7페이지 내용 : Newly Emergent Artist Groups of the Late 1950s and Their Signi cance 266 continuity between the younger generation artists in their 20s and 30s represented by the Hyundae Fine Artists Association and the middle generation the 40s represented by the Modern Art Association , while assigning novelty exclusively to the former. According to Lee, these pioneers of beauty sought “the negation of tradition, the severance from heritage, and the discovery of new aesthetics.”45 A 1958 newspaper article contrasted “mid-career artists forming clubs” with “the vigor and fervor of young newcomers”—the latter referring to the Hyundae Fine Artists Association. The journalist likened the association to “charging bulls,” whose momentum le mid-career and older artists cowering for cover. He lamented the absence of seniors who might guide these young, “battle-ready” modern artists, who were “aggressively looking to fght for a new era.”46 By 1961, Kim Youngjoo described the Hyundae Fine Artists Association and the 1960 Fine Artists Association, which held a joint exhibition at the Gyeongbokgung Palace Museum, as “a community of young artists representing their generation, pursuing modernization as a means of realizing the avant-garde in contemporary painting.” According to him, these artists advocated “the transcendence of anxiety, the future, and the unreal” amid “the fux of their unsettling thought,” seething for “an ideology negating every remnant of ornamentality in painting, to the point of denying even the last degree of purity.” Assigning their works, rolling and grappling with the complexities of the contemporary times, to a whole new aesthetic category, Kim insisted that, whatever that aesthetic may be, “their drive to act through art must be highly esteemed.”47 From this generational perspective, the newly emergent groups of the late 1950s could be divided broadly into twothe mid-career generation Modern Art Association, Creative Art Association, Sinjohyeongpa and the younger generation Hyundae Fine Artists Association , and such frameworks almost always served to privilege the younger over the mid-career. As outlined by Lee Gu-yeol, the activities of these newly emergent groups of the late 1950s manifested as both a “continuation of earlier currents that domesticated prewar Western modernist aesthetics and non-naturalist traditions,” and the “feverish importation of wholly new Western aesthetics by the unrecognized new generation,” amid which the Modern Art Association, Sinjohyeongpa, and Creative Art Association belonged to the former and the “spirited young members of the Hyundae Fine Artists Association” belonged to the latter. For Lee as well, the latter was far more consequential“The rebellious and experimental energy of the members in their 20s, their anti-art forms informed by Western trends, and their bold choice to act” constituted “the most noteworthy movement” that propelled Korean contemporary art into the new global context.48 In this logic, the Hyundae Fine Artists Association held an unmatched signifcance among the newly emergent groups of 1957, and as this discourse gained ground, the once-heralded status of the Modern Art Association as “the frst group of contemporary painters in Korea” waned.49 In his essay “Abstract Painting’s Settlement in Korea” 1967 , Lee Kyungsung stated that “abstract art only began to take root in Korea a er 1957,” beginning his account of the art world that year with the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, “the young fag-bearers of the abstract movement.” He noted that its members “persisted through six exhibitions until 1961, pressing issues and solutions alike through their works and activities with the will and demonstrations beftting avant-garde artists.” He then mentioned the Modern Art 45 Lee Kyungsung, “The Continuation of Lonely ResistanceA Review of the Western Painting Division of the Hyundae Fine Artists Invitational Exhibition,” The Chosun Ilbo, April 18, 1962. 46 “Art WorldThe Roaring, Surging Current,” The Kyunghyang Shinmun, December 17, 1958. 47 Kim Youngjoo, “New Aesthetics and New InquiryArt Commentary,” The Dong-A Ilbo, October 17, 1961. 48 Lee Kuyeul, “The Introduction and Development of ‘Hot Abstraction,’ 1957–1965,” in Korean Abstract ArtThe Trajectory of 20 Years JoongAng Ilbo Company, 1979 , 37–38. 49 “A Bird’s-Eye View of the Korean Art WorldThe Current Status Seen Through ‘Groups,’” The Chosun Ilbo, February 11,1965.
