well-guarded curator, Matthew Higgs, the Director at White Columns that I mentioned earlier, a storied and distinguished alternative arch space in New York. Next slide. Wong kind of code-emailed Matthew Higgs, asking if he could host a solo show there, and sent images such as these curren

t paintings that he was making at the time as examples. But Higgs instead offered Matthew Wong to participate in the group show he was curating for Karma Gallery called "Outside." This exhibition, coincidentally, was of outsider, non-traditional artists painting landscapes. In the next slide, we can see some the installation shots from the show "Outside" as far as the exhibition opening that Matthew attended. But at the exhibition opening, Matthew drove with his mother to the opening and made ma

ny New York connections with those who came to see the show, including the owner of Karma Gallery, Brendan Dugan, who had, a few months later, start showing Wong's works professionally at art fairs, including the Dallas Art Fair where we purchased his painting "The West." Next slide, please. In this show, we have one of the two paintings Matthew showed in "Outside." "Youth," as you can see here on screen, which proved to be a pivotal show for him as he is now back in the US and Canada trying to

build a new audience for his work here. Next slide. Matthew continues to internalize a number of artists as he delves into the emotional and artistic possibilities of the landscape genre and has more access to see actual artworks in museum collections, such as here the colorful pulsating brushwork of Van Gogh appear in the small densely parallel marks, wonderfully emanating from one son in "Landscape with Mother and Child." We can notice the figure also reappear in this later landscape paintings

, though now at a much smaller scale than before. Next slide. Entering his mature period in early 2017, Matthew becomes more interested in abstract patterns, and particularly repetition, which he attributes to studying Kusama's early "Infinity Net" paintings of incessant small dots, which you can begin seeing, such as in the Dallas painting "The West." Next slide. The painting arrived to the museum still wet actually because at the fair booth, right before the fair's opening, Matthew had added m

ore stars since he was dissatisfied with the sky that had some stars but not the dazzling concentration we see today. From the time he painted "The West" and gave it to Karma Gallery to ship to Dallas for the fair, and then to him seen it at the fair a couple of months later, his ideas about pattern and repetition have become more sophisticated and developed. Next slide. As his use of patterns and repetition intensified, his landscapes expanded into these vast magnificent terrains and the figure

s became smaller, dwarfed by the encompassing beauty of the world. Next slide. He looked often for his abstract use of patterns to depict the natural world too, as well as his creatives other than painters, such as the avant garde film director, like one of his favorite Andrei Tarkovsky, both of who imagine beautifully uncanny worlds, the forest of towering bur trees. Next slide. In this painting, "The Kingdom," I also wanted to point out how it can also be read as a self-portrait. Wong use the

king as a personal symbol. The Chinese character for Wong, his last name, means king in Chinese. And his Facebook handle, I found out, was also MatthewTheKing, one word. And also I started noticing that as I was researching for this exhibition, that he created several paintings that depicted the king or symbols of the king, such as in this painting that we see on the right, the painter of inside of a cave where the figure facing the opening of the cave where that is shaped like a crown. Rather t

han as an almighty powerful king, though, Wong's kings are usually isolated figures, far away from the crowd. Next slide. In the show with the inclusion of the painting, "The Realm of Appearances," which was the first painting that set off the market frenzy for Matthew Wong's paintings in 2020, I am happy we're able to reclaim this painting too in our narration of Matthew's artistry and development. "The Realm of Appearances" caused quite a stir when it went for 22 times more than its estimate i

n 2020. Wong's painting before his death fetched maybe about $22,000 and this one's final bid was at $1.5 million. Today, his auction record is at $6.6 million. Next slide. The two artists who inspired this work are the bright and densely layered stylized landscape paintings of David Hockney. And in the next slide, his fellow self-taught artists Scott Kahn whose "Moon" series that we can see here from the late 2000s inspired the composition of the high central moon and flat landscape beneath, an

