Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Oʻahu.

Hon-Chew Hee was born auspiciously on Lunar New Year's Eve, the son of an educator, on the island of Maui in 1906. He was very close to his Chinese heritage, raised between China and the territory of Hawaiʻi. Hee trained in traditional Chinese brush painting as a child and learned illusionistic painting as a teenager at the Royal School in Honolulu.

He continued artmaking after his graduation in 1927 and attracted the attention of Maui-born writer Armine Von Tempski. With her support, he was awarded a scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco to further his study in 1931. ¹ During this year, he trained under notable California artists Ralph Stackpole, Otis Oldfield, and Ray Boynton. ²

Hee taught and studied art in Guangzhou for a year before returning to Honolulu in 1933. ³ He continued to exhibit and teach in both Western and Eastern styles of painting, including at the Nuʻuanu YMCA with his contemporary Isami Doi. Hee taught at the YMCA during the war and was concurrently employed at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, producing signage and art for various relief efforts.

The late 1940s were an important period in Hee's artistic development. In 1948, Hee studied at the Art Students League of New York under George Grosz, Frank Dumond, Jon Corbino, and other distinguished American and European modernists. He also spent the summer of 1949 at the Woodstock artist colony, known for being an enclave for ASL artists including the Japanese-American painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

In September 1949, Hee sailed to France for the first time to study with Fernand Léger and André Lhote at their private ateliers, as well as the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Colarossi. ⁴ Hee's work was greatly influenced by this Parisian period, incorporating Léger's compositional dynamism and Lhote's Fauvist use of color into his work for the rest of his career.

In the 1970s, Hee became inspired by the ancient Chinese equilibrium philosophy of Yin and Yang and expanded his visual language. His 'Yin Yang Principle' was about representing 'the male and female, the light and shadow, the principle that each facet of life has its opposite.' ⁵ Hee applied this principal to his treatment of color and form, with interlocking shapes and high-keyed color contrasts. The present work embodies this principle in the way that he contrasts solid and dark organic forms in the foreground against a gauzy and bright ombré background.

The present work closely relates to another abacus-based work entitled Ancient IBM that was painted and exhibited in the 1972 Narcissus Festival in Honolulu. ⁶ Ancient IBM was lauded for depicting 'the abstract power of the abacus, which is, without embellishment, a truly beautiful compositional form. Its rhythmical functional grouping of counting beads, strung on horizontal lines and enclosed by a well-defined frame, can hardly be spoiled visually.' ⁷ The same can be said of the present work, which takes a step further into symbolism.

Ancient Computer is self-referential in several ways — the arrangement of the counting beads denotes '1973' — the year of the painting's creation — and the rainbow colorway evokes Hawaiʻi and Ānuenue, bridging earthly and heavenly realms. Created in the decade of personal computers and rule-based art, the present work is simultaneously a cheeky nod to the foundational importance of representation in an age of abstraction, and a unique expression of Chinese-Hawaiian cultural identity.

¹ 'Scholarship is Awarded Young Island Artist,' The Honolulu Advertiser, June 7, 1931, p. 14.
² 'Drawings in Colored Wash,' The Honolulu Advertiser, April 9, 1939, p. 12.
³ 'Art Exhibit To Be Held at Beretania Open House,' Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 4, 1934.
⁴ 'New Techniques Displayed in Water Color Exhibition,' The Honolulu Advertiser, September 18, 1949, p. 6.
⁵ 'Husband- Wife Team to Exhibit,' Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 30 January 1972, p. 32.
⁶ 'Two Shows Highlight Narcissus Festival,' Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 6 February 1972, p. 139.
⁷ Ibid.