Korean Art Research Articles

Front and Back Covers, Volume 37, Number 3. June 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 3Front coverPLASTIC POSSIBILITIESThe front cover depicts an art installation by South Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, also known as ‘the plastic alchemist’, at the ‘Your Bright Future’ exhibition in Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 2009. For Hwa, plastic is the most artificial material that is at the same time the most common element in today's landscape.Hailed as the quintessential material for design, invention and relentless production, plastic is often associated with post‐WWII industrial growth in the Western world. And yet, wading through the ‘plastic islands’ of our oceans, standing knee‐deep in landfills, choking on incinerated plastic fumes, the spectacular ‘utopia’ of plastic is beginning to register differently.In this issue, Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael present the everyday ‘alchemies’, the lived realities assembled with plastic and plastic waste in India. They take us into the household of Dey's parents in Kolkata and familiarize us with the creative repurposing techniques performed on everyday plastic items like bottles, containers, carrier bags, etc., which are supposed to be thrown away after ‘single use’. Like the recycled baskets in Hwa's art installation, the inventive deployment of used plastics here point to the emerging socio‐materialities of plastics, which might, in turn, inform and inspire different futures, leading us into collaborative kinship and more‐than‐human living with plastics.These emergent plastic relations are embedded within more extensive socio‐economic, political and ecological relations configured in contemporary India around plastic's production, consumption and waste management. The delicate plastic economies of the poorer urban households are at risk under the recent government reforms in waste management, the neo‐liberalization of waste work and the ‘toxic’ externalities produced by large‐scale extractive infrastructures.Back coverCONTAINER SHIPPINGAbove: satellite image of the containership Ever Given from the Evergreen Marine shipping line stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, 24 March 2021. Below: the same ship safely moored in the port of Rotterdam, 9 March 2020.The Ever Given, an ultra‐large containership, obstructed the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021, thereby accruing an estimated loss to the world economy of US $400 million per hour. Getting stuck in the canal on its way from Asia to Rotterdam, the ship not only brought the seemingly smooth flow of maritime transportation via this central waterway to a hold, but also sparked great public interest in the role of the maritime industry – and its ever‐growing container vessels – in the functioning of global capitalism today.In ‘Politics of scale’ in this issue, Hege H⊘yer Leivestad and Elisabeth Schober remind us that the Ever Given is only one of many ultra‐large ‘box ships’ sailing the world's oceans today. These vessels have, over recent years, undergone a spectacular growth in size. The reasons for this expansion are no longer primarily located in economies of scale, the authors argue, but rather, are enmeshed with complex political processes in far‐flung places across the world.Featuring the story of the HMM Algeciras, currently the largest containership in the world in terms of container‐carrying capacity, the article takes us from a ship christening at a South Korean shipyard, past the Suez Canal, to the Spanish port town that the ship is named after. Tracing the complex public‐private partnership that brought the HMM Algeciras into being, attention is also paid to the mounting social costs of ultra‐large container vessels like these, which require massive (and often public) investments in infrastructures at the land‐sea interface.Bigger is not always better. In the containership industry, have we arrived at a point where unsustainable false economies of scale are setting in?

Retrospective Witnessing: Paintings of Grievous Deaths in the Korean War

ABSTRACT This article examines visual arts that represent the mass killings of unarmed civilians by the state before and during the Korean War (1950–1953). It analyses three South Korean artists, Kang Yo-bae, Suh Yongsun and Jeon Seung-il, who produced paintings that made direct reference to the grievous and unjust civilian deaths, a taboo subject that is still controversial in a society bound by the unfinished war. This article seeks to contribute to the critical inquiry into the long-delayed yet urgent issue of historical injustice from the perspective of visual representation. It draws attention to the following questions: how the artists establish relations with the violent past, vicariously and retrospectively; how they represent the grievous deaths in critical, imaginative and affective modes of visual expression; and how their paintings participate in a socially engaged act of ethical witnessing. The article further considers how their works are in dialogue with and simultaneously depart from the official investigative attempts in approaching the notion of truth. It argues that the paintings enact a communicative practice of mourning that mediates the living and the dead, without anticipating premature reconciliation.

