Yim Maukun
As part of his many exhibits, Yim's work has been shown at two of the most important and prestigious museums in Taiwan, the Kaoshiung Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei (where he is also part of the permanent collection);[3][4] he has been featured in dozens of publications, including Rachel Robin Wolf's recent Strokes of Genius: The Best of Drawing series published by North Light Books) and several of the more prominent art magazines and daily newspapers in China and Taiwan.
As Mao Zedong's native province, Hunan had long been an active Communist area, including the site of a short-lived soviet in the early 1930s, but both sides of Yim's family consisted of members of the educated, property-owning (if not wealthy) class.
[8] Upon Mao's revolutionary victory at the end of 1949/early 1950, Ran Peng left the country to join the exile government of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) in Taiwan, leaving his wife and children behind in Hunan.
According to the accounts, he did so still hoping to provide for them or to even soon bring them to the island, but this proved impossible (although for many years he was able to send letters and money to his wife through go-betweens in Hong Kong).
[15][13] Craft Arts were seen as a more practical pursuit during a time of economic hardship for the country and also less tainted by Western influences; the other programs had been cut as part of the reforms overseen by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing.
Following his graduation Yim served for fifteen years as the sole stage designer for a regional Guangdong theater repertory group—later "cultural worker troupe"—centered in Zhaoqing.
[12] Given his parentage and the extremely hostile attitude toward any "bourgeois" or "non-revolutionary" artistic pursuits during the Cultural Revolution, the decade was a tumultuous and often a personally very difficult period for Yim.
Like many artists, intellectuals, and others, Yim was publicly shamed and beaten, humiliatingly paraded through the streets and denounced; his entire family faced severe discrimination because of their background.
In Kowloon he would live in a cramped high rise apartment with his mother, younger brother, and fellow artist and friend, Li Changbo, who had all moved there earlier in the year.
Yim had been married and a father since 1974, but his wife and young children were only gradually permitted to join him in Hong Kong and ultimately Taiwan one by one over the next several years, not fully reuniting until 1988.
These consisted mainly of full-sized personal and family portraits made from small photos, replicas of classical European paintings, and reproductions of pieces from various international art magazines.
Several noteworthy pieces were the result of this (including Eternal Devotion, My San Francisco and the original version of Sunset), but the arrangement ended prematurely when Yim's application for a travel visa to the U.S. was denied in 1982.
His figure drawing and oil painting students would later be among the most prominent members of the Hong Kong art community, both as artists and instructors, such as Poon Yeuk Fai 潘耀輝, Bacchus Tong 唐家宏, Chu Ka Ming 朱嘉明, and Deng Yi Nong 鄧亦農.
This led to a very successful and highly publicized plein air portrait demonstration for the Apollo Gallery in Taipei in 1987[18] which generated positive attention from the city's newspapers and television stations.
All in all the demonstration proved to be a major boost to Yim's career, leading to a number of published works, including covers for Crown Magazine and the Far Eastern Economic Review that same year, and further portrait commissions of other prominent individuals from Taiwanese society.
A 2009 workshop tour in the U.S. included the Scottsdale Artists' School (Arizona),[21] Studio 2nd Street in Encinitas, CA, and the Steve Carpenter Art Center of Rochester, New York.
At Twin Bridge, where Yim continues to conduct classes and demonstrations, students can receive instruction both in the basics and most advanced elements of figure drawing, oil painting, watercolors, pastels, focusing on classical bust study, portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and beyond.
[23] When Yim conducted two demonstrations and workshops at Fu Hsing Kang College on drawing and oil painting portraits in 2010, these sessions were recorded as instructional videos for students.
In his career Yim Maukun has been commissioned to do portraits of many elite figures in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, from politicians and business leaders to pop stars—and also of fellow painters, perhaps the foremost sign of respect among peers.
[25] Yim is just as well known for his portraits of ordinary people, however, be they indigenous Taiwanese or Tibetans, rural boatmen in Xiangxi, young art students, or random European hostelers traveling through Taiwan or Hong Kong.
As Yim has made clear in interviews and his writings, Xuanzhang is one of his favorite subjects,[12][9] likely for reasons relating to his own life story and the difficult path he has had to travel as an artist and a man.
2013's Emperor Guangxu and Consort Zhen centers on the ill-fated progressive Qing leader, whose Hundred Days' Reform movement of 1898 was thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi and her co-conspirators.
Yim is equally adept at movingly capturing the story and emotions lurking in contemporary everyday moments,[2] whether it is the lonely restaurant scene of Stood Up (1992) the tender portrayal of the young woman on the payphone in Evening Spring Rain in Taipei (1993), or the barmaid slicing fruit in Tonight (1990).
There is more of an emphasis on the essence and harmony of the overall composition; this creates a lifelike resemblance that brings out the poetic qualities, mood, and beauty of the subject rather than an exact reproduction dwelling on superficial details.
[28] While a student at the Guangzhou Academy, Yim received solid training in the basics of drawing[34] and watercolor painting (along with a smattering of sculpture), but as an oil painter he is effectively self-taught.
"[10] The prominent writer Li Ao, one of Taiwan's foremost public intellectuals, heaped similar praise on Yim's Mackay Practicing Medicine in a supplement to the Yangcheng Evening News in 2008 and also on his television show.
[30][28] Lin Yong, former President of the Guangdong Artists' Association, waxes poetic in a memorable passage: "Yim Mau-Kun has spent decades quietly, calmly, diligently and thoughtfully painting.
A 2014 Youth Daily News article focused in particular on Yim's drawing, with the reporter relating in memorable detail the experience of witnessing one of the artist's "astounding and exciting" live demonstrations.