d that we can see in Matthew Wong's painting. But if I can have the next slide. In the end, we can see that the style is still uniquely Matthew's with his characteristic small figure looking fiercely down the void of a well into perhaps another space even more spectacular than the one we can see here. Next slide. As an aside, Matthew met Scott on Facebook while Matthew Wong was just starting to paint in Hong Kong in 2012. Matthew created a staggering network of friendships on social media and pa

rticularly used Facebook as a classroom to discuss artistic questions with fellow artists and art critics around the world, including in the US. Once Matthew started being noticed by art critics in 2018 after his New York debut show, he posted a painting by Scott Kahn on his Instagram page, and then our dealers and critics started noticing Scott who has been painting in obscurity, as you can see in this article in New York for over 15 years. Being perhaps a self-taught artist, Matthew was very o

pen about all the artists who inspired him. And Scott, likewise, is very open about how Matthew helped start his career by getting the right people to start noticing his work. Matthew understood how nobody becomes visible alone and recognized the power of social media to bypass the usual processes and gatekeeping of the art world. Next slide. The final section of the show is devoted to the last two years of Matthew Wong's life, late 2018 and 2019. When he starts to slow down, you see less emphas

is on patterning and repetition. Instead, he has a laser-sharp focus on the texture and emotive quality of color, especially the blue monochromes of his last series for a second solo show at Karma Gallery. His "Blue" series, such as in this poetic blue interior. Next slide. And in this section, you can also see the influence of Impressionists and post-Impressionists, especially such as Matisse's device of having a landscape within a landscape and Matthew's yellow stylized tree in the window in "

Blue Night." Next slide. The figure art but disappears too. And instead we are given traces or hints of human presence, such as in "Blue Rain," where a light is left on in the house, making the structure like a lone but warm, welcoming beacon in the harsh rain. Next slide. The visual, as well as emotional sensitivity and sophistication in its exploration of a single color is remarkable in the suite of tour de force paintings where the vibrancy of the various marks, patterns, and surface finishes

you see in other of his paintings are all elevated to a new level in this brilliant monochromatic painting "Path to the Sea." And I hope you can see this in person at the MFA. It really is a spectacular in person. At the upper center, we can see the void reappearing at the end of the wind path as we have seen a popular recurring motif in many of his early works. Next slide. During these last couple of years, Matthew also was looking at seriality as practiced by the Impressionist of the passage

of time and the change of color and light on a subject over time. So just here, "A Walk by the Sea," of two figures on the right at dawn and gouache and the other at dusk in oil. Next slide, please. While conceptually, he may have been inspired by the seriality of Impressionists, visually he was looking at also other artists such as the great modern American colorist Milton Avery. Next slide. Then, the show closes with a couple of last works that he painted in 2019. "See You on the Other Side,"

which I view as a culmination or summary of all his periods with its magnificent use of white space with the unpainted canvas in the midsection, which echoes many of this earlier works, especially on paper, as well as canvas that we see earlier in the show. And then also you can see in the densely patterned section in the upper left corner and also the slow cool green and blue strokes that illuminate the top. Next slide. Then on a more personal note, landscape "Ella" for John Cheim. As a very po

etic... I felt close to the exhibition and need to be at the end. John Cheim is an eminent gallery dealer in New York who befriended Matthew early on Facebook as Matthew was just starting out in Hong Kong, and John was one of his early champions. In the summer of 2019, John texted... Matthew texted John to ask what he was doing and John texted back saying that he was in Long Island and just sent him a picture of Ella, his dog, there by the pool. At Matthew's funeral a few months later, Matthew's

mother gave John this painting. Inscribed on the back, it has a note from Matthew that reads, "John, with all my love and respect. Matthew." I love how the blocks of green and white of the trees and clouds seem to merge lazily into each other in this soft casual way and contrast to the more finished foreground of the straight horizontal pool and the observant dog Ella. And have used this tender affection to the landscape and reflects wonderfully a joyful cherishing of friendships and personal c

