Signs of optimism, symptoms of hope. North and South Korean painting of the 1970s and 1980s. A case study

Abstract

I discuss modern art in relation to hope, using as a case study the stylistically and ideologically diametrically opposed paintings produced in the two Koreas: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. I narrow the comparison by limiting the discussion of the latter context to the artist Chung Sang Hwa (or Chung Sang-Hwa), who has subsequently become well-known internationally in relation to the tendency dubbed ‘Dansaekhwa’ – the Korean term for ‘monochrome’ or ‘one-colour-painting.’ In opposition to Chung’s work, I discuss the North Korean variant of Socialist Realism, Juche Realism, the official (and only) form of art in the DPRK to this day. I consider the role of positive thoughts and emotions, in particular expectation, optimism, and especially, hope in determining why this art was produced and how it was received. I argue that as part of the program in which art is subordinated to political ritual, North Korean art encodes signs of social optimism. Chung Sang Hwa, by contrast, is symptomatic of a tendency in South Korean art of the period to absorb important values from western culture, blending them with intimate knowledge of local traditions and values. Chung ritualized the art making process itself as a highly personalized source of hope. In the senses in which I use the linked terms ‘optimism’ and ‘hope,’ the former implies art as a tool of wish-fulfillment aimed at pacifying people in the present. By contrast, the ‘hope’ I refer to in relation to Chung involves the refusal to instrumentalize art, combined with the obligation to use art to face up to the potentially cataclysmic challenges of an uncertain world.