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On Valentine's day weekend, Daniela and I took a trip upstate to Beacon, NY. Our plan was to spend the first day at Storm King Art center and Dia Beacon the next. This meant we would be staying overnight, meaning we would need a place to stay overnight, meaning we would need to search on google the following phrases: "hotels in Beacon", "bed and breakfasts in Beacon", "airbnb Beacon NY", etc. Seeing there were no real hotels in Beacon (much to our surprise), it was the second phrase that ended up yielding the most results, of which there were still only a few. One of those few was a fixture called "The Roundhouse" whose photos of the outside of the establishment were all either sketches done in Procreate or collages of 3d renderings and stock photography, neither of which imbued us with confidence in it being an entirely real place. The remaining two contenders shared similar archetypes: colonial buildings with historically intact interiors that surely immersed you into the rustic landscape of the town. In the end, one of those two looked just a tad bit nicer and was located more subtly away from the main street which was fittingly titled 'Main St". It was called "Chrystie House" and the photos of the rooms that were named after 18th Century American Bureaucrats promised a warm and homely stay.
We called an Uber from Storm King. He mistakenly took us back to the train station as if he knew that Beacon had nothing left to offer and, after looking at the app, was surprised to see we were planning on staying over, exclaiming "I didn't know there was a bed and breakfast over here!" After indulging us with stories from the Vietnam War, where he recanted his glory days of getting six dollar hookers in Aruba, he finally rolled into the entrance way of a home atop a hill. He was sure it was someone's private residence after seeing a basketball hoop and some other family oriented paraphernalia outside and insisted on waiting outside for us to see if this was the right address. I looked through the front door which led to a ominous, unlit hallway and was blocked by a trampoline from the inside. I assuredly sped away, certain that there was no chance this was the right place and unsure about gun laws as it pertains to trespassing in upstate NY. Only, just as I turned away, a man came out from the side door and called out to ask if we were his guests.
It was the owner of "Chrystie House", a Taiwanese fellow by the name of Yuan Lee. He immediately showed us around, giving us a look at the quaint yet elegant living room and dining room that were spitting images of the photos on google. He explained the house was built by the same architect that made Central Park and was now under his protection after the city of Beacon threatened to tear it down to build more apartment complexes. After giving us a tour, Yuan brought us to a small table in the hall that hosted three empty boxes of Nabisco Animal Crackers. He humbly tells us that he did the paintings of the animals for the packaging. He then shows us the new prints he's selling: paintings of elephants, cheetahs, bears, pretty much every zoo animal imaginable. After showing interest in his art, he excitedly brings us to the dining room, where he busts out a binder with sleeves and sleeves of stamps, each one featuring micro-paintings of nature, landscapes, and animals. He points to the walls, which we just then realized were lined with original paintings of his, the brush strokes of green foliage and brown locks of fur confronting the Georgian ornament of the home's interior.
He showed us the textbooks and childrens books he's illustrated and explains the intense research that goes behind each one. He leafed through a folder of his portfolio that his agency curated for him, which showed an array of compositions with more graphic elements. He goes off about his time at SVA, his disdain for the age of digital design, and his new pursuit of studying the origins of the Chinese language. Yuan, his wife Yuling, and their eleven year old son Christopher live in the Chrystie House, too. Their section of the house sits directly next to the dining room, separated only by a door to the left.
We only met Yuling in the morning while checking out. She invites us back up to interview Yuan for this magazine and take pictures of Chrystie House for their website. Two weekends later we returned. After some hours taking photos, Yuling invites us down to the dining room to eat something. Yuan is there complaining about the food being prepared: avocado bread with wild garlic, which we learn she sourced organically and picked at local farms. He thinks it tastes too weird and says that most people don't like it. We learn all of their food is sourced organically and picked at local farms, something Yuan struggles with daily and blames on Yuling's upbringing in China. "They couldn't afford to get sick or else they would die."
As we eat, Yuan is scrubbing the table with a rag in an attempt to revitalize it. Apparently some of the guests caused damage to it by spraying disinfectant on everything during COVID. He's rambling about the destructiveness of communism. Christopher comes in and they speak Chinese to one another. Yuan tells us about how Christopher didn't make it to the school basketball team, but someone worse than him did. He tells us how he's the only Asian kid at his school and talks about how Christopher's classmates think he's Christopher's grandfather because of his age. It's difficult to get Yuan to sit down and do the interview, but it eventually happens. He's in the midst of showing us an unpublished website of his, which displays a series of intricate diagrams of Da Vinci's sketches next to photos of the Chrystie House, when I ask him if I can start recording.
