3페이지 내용 : Newly Emergent Artist Groups of the Late 1950s and Their Signi cance 262 not necessarily present compelling justifcation for artists to accept its limitations. Asserting that “creative individuality can only be most active within the solitude of freedom,” Chung inferred that the true outcome of the many groups founded that year would become evident only in “whether and how they endure or transform in the next year or two.”16 Similarly, Yang Sooa argued that “the signifcance of group exhibitions is in fact meager in the modern age,” pointing to the limitations of collective activity. Nevertheless, he also insisted that group exhibitions had a pivotal role to play in the transitional period the Korean art scene was entering, explaining that group exhibitions needed to develop further to enable artists to assert their ideas and consolidate su cient infuence to alter the distribution of power within the artistic feld.17 Yang’s view that group exhibitions should assume a role in determining the distribution of forces in the art scene must be understood in the context of the severe confict between the Great Korean Art Association and the Korean Fine Arts Association, which clashed over honors such as membership in the National Academy of Arts as well as over privileges tied to the National Art Exhibition. This tension, which had intensifed with the founding of the Korean Fine Arts Association in May 1955, reached its peak with the so-called “National Art Exhibition Dispute” of October 1956, when the Great Korean Art Association published a declaration in The Dong-A Ilbo titled “Statement Regarding the Boycott of the 5th National Art Exhibition.” Disputes over the appointment of judges and outcomes of the review process resulted in signifcant turmoil and ultimately a postponement of the exhibition, which was eventually resolved through government mediation.18 In this process, awareness of the entrenched confict between the two associations intensifed, with increasing calls for “ideological groups grounded in artistic tendencies” rather than organizations primarily oriented toward securing privileges.19 What was demanded were not alliances based on alumni ties or slogans of unity, but rather groups that could propose “a painterly ideology with frm principle or doctrine” and embody “a stronger collective consciousness and impetus,”20 that is, “a nascence of groups centered on artistic ideology.”21 According to Kim Youngjoo, the National Art Exhibition Dispute of 1956 catalyzed widespread discussion among artists regarding “group movements” and the establishment of group “ideologies.” One outcome of this process was a wave of collective activity by younger artists, arising from what he described as a “profound awareness of the imperative of self-realization.” Kim particularly acknowledged the foundation of the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, a group of roughly 10 emerging painters including Kim Younghwan, Moon Woosik, and Kim Chungsun that grew out of the Four Artists Exhibition East Asian Culture Center gallery, May 16–25, 1956 , describing it as a manifestation of “a new generation” whose conspicuous entry had “forged a frm artery in the art world.”22 Han Mook likewise noted in his review of the Four Artist Exhibition that the younger generation of artists featured in the exhibition had “formed a collective exhibition functioning as a platform for research and presentation, thereby making a social commitment,” and that their determination deserved the highest regard.23 Kim Youngjoo was among the strongest advocates for the group activities of 1956 and 1957. Beginning in the autumn of 1956, he argued that “groups have been formed by artists awakened to the need to newly advance the order and direction of the art scene,” 16 Chung Kyu, “General Review of the Year of JeongyuThe Art World,” The Kyunghyang Shinmun, December 27, 1957. 17 Yang Sooa, “Proposals to the Central Art Scene from the Perspective of a Regional Painter,” The Chosun Ilbo, November 30, 1957. 18 “Until the Opening of the National Art Exhibition,” The Chosun Ilbo, November 12, 1956. 19 “A Cross-Section of the Internal Conflict in the Art World,” The Dong-A Ilbo, October 7, 1956. 20 Park Kosuk, “The Pangs on the Verge of CreationA Survey of the Art Scene in the Year of Eulmi,” The Dong-A Ilbo, December 28, 1955. 21 Kim Youngjoo, “The Problems of Korean ArtToward a Transformation of Mentality,” Literature and Art 3, no. 4 1956 174. 22 Kim Youngjoo, “The Sprouting Sense of Resistance and the Emergence of Rookies Part I ,” The Kyunghyang Shinmun, December 23, 1956. 23 Han Mook, “The Searching Younger GenerationOn the Four Artist Exhibition,” The Chosun Ilbo, May 24,1956.
