작업 소개

국립현대미술관 윤범모 관장이 들려주는 소장품 10분 강좌로, 작가 12명의 작품을 매주 수요일 Youtube LIVE 를 통해 공개하였다.

프로젝트 내용

10분 영상으로 만나는 소장품, 열린강좌 – 미술관소장품강좌
국립현대미술관 윤범모 관장이 들려주는 소장품 이야기

1. 박생광 Park Saengkwang, 전봉준 Jeon Bing-jun, 1985
2. 고희동 Ko Huidong, 자화상 Self-portrait, 1915
3. 채용신 Chad Yongshin, 고종황제어진 Portrait of Emperor Gojong, 1920
4. 김환기 Kim Whanki, 론도 Rondo, 1938
5. 이응노 Lee Ungno, 군상 Crowd, 1986
6. 구본웅 Gu Bonung, 친구의 초상 Portrait of a Friend, 1935
7. 권진규 Kwon Jinkyu, 지원의 얼굴 Jiwon’s Face, 1967
8. 신학철 Shin HakChul, 누가 하늘을 보았다 하는가 Who Said They Saw the Sky?, 1989
9. 이쾌대 Lee Qoede, 여인 초상 Portrait of a Women, 1940s
10. 박래현 Park Rehyun, 노점 Open Stalls, 1956
11. 오윤 Oh Yoon, 춘무인추무의 No Sowing in the spring, No Harvest in the fall, 1985
12. 이승택 Lee SeungTaek, 무제 Untitled, 1980

Park Rehyun, Open Stalls, 1956

Today, we will take a look at Open Stalls (1956) by artist Park Rehyun (pen name: Uhyang). As you can see, it is quite large. The work made a dazzling appearance on the 1950s art scene with its new, innovative style.

Park, one of the most talented women artists of the mid-20th century, studied Japanese painting in Japan during the colonial period. Typical characteristics of Japanese traditional figure painting can be seen in the way she has omitted a sense of specific, realistic site or space, and used secondary colors in portraying the women. Despite her educational background, Park’s painting style changed completely as Korea went through liberation, division and war.

As you know, Park Rehyun was married to renowned artist “Unbo” Kim Kichang. The retrospective of “Uhyang” Park Rehyun, held at MMCA, Deoksugung, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, was an opportunity to rediscover her qualities, which had been overshadowed by her husband’s popularity. Since Unbo was hearing-impaired, Park Rehyun was his interpreter on overseas trips, translating English to Korean, and Korean to, lip-reading, enabling him to communicate so that his world of art could flourish. She was a woman of iron will. This background explains the title Triple Interpreter. Every year, Unbo and Uhyang held couple exhibitions introducing their artistic achievements to the world. It was an unusual activity for an artist couple.

In the early years of her career, Park presented mostly human figures in her art, but in the late 1960s she made a transition to abstract painting. At first glance her forms resemble the shapes of ‘brass coin’ or the ‘straw mats’ used for millstones, but I believe they symbolize life and vitality. Her picture-planes capture the depth of her heart as a mother. So I think the band-shaped forms can be seen as “bands of life,” which the artist expressed in a series of abstract paintings. Viewed today as well, the bands of life remain vivid, in a style that makes one feel they could have been painted yesterday in the most advanced mode of contemporary art. While in New York, Park experimented with printmaking. Studying new printmaking techniques, she produced numerous works that were unique in both technique and contents, even by today’s standards. Unfortunately, she left us relatively few of her works, due to the fact that she had to balance her demanding life with her art. It is lamentable that only about 200 works remain, and not 2,000. Though her oeuvre is not large, each of her works is a gem, from the earliest one to the last,all of them carrying powerful stories. I think the true qualities of Park’s world of art lie in their diversity, from sense of subject to coloring, technique, form and content.

The MMCA Deoksugung exhibition demonstrates how important it is to rediscover the art of Park Rehyun amidst the new developments of 20th century Korean art, particularly through the work Open Stalls, from the MMCA collection―a prize-winning work at a National Competition. There is a street vendor with a cart, and women holding baskets of goods, among them one who is carrying a baby on her back. Behind them we see modern style buildings. The artist has interpreted the theme in a novel manner, by making new choices of background and subjects. The women are the main subjects, and they convey an exotic appearance with their tall, slender figures, and long necks, arms and legs, drawn in somewhat exaggerated proportions. Though it is a scene of everyday life, the figures in the painting are a symbolic representation of the new world pursued by Park Rehyun. Park interpreted the human figures mainly through fields of color. While traditional-style painting was achieved through lines, using brush strokes in traditional ink-wash, the main characteristic of this work is its use of lightly applied colors, integrating human figures and background architecture in a composition based on solid shapes and fields of color. The older family in the back, the buildings constructed in straight lines in the background, and the figures of curved shapes in the foreground form a diverse compositional scheme, showing contrasts between straight and curved lines, contrasts among different colors, proportional balance between the figures on the left and the background on the right, dynamic contrast, and combinations of elements. In my opinion, this is her most representative work from the 1950s. Not only as a woman artist representing the 20th century, but as a leading Korean artist, Park Rehyun definitely merits reillumination, and this painting can be seen as the evidence.