onnections Matthew had in a fleeting world. In closing, it may seem odd to present Matthew Wong's career retrospective when it was so short at six years, and I did embark on this project intending for it to be a retrospective. There are actually many variety of shows that I'm certain will come in the future on Matthew Wong and his work. He painted about 1,000 works in total. We could have easily focused the show just on his final remarkable "Blue" paintings, for instance, or because of his insat

iable use of references that could rival Picasso, we could have easily mounted a show of his works next to artists that he admired. Notably, after the show closes there in Boston, about half of the show goes to Amsterdam in the spring to the Van Gogh Museum that's organizing a new show there on Van Gogh and Matthew Wong that'll be opening very soon in the spring. But personally, once I started getting to know more of the works especially, and once I saw the earlier and ambitious works that he ma

de in Hong Kong, I understood Wong had a singular vision that just needed to be towed. At the rate that he was painting and developing, where each year seemed like 10 years easily for others, there's a resolution to a six-year career arc that merits a career survey. There will forever be the mystery when things were going so well as he hoped and there Matthew was skyrocketing and exploding. Why did he go? Regardless of the length of the artist's career, what is left is the work, and there was Ma

tthew Wong's joy in the work and his personal discovery and pure curiosity of painting that we presented here. The public will now be able to meet him and his brilliant artwork, many for the first time right there in Boston. So I thank you so much for allowing this opportunity, and (indistinct). - Thank you so much, Dr. Li, for such an engaging presentation. I invite our guests to put any questions in the Q&A function and I'm gonna start with an appreciation from one of our attendees who says, "

Thank you for this great presentation. As someone who does not know much about art, Matthew touched my heart on my first viewing of his work. His work speaks to me, still does. I wish he was here longer, but I hope his soul is at peace." So that's an appreciation. And then question. Do you consider him an outsider artist such as Forrest Bess? - That's a good question. I think because the term as outsider artist is continuously being challenged, I think, especially where he was kind of starting t

o educate himself, and he did have such a photographic memory as well. So that is just a great library kind of tool to have. And so he was just absorbing everything. I think I wouldn't call him an outsider artist. I think in many ways, he kind of shows how that term is so complicated and shouldn't be so likely applied to artists, especially today that I think there's so many places that you can learn about art. Definitely, art school is one and also very important one. But Matthew was also learn

ing from other artists, and I think I kind of talk about this in the catalog itself about how he was able to be on Facebook during a time where so many other artists were, and just discovering Facebook, and kind of connecting with each other, and just openly sharing their challenges in the studio in real-time sometimes as well. And Matthew himself was sharing his own wins and kind of challenges online as well. And that he was able to, through all this networks and friends that he was able to mak

e through these new platforms, he was able to get in the inside of the art world very quickly, I think. I think it's really about also the quality of the artwork as well and showing it to the right people. And that was, I think, he himself also questioned why are some of these great art artists, such as Scott Kahn. I mean, that's just such a great example of a fellow self-taught artist that he admired early on when he started painting. And so when he had this attention from galleries, art critic

s, he used his Instagram platform to actually show more other artists he admires such as Scott. And Scott is now having a second life of his art career. So, yeah, I wouldn't call him an outside artist, and I think he himself probably wouldn't. And I think his career, just his career shows that a lot. - Thank you. In addition to some additional remarks of appreciation for your presentation, thank you. There's a question. Were there any exhibitions of Matthew's photography? - No, not that I know o

f, I think. I mean, at the school they did have an exhibition, but I only know of the exhibition of his... Like, in 2014 he did do an exhibition in Guangdong Province where his studio is actually, that Artists Village that his studio was at. He did a self-organized show of his very first abstract paintings that are kind of like what I showed kind of Joan Mitchell, like the abstract expressionist and very gestural, and he just loved the process-based artist. And you can kind of see that kind of c

