Lee wrote extensively on Dansaekhwa in his efforts to define contemporary Korean art within a larger global context.
[1] This larger project included proposing historical periods for modern and contemporary Korean art, and coining theoretical terms like "reduction" and "expansion," which Lee would utilize in his writing for many decades.
[2] Lee's work as a critic began in Paris writing for the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo while studying at the Sorbonne.
By 1975, Lee became involved with what he later identified as Dansaekhwa by writing the introductory text for "Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White" held at Tokyo Gallery.
Lee went on to write catalogue essays, exhibition prefaces, and reviews on Dansaekhwa artists for many years, and authored several books examining and theorizing modern and contemporary Korean art.
[6] In 1963, Lee became a regular contributor to the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo covering the Parisian art world.
As a member of the avant-garde collective, Lee, along with fellow critics Oh Gwang-su and Kim In-hwan, played key roles in producing the group's journal AG.
In his exhibition preface of the same title, Lee coined these two terms that he would continue to use in his discussions of contemporary art in Korea, including those focused on Dansaekhwa.
[5]: 59 In this initial essay, Lee attempts to describe the contemporary art world as functioning under these dynamics of expansion and reduction:Today's art appears to be concerned with unprecedented extremes, from the most fundamental of forms to events that happen in the course of everyday life, from the most direct and immediate experiences to objects that are the materialization of a concept.
In the essay, Lee focuses on the color white as a symbol of Korean culture embedded with cosmological significance that extends beyond the sensorial.
He argues that white is not simply a pigment (Lee does mention that classical Korean art frequently incorporates bright hues), but rather gestures to the spiritual realm.
[12]: 239–240 Kee also notes that by 1980, Lee had stepped back from his emphasis on the importance of the color white to Korean culture for Dansaekhwa artists, and instead asserted monochrome painting's "return to that which is basic.
For the inaugural exhibition of the newly opened pavilion, Lee invited artists Yun Hyong-keun, Kim In-kyum, Kwak Hoon, and Jheon Soocheon.
Lee proposed the term "trans-modernism" instead to describe the shift towards abstract art in the 80s in Korea that sought to establish a uniquely Korean version of European and American modernism.
In a 1981 article, Lee critiqued the conservative bureaucratic hold over the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Gukjeon, and called for increased exhibitions of foreign artists in Korea.