Korea's First Museum and the Categorization of “Buddhist Statues”

Abstract The establishment of a museum in the precinct of Ch'anggyŏnggung Palace in 1909 marked an important moment in the historiography of Korean art. Although recent studies have examined the founding, organization, and financing of the first Korean museum, the formation of its Buddhist art collection and its historical implications remain unexamined. Given that not a single Buddhist temple was allowed to exist within the capital city, the entry of these objects into the palace demonstrates a radical paradigm shift in the royal court's relation to Buddhist icons. The museum's Buddhist art collection reveals what was available in the art market of the time and what was considered worthy of being collected in a royal museum. Through close examination of Korea's first museum and its collection, this study traces the recontextualization of religious icons into art objects and the historical implications behind the category of “Buddhist statues.”

한국 춤의 정서적 순환구조에 관한 연구: ‘한(恨)’과 ‘신명(神明)’을 중심으로

Koreans'' ‘Han’ saw that it was possible to create aesthetic and ethical values by creating ‘Shinmyeong’ through the process of cutting and washing the inside, not bringing revenge. The Korean people''s Han and Shinmyeong are formed in a circular structure, and the Han to Shinmyeong''s circular structure is a phenomenon that can be seen throughout Korean art. Korean dance is a dance of spirituality that breaks through deep resentment. The representative folk dances such as ‘Mask dance’ and ‘Salpuri’, a traditional dance, are all based on the sorrow of the Korean people, but are all moving toward a structure of divinity that transcends their sorrow.

Hyperrealism in Korea in the Late 1970s

Korean hyperrealism, a style that transfers photographic imagery and conventions to the medium of painting, is one of the few art forms of the late 1970s that has yet to receive substantive re-evaluation. Contrary to some critics’ derogatory dismissals, the style raises issues of cultural identity central to the aesthetics and critical theory of art after the Korean War. This study investigates how the hybrid forms and iconographical attention paid by Korean hyperrealism to common objects of everyday life reflect Korean society at a time when sophisticated encounters of opposing socio-political identities were taking place. After reviewing the history of this little known art form, especially of its critical discourse with prevalent social currents in the Korea of the period, the present study proceeds to define its iconography in relation to its “cultural other,” American hyperrealism. Many works of Korean hyperrealism engage some of the most pressing issues of Korea in the 1970s. In terms of subject matter, the works show complicated views of the character of the urbanization policies under President Park Chunghee (Pak Chŏnghŭi 朴正熙). Formally, the works present photographic details with a monochromatic tendency, a minimal surface infused with a sense of real-time theatricality, and an image of actual objects confluent with the illusionistic details. Juxtaposing and combining many antithetical concepts in an attempt to maintain a fragile balance, Korean artists struggled to create a culturally relevant mode of modernist expression and representation, and thereby translate their experience into a distinctive artistic language that is unique to their time period.

일제강점기 초기 창작가곡에서 한국적 예술가곡으로: 박태준 가곡에서 나타난 시와 음악의 상관관계

A study on the analysis of Park Tae-joon s art song is the first step in studying the process of transforming from early composing song to Korean style art songs in the early modern era of Korea. IIt focused on changing musical factors of his pieces from his initial period of time until the time when he established matured technique. I analyzed how the music expressed the lyrics when it sings a poem and how Korean elements were used in Park Tae-joon s music works.
 Generally Park Tae-joon composed simple music with regular phrase such as children s songs and hymns. Sometimes he tried to express the meaning of poetry matching texts with music by using musical elements like word painting, figurations of piano accompaniment and using irregular time. In addition, although he composed art songs that are western musical forms, he tried to use Korean musical idioms, which commonly used in Korean traditional songs called “Min-yo” such as a pentatonic scale, triple meter and Saeya harmony. This study finds that Park Tae-joon tried to find his identities of Korean art songs in the early modern era of Korea.