arrying on throughout his work, actually. But yeah, the photography, no, I didn't wanna cross at least any exhibitions, other than at the school when he graduated, I think, they did their school exhibitions. - Thank you. One participant says, "Unfortunately, the exhibition catalog is out of print already. Is there any chance for a second edition of the catalog?" - To my knowledge, no, so I'm very sorry about that. We weren't anticipating the catalog being so popular. So it ran out actually over

here in Dallas before the one of the show here, so I'm very sorry about this, but it is... Hopefully the catalog is in libraries and in public library collections, so can be referenced there. - Thank you. And do you think his huge success was destabilizing for his mental health? - That is a big question that I would be, actually, the last person to answer since I didn't know him personally. But talking with different friends, and actually a lot of the research for this exhibition is built on tal

king with his friends, his family, his mother, and so I heard different things. I think it was very quickly that... I mean, he only exhibited in the last three years of his life. Really, the critical acclaim came in the last two years. And so I think for anybody that would be destabilizing, like how to manage that, and he was already on social media. I mean, he was doing so much, actually, even earlier in his career, just learning more and more about everything I was doing, writing about art, he

was also doing exhibition reviews, writing poetry, watching movies. He was a big a cinephile, so he just had a lot of energy, I think. And so how that translates into his mental health. And that, I can't really answer, but it does, I think, for anybody, but kind of make them more retreat, more of showing everything. And definitely on Instagram, he was showing more other artists rather than his own and contrast to the earlier use of social media where he was much more open and so, yeah. - Great,

thank you. The landscapes are so quiet and spiritual. Did he ever talk about his relationship to the landscape and the natural world? - I think he did. I mean, he was drawn to landscape, what's that earlier quote I gave in the presentation? He did talk about the appeal of landscape of not being just of a place or physical representation, but more of also having this depth, this emotional, psychological depth that it could give. So I think just that he... Like landscape being such a great recept

acle for everything, like his different visions. I think that was such a rewarding and surprising part of the research process for this exhibition is learning just how many themes he was studying. Like I said, his creativity was just enormous in just finding the outlets, the mediums, the platforms. To express those, I think, was what he was kind of struggling or trying out. So I think landscape finally was a genre, such an open and vast genre that he could pour his poetry, pour this cinematic vi

sions, and compositions, and everything into. So I don't think he looked at landscape literally, but just a vast receptacle for his creativity. - While we're on the topic of landscapes, can you speak a little more about the very small figure in relationship to the very large landscape? - Yeah, that's a good question. Planning this exhibition... I mean, and also during his careers, not just landscapes, I mean even later on, you do have also interiors. We were kind of also spatially limited, physi

cally limited with what could be included. Like I said, he painted over 1,000 paintings, there will be more shows, but I think definitely, as I was going through his vast body of work, just that the figure, and definitely the landscape is so central to his artistic, especially painting, career. So I think just how the figure kept on changing as I was kind of figuring out how to order this or how to make sense of all these works. And then once I put the works kind of in chronological order, just

to see how that would look and just seeing how the figure kind of is so prominent early on in his works. And then as the landscapes become so vast and so magnificent, and pathways and horizon lines becomes much more important in the composition, then the figure becomes from a subject into more of a kind of observer kind of maybe a stand in for ourselves as well as the artist himself. And I think in many ways, kind of from a quote of him talking about his photography, how he sees just the artisti

c art making as a way of knowing that he exists, that that click of a shutter and for him painting as well. He very rarely painted over... Like, we did a painting, he would just paint over a painting. It was all done in one sitting. So it was all about that moment, kind of like a time capsule of that moment for him. And so I think... So also painting in a way is like that clip of the shutter, kind of, of that moment trying to capture that authenticity of that moment, which, I think, really speak

s to that rawness, that directness, that connection that all his paintings do are able to achieve that not all painters can reach. So I really do feel like the figure in the landscape in the world is so important to his overall artistic vision that it really comes through in the exhibition. - Great. Did Matthew identify the artists and specific works that you showed side by side or did you, as the curator, and others select them to show influence? - Actually, he did talk about these artists like

