9페이지 내용 : Newly Emergent Artist Groups of the Late 1950s and Their Signi cance 268 1950s and 1960s art scene, gained dominance, the more the stature of the Modern Art Association diminished. Retrospecting the 1960 art scene under the subtitle “Toward the Formation of a Mainstream in Contemporary Art,” Kim Youngjoo lauded the Hyundae Fine Artists Association’s sixth exhibition in December 1960 as evidence that “the realization of the avant-garde it advocated had entered its proper orbit,” while dismissing the Modern Art Association’s sixth and fnal exhibition in July 1960 as representing “the complacently conceptual attitude of established artists toward contemporary art.” While the association carried the banner of “Modern Art,” he criticized, its works failed to follow through.56 In 1967, a roundtable organized by SPACE magazine under the theme “10 Years of the Abstraction Movement” revisited this history. Reminiscing on the “era of the so-called ‘informel,’” Park Seo-bo, a member of the Hyundae Fine Artists Association and a leading fgure of informel painting, defned the abstraction a er 1957, when informel painting began to be internationalized and when abstract art began to “bloom in Korea,” as “hot abstraction.” Prior to this, he added, only “a few artists had attempted what might broadly be called ‘cold abstraction,’ a schematic form of abstraction.” At the same discussion, Kim Youngjoo also stated that the concept of abstraction pursued by the younger groups that emerged in 1957 di ered in quality from the schematic abstractions of the previous generation. Whereas the younger generation’s works seemed “driven by a spirit to reform and modernize,” the artists in their 30s and 40s “had vague ideals of doing something new but hesitated to embody and concretize them.” According to Kim, “the movement of the younger generation around 1957” represented “a concrete stage of realization,” and thus the true starting point of contemporary abstraction could be found there.57 This situation inevitably infuenced the critical understanding and evaluation of the Modern Art Association. As can be surmised from Kim Youngjoo’s review of the group’s inaugural exhibition 1957 , in which he classifed its members’ works as “abstract and non-fgurative genre of painting” Yoo Youngkuk, Lee Kyusang , “semi-abstract realizations” Han Mook , and “methods belonging to old conventions” Park Kosuk, Hwang Yeomsoo ,58 and Bang Geun-taek’s review of the group’s fourth exhibition 1958 , in which he described the works as “individual expressions that brought new ambition to the fore through the traditional methods of representationalism” Park Kosuk, Hwang Yeomsoo, Moon Shin, Chung Kyu and as “styles in transitional transformation between fguration and abstraction” Kim Kyung, Jung Jeumsik, Han Mook, Yoo Youngkuk ,59 the Modern Art Association was a group oscillating between fguration and abstraction. Yet, rather than probing the meaning of this oscillation, most critics of the time adopted abstraction itself as the primary measuring stick of value, and in doing so dismissed the group. Many rejected the abstract tendencies in the group’s works as outdated. Kim Youngjoo claimed that the methods of the association’s artists were “di cult to recognize as modern art,” insisting that, while widely misunderstood to refer broadly to “the techniques following cubism,” “modern art refers to the most avant-garde methods and expressions.”60 Bang Geun-taek contended that even the group’s abstract-leaning artists faced a “fatal limitation” in that they could not entirely abandon form and fguration, advising that they needed to “take a contemporary leap, that is, be able to shut out the instinct to depict and paint using nothing but taches and signes.”61 Such critiques almost entirely neglected the concerns of Han Mook, who maintained that “true reality must be pursued in the relation between the object nature and the painter humanity ,”62 and those of Jung Jeumsik, who emphasized 56 Kim Youngjoo, “The Art World of 1960The Path onto the World Stage—Toward the Formation of a Mainstream in Contemporary Art,” The Dong-A Ilbo, December 29, 1960. 57 Kim Youngjoo and Park Seo-bo, “Dialogue10 Years of the Abstraction Movement, Its Legacy and Prospects,” SPACE December 1967 88. 58 Kim Youngjoo, “The Attitude of Resistance and RebellionOn the First Modern Art Association Exhibition,” Pyeonghwa Shinmun, April 16, 1957. 59 Bang Geun-taek, “The Intention of Transitional DeconstructionA Review of the Modern Art Association Exhibition,” The Dong-A Ilbo, November 25, 1958. 60 Kim Youngjoo, “From Transition to New FrontiersThe Art World of 1957 Part II ,” The Chosun Ilbo, December 21, 1957. 61 Bang Geun-taek, “The Intention of Transitional DeconstructionA Review of the Modern Art Association Exhibition,” The Dong-A Ilbo, November 25, 1958; Bang Geun-taek, “Abstracted Inner LandscapesThe Sixth Modern Art Association Exhibition,” The Dong-A Ilbo, July 19, 1960. 62 Han Mook, “The Problem of Abstraction in Contemporary PaintingIts Development and Contemporary Significance” 1954 , SPACE August 1973 19.