추상 · 과학기술 · 생명 - 한묵의 생명주의 추상

Abstract

This paper aims to provide an understanding of Han Mook (1914-2016)’s abstract work of the 1970s, ones characterized by a stepped, radiating zigzag motif generated through the intersection between concentric circles and radiating lines. Titled “spirals,” “concentric circles” and “lightning rod,” his electrified geometric abstraction appeared in the early 1970s as an ambitious outcome of a prolonged status of an immigrant artist in Paris since 1961, when he left stable positions as a renowned artist, critic and educator at the age of 48 in the immediate post-Korean war years for moving to the ‘capital of the arts in the world.’ Yet the previous literature has rarely explored the historical significance of his new phase of abstract art. This paper does not rehearse the artist’s own account of his abstraction as a direct response to the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing; nor does it consider an assumed morphological influence of the optico-kinetic forms of French and Latin American art of the time. This paper instead seeks to understand the way in which the most amazing technological feat in human history and the optico-kinetic environment of the Paris art scene of the 1960s catalyzed restoration of a particular Korean artistic discourse, a theory of vitalist or bio-centric abstraction to which Han gave a potential shape in the 1950s but which did not come into fruition at the moment. According to the discourse, art should express life, an invisible force that establishes the visible world. This paper thus allows for an understanding of Han’s use of vibrant colors, rhythmic repetitions and animated surfaces in his 1970s’ abstraction as a negotiated continuation of a largely forgotten moment of Korean vitalism.