De-Modernization and the Search in the Transition Period

Abstract

In this article, the author first provides a chronology of Korean modern art, in which the modernization of every sector of Korean society is intricately entangled with struggles in regards to Westernization and the anxieties of colonialism. As a result, he points out that the ‘Korean’ aesthetics of Dansaekhwa were discursively constructed by Japanese scholars from the colonial era. Instead of readily utilizing the term ‘postmodernism’ in articulating the younger artists’ rebellion against Dansaekhwa, therefore, the author uses ‘anti-modernism (ban-modeon)’ and ‘de-modern (tal-modeon)’ as the prevailing attitude of the 1980’s art of Minjung misul and of the new figurative paintings.

Keywords:

• Korea
• contemporary art
• postmodernism
• postmodernist theory, Dansaekhwa
• Ko Huidong
• avant-garde
• Yanagi Muneyoshi
• Lee Ufan
• Korean Minimal art

Notes

1 Ko Huidong, “I and Association of Calligraphy and Painting,” Shincheonji 52, 179.

2 Lee Il, “For a New Icon,” Space (July 1985).

3 Hong Kai, “How to Understand Korean Art,” 30 Contemporary Art Criticism (1987): 12.

4 Nakahara Yusuke, “Introduction,” Five Hinsek ‘White’: 5 Korean Artists (May 6 – 24, 1975, Tokyo Gallery).

5 “It best justified Japan’s clever cultural policy, so-called colonial view of history at that time, emphasizing Korea’s toadyism and fateful inferiority or immaturity.” Aesthetics of Korean Art (Academy of Korean Studies, 1984), 6-7.

6 Hong Kai, Criticism of Contemporary Art and Culture (Seoul, Mijinsa, 1987), 148.

7 Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word: Modern Art Reaches the Vanishing Point, trans. by Park Soon-cheol (Paju, Yeolhwadang, 1978), 13.

8 Foundation Manifesto of Reality and Utterance (1979).

9 Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Incomplete Project,” Postmodern Culture, ed. by Hal Foster (London: Pluto Press, 1985).

10 ‘Modified modernism’ is my term.

11 John A. Walker, Art in the Age of Mass Media, trans. by Jeong Jin-guk (Paju: Yeolhwadang, 1987), 96.

12 Editor’s note: Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Munich: Bruckmann, 1915) new Engish edition as Principles of Art History, trans. Jonathan Blower (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lee Jae-eon

Translated from Korean by Namin Kim

Originally published as “Talmodeongwa jeonhwangijeong mosaek” in Misul Segae (July 1989): 67-74.