The Mirror

Yun Gee was born in 1906 in Kaiping, Guangdong of China, and he moved to the United States at the age of 15. He lived in San Francisco, Paris, and New York City, becoming one of the earliest Chinese painters to be active individually in the context of modern art in Europe and America. He integrates the vivid colors of Fauvism, the formal structures of Cubism, the psychological explorations of Surrealism, and the shape-color symphonies of Synchronism, creating a tension in his paintings that is both austere and detached, yet dreamlike and lyrical. The Mirror was created during his stay in New York City. Vases of flowers, fruits, and pastries in the painting blended with their reflections in the mirror while the boundary was well-defined. The subtle disarray between the real objects and their mirrored images reflected the gap between reality and perception, while also revealing the artist’s mental state of fragmentation and reconstruction within his multiple cultural experiences.