8페이지 내용 : Newly Emergent Artist Groups of the Late 1950s and Their Signi cance 267 Association as a “collective gathered under the ideal of ‘new art,’” acknowledging that, until its sixth and fnal exhibition in June 1960, the group “le signifcant contributions both within and beyond the sphere of abstraction.” Lee claimed that most of the advances in abstraction from 1957 to 1967 were “led by artists in their 20s and 30s,” elaborating that it was “the courage and adventurous spirit of these unsophisticated, eager young artists” that “drove this overwhelming historical task” and perhaps even stimulated mid-career artists into self-transformation.50 3. Major and MinorThe Narrative of the Non-Mainstream The Hyundae Fine Artists Association’s singular position and stature among the newly emergent groups of the late 1950s was closely tied to the view that e ectively equated modern, or modernist, art with abstract art, thereby dividing Korean abstract art into periods of “dawn” and “settlement” with 1957 as a reference point, as well as into categories of “modern” and “contemporary.” Within this framework, groups that emerged in 1957, such as the Modern Art Association, the Creative Art Association, and Sinjohyeongpa, were generally placed in the former the dawn, or the modern , while the Hyundae Fine Artists Association was situated in the latter the settlement, or the contemporary Within this scheme, the year 1958 assumed particular importance alongside 1957. In May of 1958, at the third exhibition of the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, Lee Kyungsung discerned a “world of the non-fgurative” in the paintings of Park Seo-bo and Kim Cheonggwan.51 Later that year, when the group held its fourth exhibition in November, where “informel-style works occupied the majority,”52 Kim Youngjoo published an essay lauding the avant-garde spirit that sought to “destroy and negate the present in order to realize what precedes existence,” remarking that the spirit had “begun to dominate the domain of modern art,” giving rise to the “world of the non-formal informel aesthetic consciousness inexplicable through the formative ideals of either reason or unreason, abstraction or surrealism.” Mesmerized, Kim went on to declare that art informel was “drawing near, even for us unfortunate ones, lagging behind in the realm of modern art without even a lineage of contemporary aesthetic consciousness,” stating that, “our inescapable condition of existence itself is the realm of modern art in Korea, and our contemporaneous consciousness of coexistence with the transition that is the informel is precisely our inspiration.”53 Subsequent critics characterized the Hyundae Fine Artists Association, which “stood for the informel”; the 1960 Fine Artists Association, which under the “infuence of American abstract expressionism” claimed to be “the most avant-garde and radical art” with “overcharged confdence and combative spirit”; and their successor Actuel as the “most conspicuous collective movements” in Korean modern art a er the late 1950s.54 According to Oh Kwangsu, the “non-formal art,” propelled by the so-called “avant-garde unit of younger-generation artists,” not only elicited wide sympathy among their peers but also “triggered a reform of consciousness among some older artists.” By the early 1960s, “non-formal abstraction had emerged as the representative tendency of Korean art.”55 The more this narrative, which placed non-formal painting at the center of the late 50 Lee Kyungsung, “Abstract Painting’s Settlement in Korea—Focusing on Groups and Artists,” SPACE December 1967 85–87. 51 Lee Kyungsung, “Fantasy and FormA Review of the Third Hyundae Fine Artists Association Exhibition” 1958 , Collection of Art Criticism by Lee KyungsungThe Status of Korean Contemporary Art Iljisa, 1976 , 107. 52 H, “True Modern ArtOn the Hyundae Fine Artists Association Exhibition,” The Chosun Ilbo, December 13, 1958. 53 Kim Youngjoo, “Art Informel and Korean ArtA Universal Formative Language,” The Chosun Ilbo, December 13, 1958. 54 Lee Kuyeul, “The Introduction and Development of ‘Hot Abstraction,’ 1957–1965,” in Korean Abstract ArtThe Trajectory of 20 Years JoongAng Ilbo Company, 1979 , 40–42. 55 Oh Kwang-su, “Korean Art Today,” in Korean Art TodayA Commemorative Exhibition for the Opening of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, exhibition catalogue Tongcheon Publishing Co., 1986 ,unpaginated.