Oh Yoon, No Sowing in the spring, No Harvest in the fall, 1985

Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at this linocut print by Oh Yoon, entitled No Sowing in the Spring, No Harvest in the Fall Oh Yoon is a great artist who has gone down in history as one of the leaders of Korean art in the 1980s. In Korea, the 1980s was a time of major transition, from the era of the military regime to the democratization movement. As a painter, Oh Yoon tried to “restore art’s function as language.” In doing so, he dealt with various themes related to Korean tradition, identity, and society, as well as unification. Sadly, because his life was cut short when he died at the young age of forty, he was not able to fully realize his vision. But even his attempts made him a giant in the art world of the 1980s.

Although he originally studied sculpture, Oh later created woodblock prints on various themes and motifs, such that he became something like the “godfather” of Korean woodcut prints. His woodcut prints were characterized by the beauty of their simple compositions in black and white, conveying the so-called “flavor of the knife,” a unique feature of woodblocks. Oh’s works are based on themes like tradition, or larger themes like “Koreanness” and the spirit of the era. Oh Yoon’s father was a famous novelist, Oh Yeong-su. In fact, Oh Yoon once lent me his father’s copy of The Rebellion of Im Kkeokjeong. I later discussed the novel with Oh Yoon, which helped me understand that his works were based on the same sense of tradition as the novel. In other words, his art is instilled with the spirit of “emulating the old to create the new.” Realizing this, I began to see Oh Yoon’s art in a new light.

Oh Yoon also produced sculptures, as well as many paintings. In particular, his Marketing series introduced a new style, satirizing capitalism amidst the industrialization of the 1980s. One of the works from the series, entitled Marketing-Scenes of Hell, shows a collection of commercial billboards filing the landscape of hell, expanding the realm of capitalist satire. One of Oh’s relatives was a “transmitter” of the “Dongnae Crane Dance,” Korea’s intangible cultural heritage, and Oh also had a deep understanding of dance. In fact, the dance movements in Oh Yoon’s works are so accurate and realistic that scholars of traditional dance can tell which part of the dance is being performed just by looking at them. In taking dance as a motif, Oh did not merely borrow the external appearance of a dance. On the contrary, his art is deeply imbued with the spirit of traditional performance and the consciousness of community that is inherent in Korean dance. That’s why the art of Oh Yoon is so dynamic, genuine, and realistic.

This is the type of realism that was emphasized in the art movement of the 1980s. It was sublimated into Oh’s distinctive style of painting, wherein reality, the spirit of the times, and Korean identity were harmonized with dance. Dance is the representative type of performing art and folk entertainment that exemplifies the spirit of community engendered by the people of Korea. Unlike in the West, where dance is an artistic activity in which the stage and the audience are sharply divided, our traditional performance realizes the “world of sinmyeong” (i.e. joy, elation), in which the performers and audience join together on the same stage. This spirit was called “madang nori,” which means something like “playing in the yard.” The concept of sinmyeong is very important in the world of Oh Yoon’s art. By invoking sinmyeong during the dark era of the 1980s, his works had a special resonance that never failed to reach and touch people of the time.

Oh Yoon is also known for his Father series , in which a father embraces his son. And also his Maternal Love series, in which a mother holds a child, seeking to retain her independent way of thought in the face of foreign powers. A publishing company once asked Oh to create a poster to commemorate its series of world literature. The result was Dad, which became one of his most famous works. The father, with an expression that shows he’s been beaten down by life, clasps a young boy, his son, and stares off into the distance. The story told by this work shows art’s inherent function as language, which explains why it has become an iconic work representing the consciousness of a community. The story that the artist wished to tell is made especially clear through the form of a black-and-white woodcut print. Furthermore, the simple composition allowed Oh to easily express his creative intentions.

