![Sample our Museum and Heritage Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5945/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Museum-Heritage-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper explores the shifting self-image of Ko Hŭi-dong (1886 − 1965), best-known as the first Western-style painter of Korea, and rethinks the meaning of Ko’s ink paintings beyond the medium-based bifurcation. The individually constructed self-images of the artist’s early oil portraits are reconfigured in his ink paintings, when his perspective shifted, to embrace the network of his circle of friends. Ko’s new interest in communal identity is reflected in these seemingly traditional depictions of “elegant gatherings,” where his initial struggle to define his self-identity gives way to an effort to locate himself in another modern space of colonial Korea.
Notes
1 For extensive discussion of contrasting opinions of Ko’s art and career, see Youn Bummo, “Korean Oil Painters in the 1910s,” Korean Journal of Art History 203 (September 1994): 111–56 and Ch’oe Yŏl, “Reflection on Literature Critique and History Investigation Method,” Form Archives 1 (2009): 153–249. In English, Joan Kee presented an in-depth assessment of Ko’s three remaining self-portraits as engagement with various ‘contemporary’ questions of early 20th century Korea. Joan Kee, “Contemporary Art in Early Colonial Korea: The Self Portraits of Ko Hui-dong,” Art History 36, no. 2 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2013.00950.x
2 The term ‘oriental painting’ was commonly used in Korea to refer to traditional ink painting as opposed to Western-style painting (sŏyanghwa). Criticized as implying a colonialist view, the term was largely replaced by Korean painting (han’gukhwa) after the 1980s.
3 A smaller self-portrait of the artist wearing a similar robe remains in the Korean National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. This painting arrived at the museum undated but was somehow registered “1918” in the museum’s old database. Many art historians think the painting was made sometime before Ko’s graduation portrait was made (Youn, 123). The museum is currently in the process of revising the date to the “1910s” (email correspondence with the collection department, December 2020.).
4 Cho Ŭnjŏng, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong, (Seoul: Culture Books, 2015), 142.
5 Yi Chuyŏng, “A Study on the Application and Appearance of Jeongjagwan in the Late Joseon Period,” Journal of Korean Society of Costume 68, no 1 (2018): 179–92 (p.182).
6 Yoshida Chizuko, “Foreign Students of Tokyo School of Fine Arts,” Records of Fine Arts Department, (Tokyo: Tokyo University of the Arts, 1998), cited in Cho, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong, 141.
7 Kee, “Contemporary Art in Early Colonial Korea,” 9.
8 Bert Winther-Tamaki, Maximum Embodiment: Yōga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012), 26–7; To see how self-portraits were established as a genre of Western art through which artists assert their social positions, see Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
9 For the definition of chungin and their cultural role in the late Chosŏn period, see Jiyeon Kim, “Gathering Paintings of Chungin in Late-Chosŏn Korea (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2009).
10 Kyung Moon Hwang, Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
11 Kim Ŭnho, Sŏhwa paeknyŏn (100 years of painting and calligraphy) (Seoul: JoongAng ilbo, 1977), 236–7.
12 The prince was already accompanied by Ko’s two cousins as attending officials. These two cousins, who were sons of the pro-Japanese minister Ko Yŏnghŭi, were well-connected with Japanese high officials. Some believes Ko Hŭi-dong received help from them when started his study in Japan. Kim Lan’gi, Uri nara ch’oech’o ŭi sŏyang hwaga, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong (Ko Hŭi-dong, the first Western-style painter of Korea), (Seoul: Editŏ 2014), 32.
13 Ko Hŭi-dong, “Na ŭi sŏhwa hyŏphoe sidae (My years with the Association of Painting and Calligraphy)
14 A Retrospective Exhibition of Ko Hui-dong (Seoul: Seoul National University Museum 2005), appendix.
15 Ko came back to Korea almost every semester break, and his graduation works were also done at his Korean home. Cho, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong, 137–57.
16 This graduation photograph was taken on February 9, 1915. Kuroda is sitting at the center of the middle row and Ko Hŭi-dong stands in the back row, fourth from the right. Kim Lan’gi, 39.
17 For a recent research of Chosŏn portraits and their meaning, see The Secret of the Joseon Portrait (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2011).
