Access a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Marilee Talkington: This oil on canvas by Ha Chong-Hyun from 1967 is called "White Paper on Urban Planning 67". A thin wooden frame painted light gray surrounds this square painting measuring just over 3 1/2 feet tall and wide.

The solid dark-blue background accentuates the bold colors and geometric forms dominating most of the canvas and filling the center of the painting.

In the bottom-left quadrant, a solid bluish-gray color forms a peak, like a mountain supporting a larger brick-red and cinnabar octagonal shape. The various-sized edges of this octagonal shape stretch and angle toward the edges of the painting, almost touching, some reaching only a few inches from the frame. The left edge of the octagonal shape appears to extend off the left side of the canvas above the bluish-gray mountain. The brick-red and cinnabar shapes vaguely echo the outline of a map of Seoul, Korea.

Two smaller clusters of colorful geometric patterns are grouped together and arranged opposite each other inside the lower-left and upper-right edges of this larger octagonal shape. They curve outward toward each other and the center of the painting. They are divided by the brick-red and cinnabar colors which flow between them, creating two peninsulas or two sections of a larger city—much like how the Han River divides Seoul. A narrow strip of orange arches along the lower-right edge of the larger octagonal shape, like a bridge attempting to connect both peninsulas but touching neither.

The abstracted peninsula toward the top-right corner has a white background with overlapping chevron patterns zigzagging toward its center, creating an almost pinwheel effect. The shades of blues, greens, reds, and ochers are reminiscent of dancheong, vivid colors decorating traditional Korean architecture. A narrow sliver intersects with the green chevron toward the bottom-right side of this peninsula shape. It is the same bluish-gray color as the mountainous shape at the bottom-left corner of the painting.

The abstracted peninsula toward the bottom left features overlapping layers of white, yellow, orange, ocher, and brick-red. Semicircle shapes extend outward and expand like overlapping flower petals or the swooping layered sleeves of a traditional Korean "hanbok", or garment.

He creates horizontal folds along the lower half of his canvas, similar to folds in an accordion or paper fan. They start at the center, spaced a few inches apart, and move downward, grouped more tightly as if the canvas is sliding down its frame, gathering at the bottom. He has created terrain in his canvas, like mountain peaks or high-rise buildings reaching upward and outward toward the viewer.

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