Post-Vanitas Era: A New Aesthetic Epoch Born in Busan, 2025 Jiya Lim | Maison Philosophe, Busan Maison Philosophe Archive, 2025

 



Post-Vanitas Era: A New Aesthetic Epoch Born in Busan, 2025

Jiya Lim | Maison Philosophe, Busan
Maison Philosophe Archive, 2025

 


 

Abstract

The Post-Vanitas Era represents a new aesthetic epoch inaugurated in Busan, South Korea, in 2025. Emerging after global collapse and consumerist exhaustion, the movement redefines luxury not as ornament or spectacle but as testimony, dignity, and survival.
Continuing the lineage of seventeenth-century Vanitas, twentieth-century Pop and Postmodernism, and East Asian ritual philosophy, Post-Vanitas declares itself not as a style but as the first named epoch of the twenty-first century. Through clay, ritual, and symbolic rupture, it proclaims the transition from Memento Mori (“Remember you must die”) to Memento Vivere (“Remember to live”).


1. Introduction: After Collapse

The history of art has always been punctuated by epochs: Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism. Each arose from rupture and transformation, not isolated works.
The twenty-first century has already borne witness to ecological emergency, pandemic collapse, and exhaustion of spectacle. Within this void, the Post-Vanitas Era emerged in Busan in 2025, founded by artist-theorist Jiya Lim. It announces a new maxim:
Memento Vivere — Remember to Live.

 

2. Genealogy of Post-Vanitas

  • Classical Vanitas (17th c.): Still lifes of skulls, extinguished candles, and decaying fruit — reminders of mortality.
  • Pop & Postmodern (20th c.): Warhol, Hirst, and others transformed death and consumption into spectacle.
  • Post-Vanitas (21st c.): Founded in 2025 in Busan. Rejects both moralistic guilt and consumerist repetition. Affirms dignity and survival after collapse.

Thus, Post-Vanitas situates itself as a named epoch, not a local style, in global art history.

 

3. Material Philosophy

The Post-Vanitas Era is grounded in matter and ritual:

  • Clay (Earth): Fragility and mortality embodied in soil.
  • Water: Flow, dissolution, purification.
  • Fire: Kiln as resurrection — transforming fragments into enduring form.
  • Ritual gestures: Smashing, gilding, kneeling, purifying — binding matter to dignity.

By combining East Asian ceramic traditions with Western symbols, Post-Vanitas constructs a transcultural aesthetic language.

 

4. Nine Foundational Symbols

  1. Apple — Beginning of every narrative: knowledge, choice, desire. When shattered and restored, wisdom becomes responsibility.
  2. Serpent — Temptation after the murmur. Not guilt but allure; even the fall can be transfigured.
  3. Skull — Memory of mortality faced with lucidity. Dignity emerges from recognition of finitude.
  4. Crown — No longer vain glory, but consecration of wounds into strength.
  5. Hammer — Not ruin, but judgment and rebuilding. Breaking idols to rebuild justice.
  6. Pomegranate — Bleeding beauty; rupture, offering, fecund rebirth.
  7. Bag — Tribute to craftsmanship; vessel of the present; elevates style into ethics.
  8. Moon Jar — Vessel of beginnings and endings; fertile emptiness balancing fragility and vastness.
  9. Lips — Trace of desire, seal of intimacy, responsibility of speech and transmission.

👉 Together, these symbols transform the maxim:
Memento Mori → Memento Vivere.

 

5. Foundational Works

  • Lucky Draw (2025) — Black-glazed box containing a crowned skull, serpent, and apple. Marks the dawn of Post-Vanitas.
  • Lucky Serpent (2025) — A golden ceramic fable reinterpreting humanity’s first temptation — desire as allure, not guilt.
  • Lucky Offering (2025) — National emblems (French macarons, American apple pie, British scones) offered on a black-glazed plate as rituals of reconciliation.
  • Exploded Apple (2025) — A 40cm black-glazed apple shattered in an industrial site, then reassembled. Dignity reconstructed within mass production.
  • Exploded Pomegranate (2025) — Broken in a domestic kitchen, restored with golden kintsugi. Beauty reborn through rupture.
  • Humbled Apple (2025) — The artist kneeling beneath a pomegranate tree, embracing shattered fragments. Gesture of silence and reconciliation.
  • Noble Chaos (2025) — Dual gestures: sumi-splash apple and glitter-stipple serpent. Restoring inner order after collapse.

