1980–1989: Expanding Art Practices and the Narrative of the Times

In the 1980s, Korean art significantly broadened its scope through the diverse practices by various “subjects.” The creative practices of Korean Art during this period, filles with Ink Wash Painting Movement, the Polychrome Painting Movement, Environmental Installation Art, Paik Nam June, the Minjung Art Movement, Video Art, Performance Art, Computer Art, Feminist Art, Photography 
Galleries, Art Magazines, Postmodern Small Groups, New Generation Art, and so on, hinted at the autonomous capacities and possibilities of twenty-first century Korean art. The specific trajectories of the activity of this era demand that we give meaning and value to its complex and multi-layered aspects. Thus, the process of drawing an art historical topography, focusing on the areas of interest and scope of thought of the “subjects” of the 1980s, cannot be simply stated or summarized. The perspectives highlighted by this era, such as identity as both the subject and product of history, the reconstruction of aesthetic desires due to social systems and technology, or the readjustment of the perception regarding history and nature, can also change at any time within the power and mechanism of memory, evoking the different phases of Korean art in the 1980s.

Minjung Art: A Tense Agenda
The Gwangju Democratization Movement that erupted in May 1980 cannot be anything but a symbol of suffering in modern Korean history. Later attempts to systematically systemize the essence of “May” seem to have aimed at healing the historical trauma. However, in the realm of art, ‘May’ resists fossilization under the powerful heading of ‘Minjung art,’ striving to revive the hidden or distorted specificity of the movement. This chronology on the Korean art of 1980s retraces its vestiges of the Gwangju Freedom Artists Association [Gwangju jayu misulin hyeopuihoe], Reality and Utterance [Hyunsilgwa bareon], Imsulnyeon, Silcheon Group, Committee of Time Spirit [Sidae jeongsin gihoek wiwonhoe], Dureong, the Seoul Art Coalition [Seoul misul gongdongche], the National Art Association [Minjok misul hyeopuihoe], and the October Gathering [Siwol moim]. This is to reflect once again on the politics of the aesthetic avant-garde and the consciousness of liberation behind the democratic community spirit. The reflective tasks posed by Minjung art continue to carry the weight of a tense agenda.

The Ecological Imaginations of Environmental Installation Art 
Throughout the 1980s, the democratic consciousness that began to erupt all through Korean society questioned the social function of art. This trend has created new forms of expression that challenged the dominant system of discernment in the Korean art world. One such practice is found in the practical search for a site of reflection that exhibits modernity, rather than looking for a purposive schema that leans towards one side or the other in the confrontation between partisanship and aesthetics. Environmental Installation Art demonstrated on the white sand beach of Geumgang River, along the banks of the Bukhangang River in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi-do Province, and the Nakdonggang River in Daegu sought to restore the primordial relationship between the body and nature filled with vitality. This gesture of exploration, which may seem like a secret religious event, not only suggested a channel to critique the artistic methodology of the time, but also concocted an ecological imagination and intelligent problem-solving mindset to counter the late capitalist culture. 

Experiments in Performance Art and Media Art
The emergence of another artistic expression that should be of note in the art history of the 1980s is the field of performance and media art. Also, body art that developed from happenings and events came to be organized under the name of “performance festival.” While encountering the limitations of Korean modernism that is under the guise of conceptualism and minimalism, the artists of this period, who also accumulated multiple variations created through the body, tirelessly experimented with the embodiment of the resilience of aesthetic thinking and the seriousness of action rather than an awakening to history and ideology. The permeation of different genres such as art, music, dance, and theater into performance art is an example of a positive convergence. The way in which sculptures, objects, and spaces are reconstructed into the multi-layered system of “installation art” can also be seen as related to this trend.

The artistic figuration of technology by Park Hyunki and Kim Youngjin, alongside Shin Jinsik, Yi Wonkon, Yook Keunbyung, and Oh Kyung-hwa, created  a simple yet spontaneous context for media art. Starting with color television broadcasting in 1980, the material structure of the new era, presented through machines such as personal computers, printers, video cameras, and beam projectors, gave the public the power of “images” that dominate and train the senses. Paik Nam June became the “father of video art” and showed the nation the future of the networked new world, a fatal fascination enough to generate excitement for creative alternatives. He presented a vision of a new world of networks to the nation, which sparked excitement and interest in creative alternatives. Artists sought to contemplate the poetic sensibility of technology or the ethos of life that they wished to identify with its mediating qualities. Although it failed to make a striking impression, early media art was preparing for an unfamiliar but productive electric shock to the public.

