Taiwanese Water and Korean Ink: Contemporary Ink Painting in Taiwan and Korea

Abstract

Contemporary art in Korea and Taiwan is influenced by two historical contexts: the acceptance of Western modernization and the progress of nationalism. These trends contradicted each other and thus brought about ideological conflicts in the art world of both countries. Under these circumstances, both art worlds realigned East Asian art practice in order to deviate from Japanese influences. Ink paintings of Taiwan and Korea have been influenced by the traditional discourse of both historically orthodox Chinese paintings, and East Asian nationalism in early modern times. Meanwhile, the consideration of “ink” and “painting” as separate and contradictory concepts was the result of a realignment of Oriental painting in the contemporary arts.

Keywords:

• Ink painting
• Taiwan
• Korea
• Abstract expressionism
• Informel art
• Oriental-style paintings

Names and Key Terms

Baimiaohua: ⽩描畫

Chuan-Fu Fu: 傅狷夫 (1910–2007)

Dai-Chien Chang: 張大千(1899–1983)

Dansaekwha: 單色畫

Dongfan huahui: 東方畫會

Ho-deuk Kim: 金浩得(1951–)

Jiro Yoshihara: 吉原次郎(1905–1972)

Mau-cheng Lee: 李茂成(1954–)

Mono-ha: 物派

Muklimhui: 墨林會

Nantenbo Nakahara: 中原南天棒(1839–1925)

Pal Chang: 張勃(1901–2001)

Sang-eui Chang: 張相宜(1940–)

Shiryu Morita: 森田子龍(1912–1998)

Taishui Hanmo: 台⽔韓墨

Teh-chun Chu: 朱德群(1920–2014)

Tōyōga: 東洋畫

Ungno Lee: 李應魯(1904–1989)

Wou-ki Zao: 趙無極 (1921–2013)

Wuyue huahui: 五月畫會

Yi-hong Lee: 李義弘(1941–)

Yipin: 逸品

Yongju Kim: 金瑢俊(1904–1967)

Zhaoshen Jiang: 江兆申(1925–1996)

Notes

1 Ink-and-wash painting was classified as a genre during the modernization of Japan. Thus, Japan’s manufacture of the modern “Oriental painting” differentiated ink-and-wash painting from the traditional ink-and-wash of China. Regarding ink-and-wash painting, which became a historical notion in modern times, the writer of this article aims to start the material perception of ink from the contemporary idea of “objecthood.” In Michael Fried’s art history and criticism, the theory of “Art and Objecthood” emerged as an anti-thesis of art. However, this study sees ink-and-wash as an objecthood from a perspective of the history of criticism, which put more emphasis on the objecthood of painting in the context of modernism and postmodernism theories. In particular, the modernization of ink-and-wash painting in the 1960s, when ink-and-wash painting attempted to understand the materialness of ink as an object in postwar Asian art, can prove its possibility as an objecthood. Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum (June 1967): 12–23, collected in Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 153.

2 Zhongguo Meishu Cidian 中國美術辭典 [Chinese Fine Arts Dictionary] (Taipei: Hsiung-Shih Art Book, 1989), 65.

3 Fan Pan 潘襎, Jiating Meishuguan Meishujia Zhuanjicongshu: Chu Teh-chun (Zhu Dequn) 家庭美術館美術家傳記叢書 朱德群 [My Home, My Art Museum, Biographies of Taiwanese Artists: Chu Teh-chun] (Taipei: Artists published, 2011), 67–8.

4 Michel Ragon, Adventure of Abstract Art (Seoul: Culture Art Press, 1964), 81.

5 Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 207.

6 Michel Ragon, “Du cubism à l’ésotérisme,” ARTS (1962), 23–9; and idem., Non Painting (Daejeon: Leeungno Museum, 2009), 138.

7 Zao Wou-ki. www.zaowouki.org/biographie/en (accessed June 10, 2017).

8 Hendgen Yann, “Zao Wou-ki,” in Art Informel in Paris: Lee Ungno, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, and Zao Wou-ki, exhibition catalog, Leeungno Museum (Daejeon: Leeungno Museum, 2015), 14.

9 The Romanization of Lee Ungno follows the spelling used internationally after the “Dobul Exhibition” (“Cross-into-France Exhibition”) in 1958 and his individual exhibition at Galerie Facchetti in Paris. Currently, the Leeungno Museum officially regards this as the orthodox spelling, www.leeungnomuseum.or.kr (accessed June 10, 2017).

