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Contemporary art and Feminism

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Study Group 1 │ On Writing Timelines of Korean Art: The Keyword

To celebrate the launch of the MMCA Research Lab, an online platform in Korean and English dedicated to sharing knowledge and information about contemporary Korean art, a related forum called "Study Group 1. Timelines and Features of Korean Art" was held at MMCA Seoul on March 29, 2024.
At the Study Group, MMCA's in-house researchers and affiliated scholars regularly present the results of collaborative research on selected themes.

Part I, "Timelines and Features of Korean Art," the Korean Art Timelines produced by the MMCA Research Lab were the main topic, and the session also explored the potential of expanding art history research through chronology.
In Part II, participants shared their views on "Contemporary Art and Feminism," the first "Features (thematic study)" of the MMCA Research Lab, and discussed the development process of feminist art in Korea.

The participants included Cho Soojin, Kang Min-gi, Kim Yisoon, Kwon Heangga, Lim Shan, Shin Chunghoon, and these participants present the keywords of each period derived from their collaborative study of the timeline and connections between their keywords and art trends of each period.

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1945–1953: Independence and “National Art” (Minjok Misul)

Kang Min-gi: The period I covered is the chaotic period after the independence of Korea and the Korean War, which included the process of getting rid of colonial remnants and pro-Japanese issues. The art world was constantly being divided by the ideological confrontation between the left and right. Various genres such as eastern painting, western painting, calligraphy, photography, crafts, commercial art, and industrial art were created and many art groups were founded, even in the provinces. It was a very dynamic and highly motivated time. I realized that anew as I created this timeline.
If you look at the documents from that time you can see that national art is very much in the picture. In fact, it was not like that only in this period but also in the period after that. This period was also the beginning of the dichotomous perception that color painting was the Japanese style, and ink wash painting was national art which led to a stagnation in the field of color painting until the early 1980s.

So when writing the timeline, my task was to think about how we should perceive the historical period and I contemplated a lot about how to reflect the various aspects of this period and how to select the entries of the timeline in a fair way. In the end, I had to focus on art groups rather than individual activities, and when describing art groups, I could only decide on whether to focus on the founding or the formation of the groups after discussing the matter with other researchers.

Next, when I looked at an exhibition, I wanted to clearly include the title, the venue, the date of the exhibition, and the artists involved as objectively as possible.

Also, the artists who participated were very important. I couldn't help but select artists by the degree of their importance and the groups that the artists participated in. This was a time when solo exhibitions increased tremendously. It was hard to deal with individuals in this timeline, so I focused on art groups. So people looking at the timeline might think, "Oh, this was a period that was centered around group exhibitions." So I tried to balance that out in the overview of the period by mentioning some of the more notable solo exhibitions.

1953-1959: The Post-war Formation of Contemporary Art

Kwon Heangga: My part was how art changed from the end of the war to 1959. It was probably the same for everyone else, but I looked at what happened to the system as a whole, what happened to each genre under each system, and what things related to modernity that began to emerge as the core discourse of this period looked like. The main thing in this period is that this is when international exchange began. So the timeline is organized to reveal the aspects of international exchange.
This is not based on my own research. It's a compilation of research that has been done by a lot of researchers. So this is the outcome of the research of the people who did it before me.

If you look at the keywords of this period, you will see the "National Art Exhibition," the "National Academy of Arts," and the "National Museum" all over the timeline. It's because, under the leadership of the state, which took an anti-communist line, the art history of the country began to be described as South Korea-centered art, not art of the Korean Peninsula. So you can see how the South Korean-centered art system was formed during that period through keywords.

Another important thing about this state-led art is that because it was the Cold War system, a lot of international exchanges such as with the Rockefeller Foundation were done as part of cultural aid. So the Rockefeller Foundation supported the National Museum, and in connection with that, the “Korean Plastic Arts Research Institute” and “Korean Handicraft Demonstration Center” were created. And in a larger sense, there were a lot of overseas exchange exhibitions, such as in the "Bando Gallery" and the "American College Student Art Exhibition." So you can see this in the timeline.

What you must see in connection to that is that the U.S. provided a lot of support for craft and printmaking in this period. This part of Korean art history is described as the emergence of Art Informel and the confrontation between the National Art Exhibition's figurative art and abstract art. The thing about this timeline is that it compresses all of the group activities at the beginning.

For example, the most described Art Informel and Hyundae Fine Artists Association in the late '50s, but these were compressed and appear only once. So if you look at the timeline, the center of gravity is greatly reduced. Instead, you can see new things that are emerging like craft and printmaking. So in a way, when you look at our timeline after studying our existing art history, you'll see that prominent things have been omitted, and instead, craft, printmaking, and graphics are being mentioned more.

A lot of new associations were formed during this period, such as the “Modern Watercolor Association,” the “Korean Prints Association” and the “Korean Art Critics Association.” They have come to be because of the question, "How can we push out modernity and establish contemporary art?" So a lot of things like this, especially groups, are included here. So this period as a whole is part of the transition to contemporary art. It continues on to the 1960s. We've mechanically cut it off at 1959, but you should start with this time period and work your way through to the 1960s.

1960–1969: Avant-garde Activities and Development of the Art System