The Freedom and Challenge of the Small Group
The 1980s was a time of opportunity for short but deep exploration of artistic media before the impending onslaught of the culture industry. Young artists, amidst the chaos of modernism, realism, and postmodernism, sought to connect with ideas that were meaningful to their own lives. Through the form of small groups, they produced exhibitions and writings that measured and communicated aesthetic achievements and showed alacrity in creatively absorbing the materials of the senses highlighted by the times. The activities of TARA, Nanjido, Meta-Vox, Logos & Pathos, and Museum, among other small groups, demonstrated a healthy autonomy in their interpretation and opinions of artistic concepts. This led to their collective identification as the “small group movement” in Korean art history.

The Foundation of Women’s Art
In the 1980s, there was also close collective solidarity among female artists to overcome life’s hardships. Beginning with the Great Worker’s Struggle in July and August in 1987, awareness of social structural problems surrounding women’s issues deepened. Women artists’ groups led by Kim Insoon, Kim Djin-suk, Yun Suknam, Jung Jungyeob (October Gathering, Teo dongin, Miyal, Dungji, etc.) promoted an agenda of social transformation through exhibitions, street rallies, strikes, and publications. In the 1980s, the women's movement revealed historical truths and secure women's human rights. This movement enabled terms such as femininity, gender, feminism, and women’s liberation to be discoursed in public every day. The journey of such volitional realization of women’s movement continues to expand the significance of the discourse on women’s art.

Critical Discourse and Institutional Dynamics
In this way, Korean art in the 1980s exuded the will for voluntary and spontaneous change and brought out, one by one, the words of aspiration that had been silent for so long. While the Korean economy, which was busy adapting to changes in the international industrial structure of capitalism, was supporting the spread of Western art and cultural products, the discourse on the social role of art in the public’s cultural consumption exposed the contentious viewpoint of opportunity and crises. Within the circles of Eastern painting, a time of reflection was called to question the language of authenticity. In particular, the Ink Wash Painting Movement, the Polychrome Painting Movement, or the controversy over the appellation Eastern painting vs. hangukhwa (Korean painting) led to the revitalization of criticism outside the authoritarian tone of existing Eastern style painting circles. There was an attempt to keep the pairs in investigation—tradition vs. modernity or nation vs. world—from falling into the self-evidentiary trap any longer. The discourse on hangukhwa (Korean painting) has examined the manifestations of immaturity brought about by longstanding adherence to Western logic and has begun to possess the self-motivation necessary to thematize the immense reality of “hangukhwa (Korean painting).”

This substantive practice was accompanied by the establishment of various systems and institutions surrounding art. In 1981, the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea was appointed from the private sector for the first time. Grand Art Exhibition of Korea and the Korean Craft Exhibition were newly launched. In addition, the Hoam Museum of Art, Kukje Hwarang (now Kukje Gallery), the Walker Hill Art Center (now Art Center Nabi), and the Seoul Art Center Calligraphy Museum (now the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum) also opened their doors. Moreover, spaces specializing in the photography genre were established for the first time and contact between arts from home and abroad also began in earnest. Large-scale exhibitions of Henry Moore, Joseph Beuys, Pablo Picasso, and the Bauhaus were held, and a Korean artist participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time. The art magazines Wolgan Misul, Misul Segae, Gana Art, and Wolgan Gongye have begun to be published. As a result, the proactive methods of expression produced in the field of art documented the relative specificity of the heterogeneous Korean art world and prepared it for its next phase. 

How to Look Back on Korean Art in the 1980s
When examining art history in a chronological fashion, it is difficult to deal in depth with the intended direction of each art practice or connect with its sentiment. However, it is exciting to systematize the complex field of relationships woven by the diversification of themes and methodologies in a chronological and developmental process. The discovery of interrelated or independent significance will enhance its functionality by the intellectual and active pursuit of the reader. In other words, since it is impossible to show the origins of many events occurred in Korean art during the 1980s through chronology alone, it is necessary to trace the historical triggers and conduct further research. Rather than being trapped by the historical priority of contemporary Korean history of “the 1980s,” we must, as practical subjects of that era, revisit our critical mind and pay attention to the wisdom and attributes of autonomous yet alternative paths.