10 Junghee Moon, “Asian Modernism: Lee Ungno and Calligraphic Abstraction in the 1960s,” in Lee Ungno and Calligraphic Abstraction in Europe (Deajeon: Leeungno Museum, 2016), 55–63.

11 “Lee Ungno’s Biography,” in Art Informel in Paris, 137.

12 Ibid., 137.

13 Tetsuya Oshima 大島徹也, “ジャクソン·ポロックと具体美術会” [Jackson Pollock and Gutai Art Association], in 生誕100年 ジャクソン·ポロック展 [Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Retrospective] (Tokyo: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2012), 158.

14 Ibid., 158.

15 Jiro Yoshihara, “A Round-table Talk: Calligraphy of Nantenbo,” Bokubi 14 (July 1952), 6.

16 Juliette Evezard, “The Temptation of the East: When Michel Tapié thinks about the Far East,” in Lee Ungno and Calligraphic Abstraction in Europe (Deajeon: Leeungno Museum, 2016), 95.

17 Yongju Kim, “New Field of Toyo-ga: Critic of Lee Ungno Exhibition,” Chosun Ilbo (March 12, 1952), 4.

18 Hyung-min Chung, “A Study of Formation Process of Abstraction in Traditional Style Asian Painting,” Goam Essays 1 (2001): 67–8.

19 The predominant view on the origin of “Oriental painting” is that it came from the “East (Oriental)” in Okakura Tenshin’s (1862–1913) “Ideals of the East.” Sun-pyo Hong, “Integral Asia Art History: Discussion of Toyo’s Arts and Toyo Art History,” in Art History Forum 30 (Seoul: Center for Art Studies, Korea, June 2010), 40–1. This idea of the East was adopted into the government-supervised art exhibitions in the colonies of Japan. For instance, “Joseon Art Exhibition” (est. 1922) and “Taiwan Art Exhibition” (est. 1927) classified Western-style painting and Oriental painting into two separate sections, and the prize contests were executed and judged accordingly. As a result, Oriental painting has been institutionally understood as the opposite of Western painting in Korea and Taiwan. Moreover, Oriental-style painting is often contrasted with the oil-painting-oriented Western-style painting.

20 Sun-pyo Hong, “Origin of Korean Painting,” in Symposium of Korean Paintings (Seoul: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2016), 2.

21 The term “glue-color painting (gouache)” was coined in Taiwan in order to emphasize the coloring that technically mixes glue within it. Painting that used this Japanese-style coloring technique was called “coloring painting” in Korea.

22 Sohyun Park, “Another Cold War in Japan: The Spectrum of French Art as ‘Democratic Modern’ during the Occupation Years (1945–1951),” Journal of History of Modern Art 19 (2006): 11.

23 Liu Kuo-sung, “Preface of Road of Chinese Modern Painting,” in Wen Xing 90 (Taipei: Wen Xing Publishing, 1965), 66–8.

24 Lu Fu-sheng, “Pre-Ink Paintings, Ink Paintings, and Post-Ink Paintings,” in A Collection of Essays on the 1st International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen, ed. Shenzhen Fine Art Institute (Nanning: Guangxi Art Press, 1998), 6.

25 Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, “Forum of International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen,” www.szfai.com/twoshow.action (accessed July 17, 2018).

26 Chang Pal took a key role in establishing the College of Fine Arts and the Department of Painting at Seoul National University. After graduating from the Department of Painting of Tokyo Fine Arts School and studying at Columbia University, Chang returned to Korea and led the art education in the country. During the early years, the Department of Painting was divided into the Department of Western Painting and Oriental Painting. Oriental Painting recognized the importance of ink-and-wash in order to exclude the coloring-oriented Japanese-style painting, and eventually created a strong academic trend that emphasizes the tradition of ink-and-wash.

27 Yoshiho Yonezawa, “The Development from Plain-line Painting to Ink Painting—Chinese Case,” in The Development from Plain-line Painting to Ink Painting, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975), 137.

28 The term “single-colored painting” is used to emphasize the sole use of ink without other pigments, which distinguishes itself from the ink paintings with coloring.

29 Yeon-shim Chung, “The Storied Space of Korean Dansaekwha: ‘Reduction’ and ‘Expansion,’” in Resonance of Dansaekwha (Seoul: Korea Arts Management Service, 2016), 94–5.

30 Chuan-chu Lin (Lin Quanju) 林銓居, “Jingzhongshanshui: Li Yi-hong (Lee Yi-hong) 鏡山水: 李義弘” [Landscape in the Mirror: Yi-hong Lee], Art & Collection 40 (January 1996), 166.

31 Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” 153.