4페이지 내용 : Newly Emergent Artist Groups of the Late 1950s and Their Signi cance 263 and that it was crucial for such groups to grapple with tasks and elevate artistic consciousness through “ideologies of action,” thereby clarifying “the contemporary signifcance of Korean art.”24 For Kim, the freedom to pursue individuality as the defning characteristic of modernity was something practiced on an individual level, yet when that freedom was asserted through an artwork, it demanded “a collective refection of individuality” or “a shared public square.”25 In a similar vein, Lee Kyungsung stressed that, as “the individual is the matrix of the whole,” the fundamental unit of an art movement must therefore be the individual artist. “If there exists a fully realized and accomplished artist,” he wrote, “that artist can also, from a collective perspective, exist as a unifed individuality.”26 In his review of the Modern Art Association’s inaugural exhibition April 1957 , Kim Youngjoo emphasized that the development of group activity constituted an urgent task for the art scene. He asserted that what was needed were groups that arose in opposition or resistance to the collective mentality, sectarianism, and other deep-seated corruptions in the art scene of 1957. Artists, he argued, had to “formulate their ideologies in concrete terms and bear their manifestos as artists in order to undergo a process of growth,” emphasizing the need to establish “a forum for contemporary action” grounded in “an ideological orientation that enables the exchange of a rigorous critical spirit as artists” where they should seek to fully assess the values of that which merited opposition and resistance, while also “testifying through their works to their artistic spirit.” It was on these grounds that he extended unreserved approval to the Modern Art Association’s inaugural exhibition.27 Lee Bongsang, writing at the end of 1957, similarly argued that collective activity could “purify the opaque atmosphere of the art scene and invigorate individual artistic consciousness.” He regarded the emergence of groups such as the Modern Art Association, Creative Art Association, Hyundae Fine Artists Association, and Paek Yang Painting Association as “the birth of groups that would compete purely through artworks,” claiming that they could serve as a touchstone for the development of the art world. Recognizing shi s in content and the exposure of artistic consciousness in the works presented in the exhibitions of the Modern Art Association and the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, he concluded that these exhibitions “demonstrated convincingly that practice rather than sophistry, and experience rather than concepts, provide the key to resolving all problems of contemporary art.”28 The perspective that regarded newly emergent groups and their exhibition activities around 1957 as evidence of “progress” exerted a lasting infuence on the historiography of Korean modern and contemporary art. In Korean Modern Painting 1980 , Lee Kyungsung wrote that the activities of the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, the Modern Art Association, the Creative Art Association, and Sinjohyeongpa “became central presences in the art world.” According to Lee, these movements were “expressions of new determination by artists, who had once uncritically concentrated in the Great Korean Art Association and the Korean Fine Arts Association and grown disillusioned with their meaningless conficts, to seek independent paths for creation.”29 Oh Kwang-su writes in his book The History of Korean Modern Art 1995 that “the succession of group formations and the consolidation of anti-National Art Exhibition forces during 1957” expanded and deepened into “the socalled contemporary art movement.”30 24 Kim Youngjoo, “The Collective with New SensibilitiesA Comprehensive Review of the First Creative Art Association Exhibition,” The Chosun Ilbo, May 31, 1957. 25 Kim Youngjoo, “The Strange Mythical AgeThe Reality of Artists and Critical Realism,” Literature and Art 3, no. 7 1956 185. 26 Lee Kyungsung, “Art CommentaryThe Unit of an Art Movement,” Hyundae Munhak 3, no. 5 1957 257. 27 Kim Youngjoo, “An Attitude of Opposition and ResistanceOn the First Exhibition of the Modern Art Association,” Pyeonghwa Shinmun, April 16, 1957. 28 Lee Bongsang, “Reflections of 1957The Art World’s Concerns in a Period of Transition Part II ,” The Dong-A Ilbo, December 25, 1957. 29 Lee Kyungsung, Korean Modern Painting Iljisa, 1980 , 112. 30 Oh Kwangsu, The History of Korean Modern ArtFrom Its Introduction and Establishment in the 1900s to the Present in the 1990s Youlhwadang, 1995 ,138.