1945–2009 Online Platform for Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

Defining the Period and Scope of “Modern Art”: Glimpse Into Korean Modern Exhibition Series (1997–2000)

In anticipation of the new millennium, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (now MMCA) organized the exhibition series Glimpse into Korean Modern, held between 1997 and 2000. This series was structured around specific genres: oil painting (Dec. 9, 1997 – Mar. 10, 1998, Galleries 1 and 7, MMCA Gwacheon), ink wash and color painting (Sep. 4 – Nov. 4, 1998, Galleries 1 and 7, MMCA Gwacheon), sculpture (Aug. 24 – Oct. 31, 1999, Galleries 1 and 2, MMCA Deoksugung), and crafts (Nov. 16, 1999 – Jan. 30, 2000, Galleries 1 and 2, MMCA Deoksugung). These exhibitions marked the first systematic review of modern art undertaken by the MMCA since the 60 Years of Korean Modern Art series in the 1970s and may be regarded as the culmination of the museum’s institutional efforts to historicize Korean modern art. In comparison to the modern art exhibitions of the 1970s, Glimpse into Korean Modern series demonstrates a significant shift in the classification of genres. Whereas the 1972 exhibition 60 Years of Modern Korean Art featured categories of Western painting, Eastern painting, sculpture, and calligraphy, this later exhibition replaced the “Western” and “Eastern” designations with medium-based classifications—namely oil painting and ink wash and color painting. While calligraphy was excluded, crafts were newly introduced as a category. Notably, the term jogak (彫刻, sculpture) was replaced by the broader term joso (彫塑), which encompasses both carving and modeling practices. The first in the exhibition series, Glimpse into Korean Modern Oil Painting, was curated by Kim Heedae, who explained that the exhibition was conceived around the following questions: “How did Korea’s pioneering artists confront and internalize the new form and aesthetics of oil painting? How do we today engage with this legacy?”1 The exhibition featured 280 works by 128 artists and was presented in Galleries 1 and 7 of the MMCA Gwacheon. It was structured around five thematic sections: the reception of Western-style painting and foreign artists (late eighteenth century-1900s); the emergence of oil painters and the formation of the art circle (1910s–1920s); group movements and ideological plurality (1930s–1945); art during the Liberation period and the Korean War (1945–1953); and transformations of modern art in postwar (post-1950s). The first section focused on the reception of Western-style painting beginning in the late eighteenth century, exploring how artists such as Kim Du-ryang and Chae Yong-sin adopted and realized visual realism. By including a section featuring oil paintings of Korean landscapes and figures by foreign artists from the late nineteenth century, the exhibition examined the cultural shifts within which oil painting was received and began to take root—offering a broadened perspective that distinguishes it from previous exhibitions on modern art. While earlier exhibitions up to the 1970s tended to regard oil painting primarily as a transplanted Western medium, this exhibition broadened the perspective by examining how visual realism disrupted traditional artistic practices, thereby facilitating the voluntary assimilation of the medium and the formation of a distinct Korean art world. Special sections were dedicated to key figures such as Oh Chiho, Gu Bonung, Lee Insung, Lee Jungseop, Park Sookeun, and Kim Whanki, as well as to artists who defected to the North, art produced during the Korean War, and overlooked and forgotten artists—reflecting an effort to expand and deepen the narrative of Korean modern art history. This shift was made possible by the lifting of restrictions on artists who had defected to North Korea (wolbuk artists), alongside a growing body of academic research that preceded the exhibition. Following democratization in 1987, previously suppressed discussions about wolbuk artists were made possible, prompting a wave of exhibitions in the private sector. These included Lim Gunhong: The Forgotten Painter (Lotte Museum of Art, Feb. 8–20, 1984), Cheonggye Chung Chong-yuo Exhibition (Shinsegae Gallery, July 20–Aug. 6, 1989), Oil Paintings of Unbanned Artists (Shinsegae Gallery, July 31–Aug. 12, 1990), and An Artist Who Defected to North Korea, Lee Qoede (Shinsegae Gallery, Oct. 8–27, 1991). These exhibitions contributed to the reintegration of artists who had played pivotal roles in the Korean art scene prior to the Korean War into the broader narrative of modern Korean art, thereby expanding the historiographical framework of Korean art history. Meanwhile, in 1990, Kumsung Publishing released art books titled The Collection of Modern Korean Paintings, a comprehensive twenty-seven-volume series. It consisted of thirteen volumes