This paper explores how South Korean artists in the 1970s constructed the identity of Korean art and whether their art actually was ‘Korean’ during this period of extreme nationalism. It deals with the 1970s de-Westernization of South Korean artists, who, up until the late-1960s had actively embraced various Western avant-garde art movements and approaches such as geometrical abstraction, happening, pop art, and op-art. This paper navigates different fields of production, including sculpture, installation, and monotone painting. The artists highlighted here commonly shared an aim of “anti-representationalsim” (talpyohyun) regardless of their formal genre. This tendency was derived from the ideology of Daoism (Lao-Zhuang Philosophy) which emphasized asceticism aesthetics of “Nature of Doing Nothing” (muyujayeon) and was distinctly distinguished from a specific Korean tradition. In this context, this paper considers the emergence of anti-representationalism in the 1970s, at this moment when artists attempted to establish a specific identity for Korean art. The paper focuses on Lee Ufan, a well-known Korean Mono-ha theorist in Japan at the time. Even though Mono-ha theory was based on Daoism (a wider East Asian tradition, and not specifically Korean), many Korean artists were attracted to Lee Ufan’s Mono-ha aesthetics because of his nationality. However, a more fundamental reason for this convergence was that in the late 1960s Japan had tried to break away from Western cultural hegemony, creating a situation similar to that of 1970s South Korea, where people desired to create a specific idea of ‘Korean art’ through de-Westernization. The 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea first led to active cultural exchanges between Japan and South Korea. As a result, the Korean art community was able to break away from the anti-Japanese atmosphere that had been strongly cultivated in the aftermath of post-colonial independence since 1945. These artists recognized Japanese culture as an ‘effective cultural channel’ and even demanded the area of cultural coexistence between Korea and Japan.’ They expected the formation of a common art community with Japan to overcome Western hegemony in Asia. In this respect, 1970s South Korean artists collaborated with Japanese artists by using the West as their shared antithetical Other, and help answer the historical demand of the Korean people to locate the identity of Korean art. Therefore, Korean artists did not necessarily distinguish ‘the Eastern’ (or East Asian) from ‘the Korean.’ In this circumstance, seeking the identity of Korean art served as a device to help create a wider imaginary cultural community.<BR> This paper argues that one of the most important formative features of monotone painting was not the use of ‘white’ but the concern with ‘anti-representationalsim.’ Although the use of ‘white’ has long been critically established as a signature nationally specific interest of the monotone painting movement, South Korean monotone painters in fact did not recognize ‘white’ as a tradition to inherit or propagate, nor did they pay particular attention to the color itself. Therefore, this paper argues that it is inaccurate to label the exhibition Korea: Five Artists, Five Whites held at the Donggyeong art gallery in 1975 as the starting point of Korean monochrome painting, or to name ‘monochorme painting as “Dansaekhwa.”
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Dec 4, 2021
Robert T Craig + 1
Open Access