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Art on Fire
by
Yun Ko-eun
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Art on Fire |
| Author: | Yun Ko-eun |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 2023 (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 249 pages |
| Original in: | Korean |
| Availability: | Art on Fire - US |
| Art on Fire - UK | |
| Art on Fire - Canada | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) |
- Korean title: 불타는 작품
- Translated by Lizzie Buehler
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Our Assessment:
B- : interesting ideas and issues, but doesn't quite come together
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Korea Herald | . | 4/11/2023 | Hwang Dong-hee |
From the Reviews:
- "The question, "What is art ?" is explored through discussions touching on how artists struggle to make a living, the power of capital and debates over burning artwork." - Hwang Dong-hee, The Korea Herald
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
Art on Fire is narrated by South Korean artist An Yiji who is working as a food-delivery freelancer when she gets her big break: the Robert Foundation offers her a prestigious four-month residency at the Robert Museum of Art in Palm Springs.
Twelve years earlier An had been: "one of the four nominees for the Young Artists of the Year Award", but her career hadn't blossomed -- but now, aged thirty-eight, she has this very promising opportunity which could put her back on track: as someone reminds her once she's on site: "you'll become famous, too, when you finish the residency", just like the artists who had preceded her there.
Not too much is demanded of the artists, but there are certain specific expectations: one of the pieces of art they create is to be inspired by nearby Q City; the artist's work is to be exhibited during the final month of their stay -- and on the final day of the exhibit one of their artworks, selected by the Robert Foundation, is to be destroyed -- incinerated, so that all that's left are ashes.
Of course, An Yiji can't pass up this chance, but she does have some concerns.
Not least, there's the whole nature of the Robert Foundation, since Robert is ... a dog.
Yes: "He's not a typical dog, of course" -- but still .....
Robert is heir to a twenty-million-dollar estate; he also achieved some fame for the photographs he has taken.
And he can communicate with humans -- engage in conversation, even, after a fashion, with the help of, among other things, an 'interpretation box':
Our conversation was made possible by four separate stages of translation: Robert ➜ black box ➜ Danny ➜ English-English interpreter ➜ English-Korean interpreter ➜ me. Even if I spoke English completely fluently, Sam later told me, they would have hired an interpreter. Interpreters considered more than just the flow of language; they provided a certain security. For safety reasons, Robert’s words passed through several checkpoints before reaching me. If I were a native English speaker, that would have removed only one of the checkpoints. Multiple stops existed between artist and patron.(And, yes, language, translation, understanding, and interpretation -- including of the (possible) 'meaning(s)' of art -- are also explored here.)
Despite the incredible opportunity of being able to converse with a dog, amusingly, one of An Yiji's complaints early on is that she is subjected to his endless yapping on at meals -- monologues she doesn't know how to interrupt and which bore her silly.
An Yiji got to Los Angeles easily enough, but getting to Palm Springs proves a bit more complicated -- in no small part because of the wildfires that are burning out of control in the area. The backdrop of wildfires remains during almost the entire extent of her stay; she is in a safe haven, but: "Outside the walls of the Robert Foundation, things continued to ignite for no reason". The fires don't truly threaten the foundation-property, which remains an oasis in the otherwise withering heat (the temperature hit 119 F in Los Angeles at one point), extravagantly over-using water -- "two thousand tons of water each day" -- when everything all around is parched and going up in flames. The only thing meant to burn at the Foundation is the one piece of art at the end of An Yiji's stay, in a carefully-controlled incineration.
It's this idea of burning a work of art -- her art -- that An Yiji really struggles with. It takes her a while to get to work, but she does produce a number of paintings, and there's one work she is particularly pleased with. But, as she is told (or warned):
The piece of art that gets burned in the incineration ceremony always ends up being the artist's best work. You might become well-known after this, but they say you'll never paint anything as good again.'The Robert Foundation certainly has figured out a way to stand out from the usual art(-preserving) institutions, and their small-scale, periodic auto de fé certainly attracts attention.
An Yiji sums up the theory behind it:
According to the Robert Foundation's narrative, the act of incineration gave the incinerated object a story. It exposed the object for what it was.For all the theory, An Yiji clearly isn't won over by this idea, and she puts considerable effort into trying to figure out how to save her creation -- knowing which of the pieces is to be burnt. This also leads the story to not just be about the (possible) destruction of art but also questions of authenticity and forgery. (The *realness* of art -- of the chosen work, in this case, the creation of which Robert ... contributed to -- and then the attempt to duplicate that is also a significant issue.)
These issues are also raised again in the form of Robert himself, as the Robert Foundation's continued existence depends on the continued existence of this creature, as: "upon the dog's death, all activities of the Robert Foundation were to be stopped". So, yes, there are quite a few interested parties who understood -- and did what they could to make certain -- that: "Robert was a creature that could not die".
Not all the previous resident artists had seen their residency through -- one because of a drinking problem, and the other having fled: "they ran away from here. With their art". An Yiji meets the latter, and hears his story, parts of which the reader is already familiar with and which also address questions such as what art is, and what is authentic, and who has a claim to having 'made' the art.
Yun Ko-eun's scenario, of the Robert Foundation (and its peculiar nature and demands) and how an artist deals with these conditions, as well as more general questions about the nature and value of art, has considerable potential, and she does do some interesting things with all this, right down to the way things work out (which is definitely not what anyone expected -- and where nature, this time in the form of torrential rain, also plays a role), but it doesn't quite gel, over-full with ideas (and ways of presenting them, in the form of its various characters and actions). While admirably not too simply trying to be a novel of ideas, Art on Fire does ultimately juggle too many of them, and loses too many of them in the plot(s).
- M.A.Orthofer, 13 September 2025
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Art on Fire: Reviews: Other books by Yun Ko-eun under review: Other books of interest under review:
- See Index of Korean literature
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South Korean author Yun Ko-eun (윤고은) was born in 1980.
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© 2025 the complete review
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