This research attempted to look back on the twentieth century korean art history focusing especially on paintings, which had presumed of the interruption of tradition during the process of coerced modernization, as a retrospective study in order to de ...
This research attempted to look back on the twentieth century korean art history focusing especially on paintings, which had presumed of the interruption of tradition during the process of coerced modernization, as a retrospective study in order to determine whether the twentieth century Korean painting was only driven by Japanese and Western styles in the former half century and the latter half century respectively. This worked as an achievement of better understanding of the Korean modernist painters' viewpoints on their own tradition.
The founding chater of 'Reality and Utterance" in 1979 shows no clear traditional consciousness. Collectively, this group took no special interest in the issue of tradition, however, even from the group inception, individual artists showed a considerable amount of both interest and sensibility regarding the matter of tradition. A particular awareness of the development of tradition after modernization was reflected in individual artist's works. Noteworthy was the exemplification of a generalized attitude and point of view regarding tradition among artists of Minjoong Art Group
Concerns with traditional forms of proletarian content were relegated to the periphery by the junior members among Reality and Utterance Group artists, who had started to think of art as social activism. While being quickly pushed to the periphery, the succession of the performance tradition rapidly increased. However, there was no examination of interpretations as to how the performance tradition appeared historically. While there was continuous, vigorous criticism of 'the beauty of sadness', there was no effort re-examine the category which had been codified as 'folk painting' by Yanagi Muneyoshi(1899-1961). Such limitations in the perception of tradition led not to an understanding and modern reproduction of traditional modes in contemporary vocabularies, but led to examining history from a perspective of a tradition that was newly Joseon, interpreted and recreated according to an early-20th century view, and then attempting to recreate this history in a modern manner. Of course, the art historians and critics of the time were also greatly complicity in such fallacies. The limitations in the perception of tradition of 'Minjoong Art in 1980s' are now being overcome with increasing research from art historians.
Accordingly, modern korean paintings which had been internalized with the dissolution of tradition while pursuing for modernization, have shown that they have been incessantly looking for the significance of identity linking the present to the past from a larger perspective, rather than pursuits of reckless westernization during a century of turmoil, it can be considered as a power engine for the development of korean contemporary art.
This research showed that it had been less than one hundred years old that we have had the central defining characteristic of tradition, related to a sense of connection to a much greater whole that includes the local, the shaman, theatre, music, art, traditional taste, techniques of non-techniques, and calligraphic paintings and spirituality(subjectivity and personality). this self-awareness requires that we need to question the role and existence of local culture in a globalizing world having slogans such as postmodern, anti-tradition, and anti-race in addition to the imperatives to transform tradition to suit the needs of the day, not as an attempt to erode native forms of culture and subsume them into a global culture. especially to be able to construct an independent form of Korean art history, but as a more sophisticated approach in measuring korean art history .