서세옥의 수묵추상 전환과정과 조형의식

Abstract

Suh Se-ok (1929-2020) is the first-generation main actor of Korean Painting(韓國畵), generated at the forefront of the ‘establishment of national art’, which was a newly born fatherland liberated in 1945. His performances after being nominated for the greatest award by the oriental painting session, a unit of the very first National Art Exhibition established in 1949, possess significance of leading a new world of creation as a shift from modern ‘Oriental paintings(東洋畵)’ to contemporary ‘Korean paintings’. Especially, he remonopolized abstract image, spread as a ‘global language’ in Western regions under cold war after the end of World War II, to Seohwa(書畫), XieYi(寫意) of literary painting, and the idea of ink painting. Furthermore, Suh utilized original paper, brush, and ink to pursue modernization and globalization, leading a pathway from ‘Korean painting’ to a nonfigurative generation. Under the context of radical change to ink abstract painting in fellow artist groups, Suh Se-ok sought for a more phased process of shift. Suh, in the initial stage of the new painting style in East Asia, amongst the period of 1954, possessed an attempt of reformation by pursuing a contemporary formation of XieYi. By the time of 1957, he sought for the transition to ink abstract painting and proposed it since early 1960 at ‘Mukrimhoe’ which he led to organize on his own. By the end of 1961, under the pathway of ‘muksang(墨像)’, it was developed into abstractive expression. Then, around the end of the 1960s, Suh created calligraphic abstraction by producing an image of mankind, passing through pictographic abstraction originating in rediscovered dots and lines of brushes and ink as an origin of creation. Thereby, he accomplished a distinctive method.