Cascade Crinoline by Jiha Moon - 2008 National Museum of Women in the Arts Cascade Crinoline by Jiha Moon - 2008 National Museum of Women in the Arts

Cascade Crinoline

Ink and acrylic on hanji paper •
  • Jiha Moon - 1973 Jiha Moon 2008

Today is our last Sunday with the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts—I hope you enjoyed its collection of contemporary women artists!

With its blue-green tonality and range of landscape motifs, Cascade Crinoline is among Jiha Moon’s most direct references to classical Asian painting. Yet the bright pink and red ribbon forms she added to the lower section of the work reflect her interest in animation and cartoons. The precisely drawn hand near the center of the composition demonstrates her passion for European Renaissance-era figure studies.

Moon’s painting process involves both chance and precision handwork. To create Cascade Crinoline and other paintings from the late 2000s, Moon applied loose daubs of acrylic paint to hanji paper (handmade Korean mulberry paper). Next, she determined what those abstract shapes suggested to her—not unlike a Rorschach test. She then built up representational shapes using her thinnest paintbrushes. In this work, she added lines around washes of color to evoke mountain ranges and rushing water, tree branches and cresting waves.