Yuan
So, these are the old photos taken in 1972, when they relocated the house, so it gave me a perfect side view of this house. When I was measuring it, I found out it was using this kind of a diagram where there is one big circle, and then you take half of it and make the 12th circle and then they create this kind of a diagram. And then from this, I found out that this house was built with this measurement, okay?
Adrian
So, you're just drawing circles trying to analyze the structure of the house?
Yuan
When I first looked at this house, I knew there must be something. There's almost 40 windows of this shape. It's four by seven. If you take the diagonal line, you will get something very, very close to eight. You can use it to create a diagram which you can evenly divide the circle into twelve. You understand that?
From what I understand, Yuan is describing what he believes to be the "sacred geometry" of the Chrystie House. He believes that the measurements Da Vinci applied to his Vitruvian Man is a universal code that can be applied to nearly every facet of human civilization, including the supposedly transcendental Chrystie House, which was made by architects who he claims studied this "sacred geometry". He goes on to explain how all of Hudson Valley is modeled after the same diagram and shows us the charts to prove it: screenshots of maps of Upstate New York overlaid with circles with radii running parallel to rivers and circumferences drawing tangents to towns. Yuan believes the founding fathers had a purpose for choosing the locations they did to set up shop. "You think about how people find a place and develop civilization. There's a reason for it." Finally, he clicks on the tab with a personal website archiving his art. On it, his many stamp commissions, book covers, textbook drawings, and hyperrealistic portraits.
Yuan
And now this is about my work. So on this website, I have two parts. Should we turn on the light? Okay, so one part is illustration. So this is a nature illustration for a high end science textbook. This is an American wetland.
He's skimming through a slew of intricate oil paintings, most of which are depictions of nature. The amount of work was truly impressive; there seemed to be hundreds of these astoundingly well-rendered vignettes of flowers, birds and forests all delicately structured within the framework of stamps, packaging, and book covers.
Yuan
This is something I did for the United Nations for the 1997 or 1998 International Year of the ocean. This one was issued in Vienna, that's why it's in German. You see, that's my signature. The UN put it there. I never asked. Because my stamps are very collectible, they even asked my permission to put my signature there.
Adrian
So were these low editions? Were they rare?
Yuan
Yeah and then they even pay me like 50 cents for each signature to sign on like 6000 stamps or something.
Adrian
Oh wow. Like an athlete.
Yuan
This business right now is dead. Killed by computers. And now they use photographs and whatever computer lousy stuff. It's not collectible anymore, from my point of view.
Adrian
So are people selling your stamps on eBay now?
Yuan
You might find it but it's not easy. I mean, they didn't print many, so in three or four months it sold out. I still have many of them because I collect them myself. I can give it to people as a gift. So you can see that I do a lot of nature, environment type of things. There's two things about my topic that I'll pick. One is human history: Astrology and archaeologies. The other is natural history because we as human beings are the caretakers of nature, even though that thinking is not shared by most of the people in the world right now. Americans will use their money to buy a piece of land but won't think that they're the caretakers. They will use as much as they can and then before they sell it, they will disguise it in beautiful ways so that they can make some profit. That's all they think about. And that's the thinking that created communism. In many poor countries, they want to kill the rich people. After 30 years of hyper development of the Chinese scorched earth capitalism, which is run by the government, there are lots of rich Chinese people who are buying American houses. And their purpose is not to help this country have a better environment or better future. It's not a good thing, but lots of people like them, especially the New York realtors. [Yuan points to a framed painting on the wall] This painting sold, so this version is a reproduction.
Adrian
When did you start selling the originals?
Yuan
Whenever I need money. Some people would come to me and say that they saw my images somewhere and that they would buy it. My wife mainly sells them to some Chinese collectors. In the past ten years, they have paid more. A lot more.
Adrian
How much did you get for this one?
Yuan
I don't think I can tell you.