The issue of two women in the korean art world

The issue of two women in the korean art world

󰡔조선력대미술가편람󰡕을 통해 본 북한의 미술인명사전 편찬

󰡔조선력대미술가편람󰡕을 통해 본 북한의 미술인명사전 편찬

“MENJADI KOREA”: MELIHAT CARA, BENTUK DAN MAKNA BUDAYA POP KAREA BAGI REMAJA DI SURABAYA

This article explores the ways, forms and meanings of Korean pop culture for teenagers in Surabaya. Several studies show that Korean pop culture has developed in Indonesia since the early 2000s through Korean films, followed by music, food and beauty products. However, studies that focus on the ways, forms and meanings of Korean pop culture for Surabaya youth in metropolitan city are still very limited. This article, on the other hand, wants to discuss this in field research through in-depth interviews with 5 Surabaya teenagers, members of KLOSS (Korea Lovers Surabaya Community). This article shows that Korean pop culture has become a new culture for youth in Surabaya because its novelty values. They get the Korean pop through television and social media. The prominent forms of pop culture used by the majority of youths are Korean cultural symbols represented in everyday life. Meanwhile, the meaning of Korean pop culture is in the form of information about Korean youth, Korean artists and other “Korean-ness”.Keywords: Korean Pop Culture, To be Korea, Korean-ness, Surabaya Teenagers.

The memory struggle: archives of postmemory in contemporary Korean photography

This essay elucidates works of ‘the generation after’ Korean artists whose photographs reveal crevices of the modern and contemporary history of Korea. Using the medium of photography, Kwon Soon Kwan, Oh Suk Kuhn, An Jung Ju, Im Jong Jin, and Lim Anna look back and take issues with memories of then Korean War and the Gwangju Democratization Movement of May 18. I examine how their postmemory works visualize ghostly presences, dramas of anxiety, bodies as sites for trauma, and consumed and celebrated memories. I analyze ways in which they explore cultural, historical, and political transformations in collective memories based on Marian Hirsch’s theory of postmemory. Their works further pose questions on official records of the past traumatic events that were modified, edited, distorted, and even deleted for political purposes. I claim that, by giving the individual victims permanent presences, their photographic impulse is to recover what is no longer visible in society and history. Photographs in their work are places of lasting return that bring about ghosts that have disappeared in the archive. I argue that focused on the tension between national and individual memories, the artists’ imaginative horizon and creative appropriation recover specific local histories of the political violence embedded in oblivion.

From Korea to Japan: A Transnational Perspective on South Korea's Important Intangible Cultural Properties and Zainichi Korean Artists

From Korea to Japan: A Transnational Perspective on South Korea's Important Intangible Cultural Properties and Zainichi Korean Artists

Dong-Yeon Koh, The Korean War and Postmemory Generation: Contemporary Korean Arts and Films

Dong-Yeon Koh, The Korean War and Postmemory Generation: Contemporary Korean Arts and Films

1970년대 미술가들의 정체성 찾기 : ‘한국적인 것’과 ‘동양적인 것’의 착종과 접합

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.”

Oppan Gangnam style! A series of accidents – place branding, entrepreneurship and pop culture

PurposeThis study aims to highlight a series of accidents epitomized by the success of a music artist, bringing three streams of literature together – pop culture, entrepreneurship and place branding.Design/methodology/approachUsing an illustrative case of a 2012 YouTube hit song, Oppan Gangnam Style, by Korean artist Park Jae-Sang, the artist’s attempt to lampoon the extravagant lifestyle of Gangnam District’s residents accidentally puts them on the global map. The narrative is built around the storytelling approach.FindingsThe study highlights the intersections of pop culture creativity and entrepreneurship (albeit accidental) with implications for place branding.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is overtly documentary analysis-based and could, therefore be subjected to quantitative analysis in future research. Furthermore, the conceptual model could be tested with additional cases in the future.Originality/valueIn a broad sense, this study is a pioneering effort in the field of entrepreneurship and its interconnections with other disciplines – marketing (place and entrepreneurship) and pop culture. The conceptual model could form a basis for future research in such intersections.

