No Title
- Artist: Li Yuan-chia
- Date: 1993
- Medium: Hand coloured photograph on paper
- Dimensions: 198 x 243 mm (print)
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is “No Title” by Li Yuan‑chia, created in 1993. The work is a hand‑coloured photograph printed on paper; it measures about 198 × 243 mm for the main print, with a slightly larger secondary support of 220 × 268 mm. Li Yuan‑chia (1929–1994) was known for his photographic explorations that blur line and color. In this piece he takes a snapshot of an everyday scene—an architectural detail or perhaps a fragment of street life—and reworks it with delicate hand colouring, creating layers of pigment that lift the image from a flat paper to a more tangible surface.
The photograph has a quiet, almost photographic realism, but the added hues give it a painterly quality; the colors are not simply over‑saturated but seem to come from within the image itself, as if light were drawn out by brush strokes. It is displayed on the JMW Turner show at Tate Britain’s Living Gardens (Room 39), inviting viewers to step close and feel the texture of paper, the subtle interplay between photographic detail and hand‑applied color.
The piece sits in the Tate collection, acquired in 2004, and it reflects Li Yuan‑chia’s mid‑century approach to blending technology with traditional art techniques, a dialogue between photograph and painting that invites you to pause and see both image and colour as separate yet inseparable elements.
See it in person
No Title is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
