During the 20th century, an era far from traditional art began to spread with a flourish of Western culture in Korea. It saw the emergence of the term misul ("fine art"), which had not existed in traditional society, along with the concept of "genre" in areas such as painting, sculpture, and craft arts. Tenns such as "Western Painting" (Seayang-hwa) and "Eastem Painting" (Dongyang-hwa) began entering the parlance. Art institutes were established to educate prolessional artists, and public art museums and galleries began operating as places where people could freely appreciate works of art Meanwhile, a growing number of prolessional artists were graduating from art instibites and making their debuts at the art competitions or solo exhibitions. Korean art in the 20th century can be divided into two periods: the first a "modern art" period and second a "contemporary art" period. Because of Japanese control during the first half, the histories of Japanese and Korean modern art are inextricably linked.

Korean modern art began after the country's 1945 liberation from Japan. As the government began establishing art institutes and reorganizing its various systems, artists made an effort to break free of any influence by Japanese art and to develop their own style that would reflect Korean identity. Unfortunately, the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War put a halt to these changes. The country was divided into North and South Korea, causing upheaval in the art world. As Many artists fell victim to the war, Kim Young-jun, Yi Kwae-dae, Gil Jin-seop, Bae Un-seong, and Cho Gyu-bong defected to North Korea while Lee Jung-seob, Park Soo-Keun, and Choi Yong-lim defected to the South. It was not until the mid-1950s that artists became active again. Lee Jung-seob’s use of expressionism was appealing to the society that had just gone through the experience of the war. In addition, as Park Soo-Keun’s work depicted the everyday lives of people from lower classes with a granite-like texture, it was very popular among foreigners for its modernity and representation of Korean sentiments. The transition in Korean modern art was developed by a generation who had received their education from the art institutes established after liberation. This paper will examine changes in the art world by decades.

- 1950s: The Beginnings of Korean Modern Art

After the Korean War, many artists working in Korea began to experiment with Western art. For example, there were several senior artists stayed and worked in Paris for either two to three years or more than ten years; these include Kim Whan-ki and Nam Kwan. Although they had previously attended art institutes in Japan, they decided to move to Paris, a city with a reputation as a "home of the arts," to develop and deepen their artistic styles into something more modern. Though Kim forged a concept of Western abstract language, he adopted traditional Korean subjects like the crane, apricot flower, moon, and ceramics as ways of representing Korean sentiments characteristically. Nam practiced cubism early in his career before he was engaged in the work that combined atypical elements from Art Informel and abstracted alphabetical characters. Cubism, which had been practiced by a number of modern artists, became very popular in the 1950s. Han Mook, Chung Chang-sup, Choi Yong-lim, Kim Ki-chang, and Park Re-hyun all used elements of cubism of its simplifying and dividing of objects to modernize their work. Even a traditional ink painter like Lee Ung-no moved to Europe to explore and work freely beyond the boundaries of art genres.

Left) Kim Whan-ki, 'A Song of Eternity', 1957, oil on canvas. Courtesy Leeum Samsung Museum of Art.
Right) Oh Youn, 'Marketing I – Scenes of Hell', 1980, mixed media on canvas

- 1960s: International Exhibitions and the Search for 'Korean Identity’

Printing is a genre that became popular as international exhibitions were established. In traditional art, engraving had simply been a printing medium, however by the late 1950s, the heavy presence of printed work among the pieces by foreign artists who were introduced to Korea brought about a change in perceptions about engraving. Young and progressive artists began showing an interest in printing medium; Kim Jung-ja and Yu Kang-ryol studied in America then trained younger artists after their return. Jung Kyu and Lee Hang-sung had already been working in printing since the 1950s, and local interest began to rise the following decade as artists like Youn Myeung-ro, Kim Bong-tae, Kim Jong-hak, Seo Seung-won, Kim Ku-lim, and Hwang Kyu-baik all participated in international biennials with works of printing. This continued an interest, and helped expand a base for the medium, which culminated in hosting the International Print Biennial in Seoul. By the 1980s, printing was established as an important genre of Korean art, with Hongik University setting up its own art department.

- 1970s: 'Korean' Modernism

The 1970s is seen as the era of "Korean" modernism in Korean modern art history. It was during this time that the interest in "Korean identity" from the 1960s became truly visualized. The term Korean modernism connotes an artistic style containing both Western modernism and characteristically Korean elements. Artists of the time focused mainly on monochrome painting; although they recognized the importance of the flat surface - the key element of modernism espoused by Clement Greenberg - they wanted a style that would reflect Korean sensibility and emotion. The flat surface in particular was seen as encompassing a kind of spirituality, in contrast with the Western style of flat surface which was perceived as too mechanical and cold. It was with the Five Hinsaek (Whites) exhibition at Tokyo Gallery in 1975 that Korean modernism became embodied visually. The exhibition was part of an overall trend of looking at white as a "Korean color." But the focus for Park Seo-bo, Ha Chong-hyun, Choi Myoung-young, Chung Chang-sup, Seo Seung-won, and other artists known as monochrome painters was not simply on the color white. They favored the use of natural, achromatic colors; paintings that ruled out any possibility of reproduction were interpreted as basic, original, and spiritual. In addition to non-representational expression, they also put great emphasis on repeated strokes of the paint on canvas, considering this to be a kind of process of emptying out worldly desires and capturing the heart.

The use of monochrome first became popular among oil painters, but by the 1980s it had spread to Korean ink painters. Some of the leading ink painters including Song Su-nam, eliminated the use of color entirely, opting to paint only in ink. They chose to depict landscapes by only using ink, or to compose artworks of utter abstraction, focusing simply on manipulating the concentration levels and spreading of the medium. These artists, too, sought spirituality through the use of ink. Moreover, Non-representational style and complete rejection of objectivity became popular among sculptors with their own abstract pieces. Park Suk-won and Shim Moon-sup, two leading abstract sculptors, made use of traditional materials such as wood, stone, and iron. Rather than being carved into specific forms, natural materials like wood and stone were used as a representation of their own inherent properties; if they created any specific shape, this was seen as indicative of an anthropocentric approach to nature. The sculptors' focus was on revealing the true properties and characteristics of the material. By showing these essential attributes, results were seen as capable of representing the basic condition of nature, as opposed to the anthropocentricism or artificiality of Western modernism. Referred to as "Korean minimalist sculpture," these works adopted something of a Western modernist style in the idea of abstraction, but the artists' ultimate goal was to de-Westernize the art and achieve something characteristically "Korean" or "Oriental."

Kim Yi-soon / Professor, Art History, Hongik University

Professor of Art History at Hongik University, Ph.D. in Korean Modern and Contemporary art history