18 Youn Bummo, “Ko Huidong, Self-portrait, 1915,” 8:58, YouTube video, June 12, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XlYrgh-Wi4
19 Park Young-sin, “The Chosŏn Industrial Exposition of 1915” (PhD. Diss, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2019), iv.
20 Youn, “Korean oil painters,” 122.
21 Youngna Kim, Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea (Seoul and Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym, 2000), 11.
22 The term sŏn’gu or sŏn’guja was widely used during the colonial period to indicate ‘forerunners’ including the political vanguard (Jiyeon Kim, “‘Waiting for Vanguard to Come Forward’ by Sin Paegu,” Eds. Hanscom, Lew, and Ryu, Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Culture, and Society from the Japanese Colonial Era, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), 29–41. The newspaper article about Ko Hŭi-dong’s preparation for the Chosŏn Industrial Exposition also used this term. “Forerunner of western painting, first undertaking of modelling,” Maeil sinbo, July 22, 1915.
23 The pose can be found, for example, in the 14th century Korean Water-moon Avalokiteshvara (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 14.76.6).
24 “Why Did Ko Hŭi-dong Paint a Self-Portrait with His Shirt Open?” Chosun Ilbo, May 7, 2020.
25 From a postcolonial view, the image is criticized as “[an attempt] to replace colonial reality with imaginary mythical history.” Sŏ Yuri, The faces of magazines in modern Korea: Iconography, history and politics (Seoul: Somyŏng, 1916), 110.
26 Youngna Kim, Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, 6.
27 Youn, “Ko Huidong, Self-Portrait 1915.”
28 Kee, “Contemporary Art in Early Colonial Korea,” 22.
29 O Sech’ang complied the first major source on Korean art history, Kŭnyŏk sŏhwa ching (Record of Korean painters and calligraphers), published in 1928.
30 Ko Hŭi-dong’s artistic network and paintings created in that context can be found in Kŭndae sŏhwa ŭi yoram, Kyŏngmuktang (Kyŏngmuktang the cradle of modern painting and calligraphy), Korea University Museum, 2006.
31 For a detailed discussion of the album, see Kim Yejin, “Study on Handong-ajipcheop and O Sech’ang’s poetic gatherings,” The Oriental Studies 48 (2010): 105–29.
32 Ibid., 111.
33 For late-Chosŏn chungin’ social networking and self-image, see Jiyeon Kim, “Kim Hongdo’s Sandalwood Garden: Self Image of a Late Chosŏn Court Painter,” Archives of Asian Art 62 (2012): 47–67.
34 Ch’oi Kyŏnghyŏn, “Collaborative Instant Calligraphy Paintings by Modern Korean Painters, and Their Transformation,” Study of Art History 36 (2019): 51–74.
35 Kyŏngmuktang, 125.
36 Ibid., 124.
37 Yi worked for Taehan minbo (People’ Newspaper of Korean Empire) as an illustrator, and taught painting at several private high schools in Seoul.
38 In the 1928 newspaper article showing the painters preparing for the annual exhibition of the Association of Painting and Calligraphy, one can easily find many similarities in hairstyle and other features between the photographs and the figures depicted in Caricature. Dong-a ilbo October 28, 1928, cited in Cho, 212–3.
39 Youn, “Korean Oil Painters,” 118.
40 The house reopened to the public in 2012 as an archive and exhibition space.
41 Kim Lan’gi, Ko Hŭi-dong, the first Western-style painter of Korea, 60–5.
42 Kim Yejin, “The Cultural Activities of Poetic Societies during the Japanese Occupation Period and Seohwahapbyeokdo,” Korean Journal of Art History 268 (2010): 195–227.
43 Research of this painting was published in 2016. Jiyeon Kim, “Negotiating Modernity: Elegant Gathering by Go Huidong (1886-1966),” Yeol-sang Journal of Classical Studies 52 (2016): 93–118.
44 Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong 40 chugi T’ŭkpyŭljŏn, 112.
45 Cho, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong, 255; Kim, “Negotiating Modernity,” 47–8.
46 Cho, Ch’un’gok Ko Hŭi-dong (italic), 152.
47 It has also been criticized that this ‘forefront’ image of the artist was largely self-invented through his numerous interviews and retrospective writings (Ch’oe, “Reflection,” 244–7).