Art on Fire by Yun Ko-eun

Award winning Korean author Yun Ko-eun has been writing since 2004 but only more recently have her novels been receiving English translations. Her 2013 book The Disaster Tourist, a dystopian satire, was translated in 2020 by Lizzie Beuhler. Now her 2023 novel Art on Fire (called Burning Work in the original Korean), another dark satire this time based around the art world, has been released in translation also by Beuhler.

Art on Fire has an intriguing and more than a little weird opening sequence. It concerns photographer Bill Mori who becomes famous for a photograph he took accidentally on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Only it turns out that the photograph was actually taken by a dog called Robert. Fast forward a few years and, with the help of a wealthy benefactor, Robert has been made the patron of an American art institute based near Palm Springs known as the Robert Foundation. Every year the Foundation invites an artist to a residency with one condition: at the end of the residency, Robert will choose one of their new works to be incinerated.

The story itself is narrated by Korean artist An Yiji, who has been invited to take up a residency at the Robert Foundation. Just getting to the Foundation turns out to be a kind of surreal experience due to raging California wildfires. But once she is there, An finds things to be even weirder, down to her meals with Robert which are translated by a Korean translator (even though she speaks English) and then a second translator who interprets for Robert the dog. She also encounters a range of strange characters from the staff at the foundation to the residents of the local city of Q, which is partnering with the Foundation on An’s residency.

Art on Fire is a satire on the art and entertainment world but even given this background it is really hard to know what Yun is trying to say. The introductory section and Kafkaesque trip to the Foundation are both well handled but once An actually reaches the Foundation things slow down. She experiences a painter’s block but when she gets past this and starts painting, An starts to worry about the work that will be destroyed when her residency ends. The fact that the Foundation is seemingly run by a hyper-intelligent, photograph taking dog is a crazy idea but one that very quickly runs out of steam.

The idea of the value of art is central to the narrative. Is An’s remaining art more valuable because she has to destroy a painting? Does the chosen painting become more valuable in her eyes because it is the one she is required to destroy? The interesting thing with asking this question being that this is not just a thought experiment. It is exactly what happened with Banksy’s painting Girl with Balloon which, in 2018, was sold and then passed through a shredder. It has since turned out that “the act of destruction turned the piece into a unique, historical object, significantly boosting its value.”

Yun Ko-eun has a range of interesting things to say about inspiration, the nature and value of art, the pressure on artists and the artificiality of the art world. But while there is some strange enjoyment to be had from many aspects of Art on Fire and its bizarre set up, it does not quite hit mark.

Art on Fire by Yun Ko-eun

6.5

6.5/10