Lee Cheng-dao (李承道) paints in his underwear.
Not “in” as in “inside” his underwear, but while wearing only underwear.
In his underwear, Lee paints pictures of people wearing only underwear. More specifically, he spends most of his days in a Shilin District studio, half-naked, painting from photographs of friends and acquaintances who are also half-naked.
Taipei’s Aki Gallery (也趣畫廊) hosts Lee and 10 other young artists at YES: Young Emerging Stars, an exhibition that opened Saturday with a live jazz band and a mini-fridge of Miller High Life. Only one of the featured artists is over 30.
Lee, who had a solo exhibition at Aki last July, fit right in. The 27-year-old received a master’s from National Taiwan Normal University in February and plans to start his military service this summer.
Although his father is a well-known painter (Lee Chien-yi, 李健儀), Lee describes himself as not showing an aptitude for art while young. He still managed to test into National Taiwan University of Arts, where he tried “a little of everything” before settling on oil painting after his junior year.
Many of Lee’s paintings combined a fresh interest in art history and the popularity of taike (台客, a style that celebrates things stereotypically Taiwanese) at the time.
“I wanted to paint [Taiwan’s]
subculture,” he said in his studio earlier this month. “Betel nut beauties, taike, rockers, gays.”
He posed his subjects like figures in classical court paintings, took photographs, and painted them without flourish. Later he began grouping his subjects, creating elaborate scenes based on compositions he appropriated from old masters like Caravaggio.
“I just invite a bunch of friends over to hang out and then take some pictures. If I want them to change something or do something different, I just ask.”
Like stripping?
“Men are mostly OK with it,” Lee said, “but women can be difficult. They wonder if you’re trying to trick them. ‘Why do you want me to take off my clothes? What are you trying to get me to do?’”
Young artists learn quickly to surmount such obstacles.
“I invite them to see my paintings so they can tell I’m a serious artist ... ‘That’s pretty good,’ they say. I know some of them already ... They think it might be fun, so they agree to take their clothes off.”
Eventually though, Lee ran into a problem, which brought him to his latest series.
“I painted so many people that just looked normal, nothing special. Because they didn’t have anything particular about them, I had to put them in groups, add things, put in a lot of different objects.”
Pointing to a newer painting of a man rippled with folds of fat, he says: “But look at this. There’s much more drama.”
Lee’s three paintings at Aki all depict what he calls “fatties” (胖子). He still tosses in the occasional gimmick — a man in fishnet stockings and heels is posed like the model in British painter Lucian Freud’s Naked Man, Back View and has a fast-food box on his head — but the fleshier body type allows Lee to concentrate more on the figure.
And “fatties” are no less willing
than others to take off their clothes,
Lee says.
“Maybe they’re not used to someone telling them they have an interesting body, so when they hear it, they’re happy.”
Heavier models have their problems, though, as Lee notes when talking about a math teacher who used to weigh 150kg.
“He’s on a diet,” Lee says. “He’s lost about 50kg.”
Lee learned at an early age that posing naked was nothing to be ashamed about.
“When my dad was painting, he’d sometimes ask me to strip and pose with nude models he was working with. I was shy at the time, but you get over it.”
As for himself painting in his skivvies, Lee has a practical explanation.
“I want to be relaxed when I paint ... And my mom kept scolding me for getting paint on my clothes,” he says.
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