Story | Connie Li Photography | Louis Vuitton
The fourth edition of Louis Vuitton’s Artycapucines collection sees six more leading contemporary artists bring their unique visions to the bag and transform its blank canvas into a contemporary artwork.
Among these is celebrated Korean artist Park Seo-Bo, founder of Dansaekhwa—a movement that began in the early 1970s and altered the course of Korean art with its ideas of the purposelessness of actions and the spiritual benefits of endless repetition.
Awarded Korea’s Order of Cultural Merit last year, Park’s work is part of permanent collections at numerous art institutions: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and K20, Dusseldorf.
Park’s richly embellished Artycapucines stems from a 2016 work from the Korean master’s celebrated Écriture series, meticulously translated into bag form with the assistance of his grandson, designer Park Jifan. To recreate the image’s beautifully tactile texture, the bag’s calfskin is first treated with a brushstroke-like coup de pinceau effect, before a highly detailed 3D rubber injection—based upon a highdefinition scan of the painting—is then carefully applied to the leather.
To ensure that each bag is a perfect reproduction, the bright red and burgundy leather is then hand-finished to ensure a deep patina. The bag’s interior lining of natural linen canvas reproduces the back of the original painting and features a print of Park’s signature in the central pocket.
The elegant handle is made in polished walnut mounted on a metal frame. The bag’s leather-lined enchapes and LV logo are inlaid with leather that matches the deep burgundy colour of the bag’s stripes and flap, while the four studs on the bottom are inspired by screws that Park has long used on his works, each one adorned with a Louis Vuitton Monogram flower.
“When I later started using colours in my painting, I did so by searching for ‘natural’ colour instead of ‘ideological’ colour,” Park says. “One time, I was looking at a valley by Mount Bandai. The valley was aligned with the sun, so it appeared to be an almost neon red. The colour was so intense that it felt like I was looking at a flame that was chasing me to my death.
“That moment acted as a reminder that I’m only a tiny being in front of the vastness of nature. As the wind blew the clouds and the sunlight shone, one side of the valley remained neon red, while the other side became shaded and much darker. I thought I should paint this ‘harmony of nature’; my red painting came from this moment, from nature.”
Each bag in the fourth Artycapucines Collection will be available in a limited edition of 200, its worldwide reveal was in October.