on oil painting (or Western-style painting), featuring artists such as Rha Hyeseok and Lee Chongwoo; thirteen volumes on ink wash and color painting (or Korean painting), including figures like Cho Seokjin and An Jungsik; and a supplementary volume titled Artists Who Went North. This publication undertook the rediscovery and re-evaluation of works of artists from the modern period. In 1994, the MMCA and the Association of Korean Modern and Contemporary Art History jointly held an academic symposium on the origins of modern art. Significantly, a new perspective emerged—one that departed from the transplantational framework, conceiving modern art as a historical continuum that rearticulated traditional aesthetics through innovative perspectives and methodologies. Further reinforcing this shift, Choi Yeol published his seminal work, History of Korean Modern Art: 1800-1945, in 1998. This comprehensive study provides a meticulous account of the evolution of modern art in Korea. This shift in perspective is further exemplified by the exhibition Glimpse into Korean Modern Ink Wash and Color Painting, particularly in its decision to define the category as “ink wash and color painting.” This category was originally named “calligraphy and painting,’” which, in the premodern era, were considered as a unified practice grounded in shared principles and ideals. In the early twentieth century, however, this classification was redefined as “Eastern painting” by Japan to encompass China, Japan, and Korea. Eventually, the category shifted toward medium-based criteria. The genre terms “Western painting” and “Eastern painting” were established during the colonial period in the early twentieth century. Since the 1950s, there have been calls for revising these labels, as they reflect an othering of Western art and encompass a vague and ambiguous notion of “the East.” The exhibition appears to reflect this ongoing critique. Instead of framing the evolution of modern ink wash and color painting within a broad art-historical narrative, the exhibition presented 135 works by sixty-seven artists according to traditional subject categories, such as flower-and-bird painting, landscape, the Four Gentlemen (plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, and bamboo), still life, animal paintings, and figure painting. For example, the flower-and-bird section spans from Shin Myeong-Yeon’s Flower and Bird (nineteenth century) to Park Saengkwang’s Peony (1969); the landscape section from Heo Ryeon’s Landscape (1877) to Kim Haksoo’s Snowy Day (1993); the Four Gentlemen and stilllife section from Jo Hui-ryong’s Plum Blossoms (late nineteenth century) to Choi Wooseok’s Vegetables and Fruits (1959); the animal section from Kang Pilju’s Deer (late nineteenth century) to Sung Jaehyu’s Group of Tigers (1970); and the figure section from Kang Jin-hui’s Farewell at a Plank Bridge (1888) to Chun Kyungja’s Gate of the Youth (1968). While this categorization facilitates the tracing of subject-specific developments, it also raises critical questions: Does the modernity of ink wash and color painting lie solely in shifts in subject matter or expression? The exhibition’s subject-centered approach excludes post-1950s developments in ink abstraction, thereby effectively limiting modern art to its ‘traditional’ aspects. Consequently, it calls for a reconsideration not only of the lower threshold of modernity in ink painting, but also of its upper limit. A notable terminological shift was evident in the exhibition Glimpse into Korean Modern Sculpture, where the genre label in Korean was changed from jogak (彫刻) to joso (彫塑). This new term, joso, encompasses both jogak (sculpture) carving from the outside and joso, which involves building up from within. The exhibition demonstrated a conscious effort to trace the transformation of traditional sculptural practices into modern forms. Part I, titled “The Modern Development of Traditional Korean Sculpture” examined this shift by presenting works such as the clay Arhats (1905) and the stone Civil and Military Officials (1919) at King Gojong’s tomb Hongneung, all of which are by unknown artists. This section explores how these traditional sculptural forms evolved toward modernity. Part II, “The Dawn of Modern Sculpture Art,” featured artists who studied Western sculpture, including Kim Bokjin, Gu Bonung, and Kim Chongyung. Part III, “The Transition of Modern Korean Sculpture,” focused on figurative sculpture from the 1950s onward, showcasing artists such as Kwon Jinkyu, Kim Sechoong, Kim Chungsook, and Song Youngsu. It was noted that works engaging with abstract sculpture and the wider trajectory of modernity in joso were deliberately reserved for a subsequent exhibition, An Aspect of Korean Contemporary Art in the 1950s to the 1960s.2 The final exhibition in the series, Glimpse into Korean Modern Crafts, aimed to examine