Joan Mitchell, Pollock. He talked about many artists. Like I said, he was not shy about his influences, so he did speak. And so the ones I did show side by side, most of them he did talk about. Wu Guanzhong, that one is more of a visual formal comparison. The Milton Avery, that one was kind of a nice surprise when I saw that work and then I saw those two paintings, and I was like, "This is just too uncanny not to be..." So at least to make that argument because the composition, the colors are j

ust so rich in Wong's works as well as Milton Avery. So those are a couple that I kind of did more my own, like as an art historian, more visual formal comparison. But the other ones you did talk about. - Great. Did Matthew keep a journal and/or diary in parallel of his painting years? - So in many ways, the Facebook was his journal, I think, and that's how I found many of his friends were people on Facebook that knew him from those early years. And that's one of the surprising things when I lea

rned that he, from pretty much the first year, the early years, he was very active on Facebook as the newcomer. There was like a community of artists, not so much anymore, that were kind of connected. And they were international, not just in Hong Kong, also in New York, all over the US to Indiana, other places as well. And so he was just, every day, like I said, he painted a painting every day, if not more. So I talked with the LA artist, and he remembers Matthew very well and he said that becau

se of the time difference, about 12-hour time difference between Hong Kong and LA, that whenever he woke up and turned on Facebook and to see what's going on, and he would see Matthew already posted so many paintings he painted that day. And it was kind of like a challenge for himself to also accomplish some paintings too that day. So that was the kind of... He was very open, like I said, on Facebook. He used Facebook as his classroom, talking with some of his Facebook friends that some of them

only knew him on Facebook and never met him in person. They said that he grew up on Facebook right in front of their eyes. I mean, some of these artists that are much further along than him. And giving him advice too and championing or giving him critiques, these virtual critiques. And so I thought I would have all this when I started my research, but it is... And I did hear from many friends that he was a very deliberate and honest actions. And so a few weeks before he passed, he did delete his

account even on the cloud, I believe so. So I did not have that, and so I kind of also started thinking, "Well, contemporary art, I mean after a while, on these great documentation is actually on Instagram today for many of the young artists or artists in general." So our research material, we won't have the letters from Van Gogh's brother anymore to be looking at. But that's another I kind of digressed there. But yeah, he did keep a journal, kind of a virtual online journal in a way, but we do

n't have access to that anymore. - So you've talked a little bit about this, but do you know about his painting process? For example, did he sketch his compositions or approach his canvas and just begin painting? - He did not sketch, I do know that. And then it was also surprising or really kind of very remarkable to learn about his paint practice from his mother to also friends, also one studiomate that shared studios with him in Hong Kong as well. Yeah, like I said, he does not continue a pain

ting the next day. He does not go to sleep. He does it in one sitting, it's very important to him. He listens often to music too when he's painting. And he might have some ideas in his mind, but he'll start painting, and you can look online, there's some interviews he did in 2018, 2019, where he talks more about his process. But he would just let the paint kind of guide the painting, how it would form. So he'll already have some ideas, but he was kind of more con response. He would add the paint

ing, and start painting, and then he would start... A new idea might form and then he would just take it in that direction. And so it's very intuitive, very improvisational. And then once he's done, he's just done. I mean, so many paintings. I think there's one example kind of conservation discovery painting that we did a label for talking about the reuse of canvas. So many times, he would... If he doesn't like a painting the next day or even a few years later, he might paint over the painting.

