In the discourses of Korean art history, the concept of modernism has tended to be used in an equivocal way. This ambiguous usage may cause a confusion in discussions of Korean art history. This paper aims to explore the characteristics of modernism in Korean art by distinguishing its different usages.
According to Charles Harrison, who is professor of the history and theory of art at the Open University in England, the concept of modernism has been used in three different ways in Western art history. First, as the substantive form of the adjective ‘modern,’ modernism is used to refer to the distinguishing characteristics of Western culture from mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. The second sense of modernism refers to the modern tradition in high art and to the grounds on which a truly modern art may be distinguish not only from classical and conservative types of art but from the forms of popular and mass culture. Finally, the third sense of modernism stands not for the artistic tendency but for the usage itself and for a tendency in criticism which this usage is thought to typify.
The first documented use of the term modernism in Korean art history can date as early as 1931, when the artist Kim Yongjoon argued that “we should not hastily disregard all the modern art movements as superfluous” in his review for the second exhibition of the Dongmi Association. As an argument against Hong Deuksoon’s criticism of its first exhibition, Kim’s review advocated the establishment of a true Chosun art. In this sense, Kim’s theory of native art can be considered both a part of modernity in Korean art and a characteristic of Korean ‘modernism’.
Not only did the information about current artistic trends from the Japanese art community play an important role in forming the concept modernism in Korean art, but the interaction between artists and writers in the 1930s did too. Especially, members of the Guin Association came to understand modernity and got their literary inspirations through modern art. While expounding his theory of modernism, Kim Kirim, one of it members, proposed a solution to correct the literary tendency toward technicalism by criticizing modern civilization, whose parallel can also be found in Kim Bokjin’s theory of art. With the intervention of Japanese colonial policy, however, the balance between modern and proletariat art was broken and Korean modernism’s potential for criticizing modern civilization was also dissipated.
The theory of modernism proposed by Lie Yll, who came out in favor of the so-called ‘Monochrome Painting’ in the middle of the 1970s, corresponds exactly to Clement Greenberg’s Modernist art. In ‘Monochrome Painting’, Lie Yll saw not only a complete command of medium but also a Korean outlook on nature. Thus, he regarded it as the most fruitful example for advanced Korean art. His view of ‘Monochrome Painting’, which was presented at length in his subsequent critical writing, formulated arguments for a compelling theory of Korean modernist painting. In this sense, his theory of ‘Monochrome Painting’ can be seen as a Korean version of Clement Greenberg’s modernist theory. Considering that he tried to differentiate his Modernism from Greenberg’s one by introducing east asian thoughts on nature, however, we can also find a characteristic of Korean Modernism in Lie’s theory.