The Valuation of Art in the Online Art Market: Based on the Experience of the Selected Korean Artists on Saatchi Art

The Valuation of Art in the Online Art Market: Based on the Experience of the Selected Korean Artists on Saatchi Art

Building North Korean Art: Pen Varlen/Pyŏn Wŏllyong and Ethnic Networks amid the Cold War

This article scrutinizes the roles of mobile individuals in the geopolitical formation of North Korean art in the mid-1950s. The networks of Pen Varlen (1916–1990), a visitor from the Soviet Union, and his colleagues in North Korea exemplify how the international travels and connections of these ethnic Korean artists reconfigured postcolonial Korean art to construct a new socialist art. The article examines how the codes of Soviet Socialist Realism became transferable, communicable, and adaptable by Pen and his circle in North Korea and how their relation to the Soviet Union shaped a new identity for national art.

The Aesthetic Journey of Seundja Rhee: From Earth to Cosmos

Seundja Rhee (1918–2009), celebrated in Korea and France, has remained largely unknown elsewhere. However, in the history of Korean women artists, especially those active abroad, she takes a remarkable place with achievements deserving reconsideration. Her six-decade career covered very distinctive stylistic periods, which she named: Figurative (1954–1956), (1957–1960), Woman and Earth (1961–1968), Superimposition (1969–1971), City (1972–1974), Yin and Yang (1975–1976), Nature (1977–1979), Road to the Antipodes (1980–1994), and Cosmos (1995–2008). This article groups Rhee’s oeuvre into four broader phases and examines her artistic development and life story.

‘The living hand gives birth to the painter’: Selected writings on painting by Lee Ufan

Alongside his studio practice, the Korean artist Lee Ufan (b.1936) has consistently published writings that are intended to both elucidate his own practice and to address much broader issues relating to art and culture. Through his writing and art, Lee has sought the grounds from which to both assimilate and challenge Westernizing hegemony, based on a deep understanding of both East Asian and Western art and philosophy. Lees work maps the conventions of modernist Western abstraction onto traditional East Asian concepts of painting, most especially in relation to the role of the body, circulating energy, void and the ‘untouched’. The selection below is a small sample of his writings, and they are preceded by an introduction to Lee Ufan, and a brief interview with the artist conducted by email with Simon Morley in 2017.

Impact of Government Support on Performing Artists' Job and Life Satisfaction: Findings from The National Survey in Korea.

In this study, we aim to propose motives that can help increase the creative activities of Korean performing artists and discuss the policy implications for the sustainable management of Korean performing arts. First, we investigate the characteristics of Korean artists that receive subsidies as a form of government support for undertaking artistic activities. Second, we examine whether receipt of such grants influences the artists’ job and life satisfaction. Through a logistics model, we reconstructed the “2015 Survey Report on Artists & Activities” and validated the research hypothesis. We first considered subsidies that could directly impact artists’ income and activities and then verified whether subsidies influence artists’ job and life satisfaction. As a result of the research, first, art grants should be supported in order to help artists produce creative and experimental works. Second, we showed that artists’ subsidies should be expanded in order to enhance artists’ quality of life and the sustainability of artistic activities. Above all, subsidy support for artists showed that art can be legitimate as a public good, which is a common asset in society.

문예회관의 효율성 및 생산성 변화분석: 맘퀴스트 생산성지수를 중심으로

By supporting the construction of arts and cultural centers, the Korean government has striven for improving the arts and the cultural environment. However, some questions are being raised about the inefficient operation of the established facilities. This study focuses on efficiency and productivity of Korean arts and cultural centers, using data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity method in order to determine operational optimization. The main results are as follows. First, over the years, the change in the efficiency and productivity of Korean arts and cultural centers has proven somewhat lower than that of the reference group. Second, the details of the Malmquist productivity index indicated that the flow of productivity is more similar to a change in scale efficiency than to the effects of technical change or efficiency change, allowing for increased productivity through the improvement of scale efficiency. Third, we discovered that Korean arts and cultural centers generally operate in an increasing “returns to scale” landscape. Our findings illustrate that Korean arts and cultural centers will be able to maximize their sustainability and accessibility by improving low productivity through an increase in the amount of inputs—such as operating cost and manpower.