the origins and development of modern craft and its transition into contemporary practice. The exhibition was structured into four sections: Changes in the Perspective of Traditional Craft (late nineteenth century–1900s), The Dawn of Modern Craft (1910s–1920s), The Emergence of Modern Artisans and the Restructuring of the Craft Circle (1930s–1945) and Searching for New Directions (1945–mid-1960s). Showcasing over 200 works by thirty artists, including those by anonymous makers, the exhibition traced the evolution of Korean craft across a range of mediums. In Part I, anonymous late nineteenth-century household objects were exhibited such as the Butterfly-shaped Iron Oil Lamp, White Porcelain Jar, and Stacked Food Boxes among other metal, ceramic, and wooden items. Part II explored transformations in production systems under the impact of modernity, featuring objects such as the Silver Plum Blossom Wine Cup produced by the Yi Royal Household Art Manufactory (Yiwangjik Craftwork Manufactory), the Imperial Edict Box of Emperor Gojong, and embroidered Landscape. Beginning with Part III, the exhibition presented designs by Lim Suk Jae and Lee Soonsuk as well as lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl, embroidery, and ceramics attributed to specific artists. Part IV covered the period up to 1965, which marked the institutional separation between craft and design.3 The selection and categorization of works were informed by the distinct nature of the craft genre, which, unlike other artistic practices, has historically lacked attributed authorship due to its artisanal modes of production, and which necessarily balances functionality with aesthetic considerations. Therefore, the exhibition series Glimpse into Korean Modern, structured across multiple genres, marked a shift in how modernity is approached in Korean art history. Unlike previous exhibitions, in which mixed genres and uniform temporal boundaries for artists and works often hindered the articulation of modernity, this series differentiated each genre by its specific characteristics, thereby aiming to trace the transformations of traditional painting, sculpture, and craft into modern forms. In doing so, it reflected a shift in the historiographical approach to modern art. However, the demarcation of the lower chronological boundary for modern works remained largely anchored in figurative or naturalistic realism. In other words, the exhibition reflected the continued influence of a 1970s framework that defined the contemporary primarily through the emergence of abstraction. What was the underlying foundation of these exhibitions on modern art and the discourses surrounding them? It appears that they were largely driven by a post-Korean War effort to define contemporary art as distinct from what came before, thereby designating earlier works as modern art. Central to this framing was the concerted effort to mark the Contemporary Art Exhibit in 1957 as the starting point of contemporary Korean art. But was this division between the modern and the contemporary truly valid? If Korean contemporary art is to be defined by the influence of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel after the World War II era—particularly represented by the United States and France—then Korean art history is inevitably positioned as a narrative shaped by external stimuli and stylistic imitation. Yet even by the late 1930s and early 1940s, artists such as Kim Whanki and Yoo Youngkuk were already articulating a sensibility attuned to their time. Through the 1950s and 1960s, they continued to develop highly individual styles, largely independent of the dominant aesthetics associated with Art Informel. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, exhibitions on 'modern art' redefined the term: in the 1950s and 1960s, by contrasting it with traditional art, and later, in the 1970s, by distinguishing it from emerging contemporary art. By the late 1990s, exhibitions of modern art sought to address both continuity and change in relation to tradition; nonetheless, they continued to position modern art as categorically distinct from contemporary art. From today’s vantage point, nearly a quarter into the twenty-first century, we might ask: which continuity has proven stronger—tradition to modernity, or modernity to contemporaneity? And which transition entailed more profound transformation? Was the introduction of abstract art truly the decisive rupture in the modes of perception and representation, as it was understood during the 1950s–1970s? Could these exhibitions perhaps have constructed a framework through which modern art came to be perceived as such? However, now may be the moment to take a broader view—one that acknowledges continuity between modern and contemporary, and recognizes the distinctiveness of the present as having emerged from that very continuum.