Yuan
Of course. That's between me and the dealer and client. Because this is not bought in the galleries. They are private dealers. I cannot do this. Otherwise I could screw up a lot of people, not just me. [Yuan gestures to the next painting] Okay, so this is another one. This one I was invited to do as a part of a group show in the Taiwanese National Museum. It's for an environmental thing: a fundraiser. So I did this and then I donated the rights for them to duplicate it for stamps and other things.
Adrian
Was it for the bear specifically?
Yuan
No, these are all Taiwanese endangered species. By the way, this one [He points at the bear painting] they officially announced that it's extinct in Taiwan. I did this painting with some references and also a model from the natural museum there.
Adrian
Is that what you normally do to paint animals?
Yuan
Well, for this bear, I saw this fat one in the zoo. This wildlife expert in Taiwan was saying that my work made it obvious that I wasn't local because they don't get this fat in the wilderness today. They don't have enough food. Taiwan needed to carve out all these rocks to create mountain roads and so these unnatural rocks fell down and then blocked the creek. So, I'm kind of using this to say this bear is kind of upset about this. You know American black bears are now becoming endangered? I did an American black bear for the UN in 2000.
At this point, Yuan calls Christopher to come help with the iPad after it locks in vertical orientation. It was surprising to see Yuan's predilection to discussing such political conversations with his work. At first glance, his art seemed observational to the point of objectivism, almost indifference. It was an interesting process trying to recontextualize his paintings of nature with this newfound enviro-conscious lens. The staleness of the animal's placement—an endangered bear stagnant next to a stream, his paw almost but not quite resting over a rock—suddenly transfigured. What initially seemed to be a kind of awkward limbo pose turned into an intentional posturing, representing the bear's tragic apathy for the future of its species.
Adrian
So how did the UN find you? Were you already established?
Yuan
I used to advertise in things like the Black Book. It's like $5,000 a page, you know.
Adrian
When did you sign to your agency?
Yuan
After I decided to start to do illustration, I advertised in the Black Book and then the agent contacted me. At the time, there was a very popular Jewish woman agent who represented the most popular romance cover painter, Pinto. He was a very impressionistic painter and all the big publishers hired him to do romance covers. People sometimes have to wait between six months to a year to get his work and they pay him top dollars for it. But then he resigned. And so she had the idea that I could be the next Pinto. And I said, "Oh, yeah!" I didn't know much, I was young. So I tried a few, but I didn't feel good about it. The way it works is usually the art director will take the photographs of some supermodel, a guy from Serbia or somewhere.
Adrian
An Arnold Schwarzenegger type guy.
Yuan
Yeah. And he's on every cover. That's the way they do business at the time and I just didn't like it. But I did a few. And then one time, I needed to go to Paris and I walked out the Louvre and I saw a book with a cover that I did on a bookstand and I was going to die. Then when I got back I quit and became independent for a few years.
Adrian
So you didn't like the fact that the book cover that you did was everywhere.
Yuan
I felt embarrassed. At the time my mother was still alive!
Adrian
How was the crediting done?
Yuan
They put your name on the cover. Over the years I've done hundreds of different ones that have my name on them.
Adrian
So was that a big break for you when that art director called you up?
Yuan
No, because I killed that. When she needed an artist to do certain work I'd do it, but they weren't the things I wanted. I mean, I told her the things I wanted to do but she wouldn't give me projects like that because she had too many other artists doing nature stuff. And then later, when the UN contacted me for the International Year of the ocean, I went to the meeting, and she was there with a different artist. So I don't think that she was a break for me because even after that I was paying for two pages in the Black Book for $10,000 to advertise my work. I represented and invested in myself and people were impressed by it so they would contact me. Then the big break came from the Nabisco packaging.
Adrian
So how did that happen?