And for example, the painting in the Dallas' collection "The West," we found out that has another painting underneath that was created the original, or I guess the first one was three years before he painted "The West" in 2017. And talking about different friends, like I mentioned, he is deliberate in his personality and his actions. So some friends also talk about how he was also very cognizant of his legacy, of his body of work he's building. And so not just because of lack of materials, espec

ially that he's painting so much that he was repainting over some of the paintings, but consciously also editing out paintings, that will be his legacy. - So you mentioned that he listened to music while he was painting. Do you know what kind of music and what artists he was listening to? - Oh, that's a great question, and I did try to do some research on that. I mean, I think he... Actually, he was... He loved rap, R&B. He was very diverse in his musical taste. But I think especially rap, I thi

nk I did come across where he wrote a kind of a post or just an homage to rap and how that helped him deal with also personal issues too about... And we did put, if you look on the webpage, the matthewwong.dma.org, we did create a playlist of some of the known artists that he did enjoy, so you can check that out. I think it's just Spotify, it will take you to a Spotify that we created. But yeah. - Was his work influenced by a multicultural identity? - Definitely. I mean, yeah, no, he was, I thin

k, a Canadian Hong Kong artist also. And in some ways, you can claim him too since he lived in Michigan as well and for a little bit in LA as well. And so I think he just... I think in many ways, you can see him as a self-taught artist that he just didn't have these boundaries or learn boundaries of how this medium should work and that medium should work, and this genre should be like this and the... But I think it's also the fluidity of just how he took in culture. I think he was looking at art

ists, like I said, not just in the kind of western canon, and mostly modern, actually modern art 20th century or late 19th century artist he was really influenced by, but he was looking over... Especially also in East Asia and even... This was one artist that I kind of mentioned in one of the labels, "Morning Mist." It's Cho Sho Hua who is a landscape painter, a contemporary landscape painter who is very well known in China, and that's one of his famous or his favorite painters working in China

today. And so that you can kind of see Cho Sho Hua, he uses very dilute, kind of almost like washes of oil and to make these kind of almost looks like monochrome, white monochrome paintings. And Matthew Wong, he really enjoyed how... But if you look much more deeper, you can see so much depth and so much other things going on. So he enjoyed that kind of surface, like rewarding close looking. And so I think of "Morning Mist," that really comes out too in the show. So definitely, he was just so fl

uid in how he kind of took in everything. - So I'm mindful of time, so we have one last question, and I'm gonna combine a couple of questions. The second to last painting is presented as his sort of goodbye culmination of many themes he built over the course of his life. The entire exhibition reads like an incredible story, but I'm curious as to what his later paintings might have pointed, where his interests were heading, if he had continued painting. So might you comment on Matthew Wong's arti

stic legacy? - Oh, that's a great question. (Dr. Lu chuckles) Especially for thinking where it might have went. I mean, I haven't really thought about that myself since I was so absorbed learning what he did create. I guess, and I mean, like I said, definitely color and slowing down was something that he was practicing in the last couple years, or not even two years, I kind of feel like, and getting ready for the show at Karma, his second show. And I do remember that he said he never wants to be

known as just a kind of a one-note artist. Like, "This is a Matthew Wong work or..." I mean, and so I think from his first show and just how much attention that received, he just wanted to do something completely different or something. And he also would talk about how he wants to also make ugly paintings as well and not just gorgeous paintings. So yeah, he did want to trouble himself his own career. So just kind of predicting where his works could have went. I really don't know because I think

he... I mean, even seeing this body of work, which I try to make a kind of a visual formal narrative to, but as I was looking at more and more of his works, I was like, "What is a Matthew Wong work?" I mean, they're so different. Even in the show, actually, they're so different and then there's more that's radically different. He was so experimental. I mean that, for sure, comes out clearly in these works. And so I think his legacy is that to encourage other artists, especially being able to sp

eak with other artists when I give tours of the show has been so rewarding and just so grateful because I see how they also give so much encouragement from his works of being kind of all over the place and just enjoying that, just enjoying the painting process. And I think that should be his legacy. - That's wonderful. Thank you again, Dr. Li, for being here tonight. And I wanna thank everybody who joined us and wanna just let you know that our next member lecture is on December 6th and focuses

on "Tiny Treasures: The Magic of Miniatures" with curator Courtney Harris. And I hope you all have a good evening. Thanks very much. - Thank you.