As a giant of 1980s art and a pioneer of woodcut prints, Oh Yoon inspired the younger generation of artists who succeeded him, and who persistently led the printmaking movement. Actually, the art print market is almost nonexistent in Korea, and prints still don’t receive much attention. But to this day, Oh Yoon’s works continue to gain attention and popularity in the art market. Having an S-shaped composition, this workis a simple portrayal of the joy and excitement of “madang nori.” The title has a symbolic meaning: “no benevolence in the spring, no righteousness in the fall.” It can be translated like the current title,“If you don’t sow seeds in the spring, you’ll have nothing to harvest in the fall.” This work depicts members of a farming community playing together back to back in an S-curve, engaging in traditional performances such as “samul nori” (traditional percussion music with four instruments) and “nongak nori” (farmers playing music and dancing). It’s a representative image of “sinmyeong,” made by painting onto a woodcut print. As a scholar of the “Dongnae Crane Dance,” Oh produced this print that harmoniously combines the spirit of community with the “flavor of the knife.” Showing all of the unique characteristics of Oh’s art, this is also one of the last works he produced just before his death in 1985. MMCA recently added this important work by Oh Yoon to its collection. This is No Sowing in the Spring, No Harvest in the Fall by Oh Yoon.

Lee SeungTaek, Untitled, 1980

Hello, today, we’re going to appreciate Untitled by Lee Seungteak.

Produced in 1980, this is a very unusual work. It’s an ordinary tree, like we’re used to seeing, but it generates a new atmosphere. You can see these things resembling the nests of magpies in various places; he made about twenty of them by bundling rags and tying them with string. What story did the artist want to tell by creating this new type of work? Tying these nest-like shapes to tree branches in the same manner as we see in nature… Today we will explore the type of story that the artist wanted to tell.

Contemporary art is characterized by infinite expansion, without boundaries. And I believe this work should be a representative example of that tendency. In Korea, contemporary art movements began to fully emerge in the late 1950s, and developed in various ways from the 1960s through the 80s. Various modern art movements developed in Korea, from the experimental art of the 1960s, to Dansaekhwa (“Korean monochrome”) in the 1970s, and Minjung art (“People’s art”), based on realism, in the 1980s. One of the important examples is the experimental art movement. Lee Seungteak is an artist who has consistently experimented with his art as an outsider and a stranger, or like a type of maverick, rather than taking a leading role in the painting field. In short, Lee Seungteak’s art is prominently based on deconstructing and challenging stereotypes and fixed ideas.

In fact, Lee Seungteak possesses excellent skills for expression and description. He produced a number of statues of historical figures, clearly demonstrating his expertise in the realistic style. But at the same time, in other works, he showed various elements of abstraction, without concrete form or shape, which cannot be strictly defined as abstract art. Likewise, for his materials, he mostly used non-traditional things, such as plastic and strings, and even briquette ashes, which are not commonly used in art. He also used the fundamental elements, such as soil, water, fire, and wind, as primary materials for his works. Transforming actual soil, water, fire, and wind into a work of art is very unusual. He’s the type of experimental artist who tries various things like putting a flag up in the air and letting it blow in the wind, or starting a fire by a river or in a field, making the smoke rise, or setting fire to a work before floating it on a river. All of these are attempts to overthrow, convert, and reverse values relating to the inherent characteristics of materials. Attempting to instill new meaning in the unique traits of a given object or substance is one of the defining characteristics of his art.

He makes a statement like, “I look at the world upside down and inside out, and the result is my art.” In general, when it comes to sculpture, one uses traditional materials to produce some form, but Lee rejected this in creating so-called “non-sculpture.” Pursuing “non-sculpture” and “form without form,” he showed new ways for expanding and developing the possible motifs, materials, and themes of art. From the late 1950s to today, he has persistently transmitted his experimental spirit in works that often emphasize the meaning of strings or cords. He’s been working extensively with strings or ropes for quite a while. With stones… he ties stones with ropes, generating an optical illusion in which a solid stone looks like something soft. In some cases, the actual rope is gone, but the stones still bear the grooves or traces of rope, for a shape that is deeply resonant. He has long experimented with using strings in diverse ways, such as repeatedly tying them, or creating traces by tying them in zigzag patterns on a wall, or in geometric patterns on a flat surface, producing some shapeless form.

In Korean shamanism, colorful cloths are hung around a Seonghwangdang Shrine and Dangsan Tree in order to protect a village. So if we trace the roots of Lee’s art, we can see that they’re connected to traditional shamanism. His art is the result of capturing traditional aspects and recreating them in his own way. I think that the flags or strings, etc., are his way of “giving new meaning” to shamanism. Focusing on new materials, he has expressed his world in many different ways, including shapeless works, works that disappear after being installed, works of Land Art, and performances. Another such result is this work, Untitled.

At first glance, it’s like a flower or a bird’s nest. But here, the unique meaning and character of a tree have been transformed in the artist’s own way, so that it can be discovered anew and given new meaning. I think this is a characteristic of many contemporary artists, including Lee. The crucial keyword is “to discover.” When you flip a fixed symbol or meaning upside down, you will see a new world. I believe that this work is associated with his habit of turning the world, or art itself, upside down, like a stranger in the art world. This “looking upside down” is one of the ways of seeing the world that he proposes, and the result is this work. How will you see the world? And how will you interpret it? This work forces us to ask ourselves many such questions.