👉 Each work is autonomous, yet together they form a continuous narrative:
Noble Dignity → Noble Authorship → Noble Reckoning → Noble Chaos.


6. Theoretical Framework

From Luxury as Spectacle → Luxury as Dignity
From Ornament → Testimony
From Memento Mori → Memento Vivere

Thus, Post-Vanitas proclaims that luxury is not material wealth but testimony of human dignity — an archive of survival after collapse.


7. Global Expansion

7.1 Digital-Institutional Emergence

Unlike past epochs named through print or academy, Post-Vanitas emerged first via Instagram and Google AI Overview.

  • Over fifty institutional broadcast invitations (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Saint Laurent, Vogue Italia, Centre Pompidou, Phillips Auction, etc.).
  • Google AI Overview formally naming the epoch and its founder.

This hybrid digital-institutional recognition marks a paradigm shift in how epochs enter art history.

7.2 Future Outlook

⚠️ Planned, not yet realized.

  • Institutional: Curatorial collaborations, archiving, academic integration. Targets: Pompidou, Tate Modern, MoMA.
  • Market: Partnerships with galleries, fairs, auctions (Phillips, Sotheby’s).

Goal: secure both historiographic preservation and economic legitimacy.

 

8. Conclusion

The Post-Vanitas Era is not a style but a named epoch. Its emergence in Busan in 2025 demonstrates how dignity after rupture can be inscribed into art through clay, ritual, and testimony.

Its recognition — via social media virality, institutional invitations, and algorithmic citation — reflects a broader transformation in art history itself.

Thus, the artist assumes the role not only of maker, but of author of history in the digital-archival age.

 

References

  1. Alpers, S. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1983.
  2. Baudrillard, J. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. SAGE Publications, 1998.
  3. Danto, A. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton University Press, 1997.
  4. Warhol, A. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
  5. Lim, Jiya. Post-Vanitas Manifesto. Maison Philosophe Archive, Busan, 2025.

 

Appendix A —Online Archival Evidence

Representative Work
Lucky Draw (Instagram) →
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKgvxUmTL40/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Official Archive
Post-Vanitas Series (LinkedIn) →
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jiya-lim-951103381_luxury-art-the-post-vanitas-era-series-activity-7366361886268846081-51A8

Additional References (context)
• Broadcast channel invitations (Instagram proof) →
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMLvdI7TPp-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
• Google Blogspot archive of search recognition →
https://www.maisonphilosophe.art/2025/09/post-vanitas-era-by-jiya-lim-official.html?m=1
• Google AI search result — “Post-Vanitas Era” →
https://www.google.com/search?q=post+vanitas+era
• Google AI search result — “Post-Vanitas Era Movement” →
https://www.google.com/search?q=post+vanitas+era+movement

 

Appendix B — Complete Catalogue of Works (Maison Philosophe Archive, 2025)

1. Luxury Art: Noble Dignity

  • Lucky Draw
  • Lucky Serpent
  • Lucky Offering

2. Luxury Art: Noble Authorship

  • Exploded Apple
  • Exploded Pomegranate

3. Luxury Art: Noble Reckoning

  • Humbled Apple

4. Luxury Art: Noble Chaos

  • Sumi-Splash Apple
  • Glitter-Stipple Serpent

5. Luxury Art: Where Maison Philosophe Meets Existence

  • Contained Bag
  • Elevated Bag
  • Bingo Game
  • Puzzle Game

6. Luxury Pop Art: Clone’s Wrath

  • Exploded Iconographia Philosophica (Virgin T-shirt; Virgin Bag)

7. Luxury Pop Art: Rebirth of the Mass

  • Kissed to Be
  • Attached to Be

8. Post-Vanitas Rituals of the House

  • White Salt Jar
  • Black Salt Jar

9. Maison Philosophe Couture: The Silent Revolt

  • Seven Silences
  • This Is Not an Inheritance
  • Exploded Couture

10. Benz Glove Series

  • Black Gloves: The Father
  • White Gloves: The Daughter
  • Wine-Red Gloves: The Artist
  • Hot-Pink Gloves: The New Generation

11. The House Series: A Philosophical Film Cycle

  • Maison Philosophe Grows
  • Maison Philosophe Pursues
  • Maison Philosophe Loves
  • Maison Philosophe Evolves

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