Yuan
So I did this UN thing and then this agent, Lavaty, contacted me. Maybe you guys should do something with him because he is going to be ninety and his father represented artists like Norman Rockwell. He's the second generation of famous agents. Anyways, one day I got a phone call from him. He said, "I'm Jeff Lavaty and you have to forget about this phone call after we finish it." He thought every illustrator should know who he was but I didn't know him. I was ignorant at the time. He said, "The UN came to me with a big project and I know you have done something similar. I think that you can work with me just for this one project. Let's just get it done. I'll take my commission and you get your pay and that's it. Forget about this conversation." You know, he thought that he was too big and I was too little and he felt embarrassed. And I said, "Mr. Lavaty, one question: why would you call me? Don't you have hundreds of other artists?" He said, "There are a few artists but the UN doesn't hire the same people repeatedly." They cannot reuse artists within five years because, politically, they have to use all the artists in the world. So I did that project for the UN. And then one day, someone told Lavaty that I did a good job with the UN project and there was something big coming up, which was the Nabisco animal cracker. All his artists were being hired and fired for it. So, again, he called me, saying, "I have to call you because I ran out of artists." He told me that it's not an easy project because Nabisco already told me that they are paying a low kill fee. Usually the kill fee is a third or half of the total contract.
Adrian
What's a kill fee?
Yuan
It's the portion of the money they pay you if they end up firing you.
Adrian
How much lower was it for the Nabisco project?
Yuan
I didn't even ask. I said, "I don't think they will kill me." So I went to the meeting, and I liked the designer working on the project with me. The first meeting they had me sit there and do live drawings in front of them. That's how tough it was. Nabisco animal crackers has a joint venture with Barnum and Circus, the number one circus in the US. That's why the animal crackers were using the circus cage imagery. The problem was that in 1997 many kids, along with their parents, went to the circus to protest animal abuse, right? But Nabisco had this long contract with the circus that they could not abandon. So I was in the meetings, and we talked about how to deal with it. And I said, "The circus is good parenting. The parents took their children there to have fun. So let's just focus on that." That's how I came up with animal parenting. So I did some drawings for them. They told me that they want to talk about endangered species and promote the protection of animals. So that's why the panels have the animals in the wilderness. The difficult part was the top banner. In the beginning, we tried baby animals with parent animals again but it was very messy because it's such a small format. So instead I said, "Let's do an example of successful parenting, which is teenagers", and they agreed. Many months went into executing it all. After that Jeff Lavaty called me and said, "Yuan, I think it's about time for me to pay you a visit." We signed a contract immediately after he saw all my work. I even negotiated so that if I got clients myself, I wouldn't have to split it with him and he accepted.
Adrian
Was that a rare occurrence—to negotiate your contract like that?
Yuan
I talked to some illustrators and they said that I had some nerve to do that. I said, "I am already advertising myself. I'm happy." But of course he's the one that brought me new clients. That's the reason that their agency like that exists, because they have like old relationships with people. But I don't think that works today. After the year 2000, I saw American society totally change, especially in the commercial art world. Very seasoned art directors and legendary directors were retiring and replaced by very young computer design graduates who didn't want some senior art director coming to them saying what to do and what not to do. I'd call it a computer oriented democracy, which means there was no longer the middleman.
Adrian
So you were out of work when digital art exploded?
Yuan
No, I survived. My type of work still continued because it was one of a kind. People that needed a historically accurate painting for their historical fiction—they would have to hire somebody like me. There was a period of time I kept getting phone calls from a publisher who started to buy all my images so that they could create the image bank that they could recycle through and then they could just hire a young person to put something together. That way they wouldn't need to create new original art. But, again, if you are serious, you have to make it historical.
Adrian
When they commission you to do the historical work do they give you the background info or do you have to do your own research?
Yuan
The art director will give me the whole book to read. So I read all of it and created a book cover.
Adrian
So what is the art director's job?
Yuan
In that generation, many art directors just own artists. So, for example, I wouldn't work with any other art directors in that company. I had this experience working with this art director in Texas for a huge painting about Hannibal and the Romans. She showed me a rough sketch and I said it was historically incorrect; you cannot put the elephant behind the Calvary. So I pretty much redid the whole thing. Then I got a call from Jeff saying that they want to fire me because the art director found that it's impossible to work with me. I put up a fight and sent my drawing to the editors and the editors said I was correct, but the art buyers still called saying that the art director is too important for the company and she just doesn't want to work with me. I had a feeling that there was some racism there. Can you imagine you put the elephant behind the Calvary? It looks nice, but in a real battle it wouldn't work—the elephant is gonna trample over all the horses! The American publishing world is no longer the one that I used to know. They're younger and they're ruthless.
Adrian
What do you think makes someone a superstar?
Yuan
There are three different aspects of a superstar. One is the timing. The other one is the field and the situation that requires a superstar. And then of course, it's the ability or quality of this person.
