Home > Explore Content > All Issues > Article View
Modernity in North Korean Art: Social Realism, Joseon-Painting and Photography
Journal of History of Modern Art
2013,
(34), pp.133-152
DOI : 10.17057/kahoma.2013..34.006
Publisher : 현대미술사학회
Research Area : Art History
DOI : 10.17057/kahoma.2013..34.006
Publisher : 현대미술사학회
Research Area : Art History
-
The purpose of this paper is to find out what is the modernity(or newness) in North Korean Art. We need to go back to the “formative period (1950’s-1960’s)” of North Korean Art to solve this problem. In this period, North Korean Art World accepted “Social Realism” of Soviet Union as a canon of new art. For example, They assigned the priority of Art world to the Joseon-Painting(朝鮮畵) which is the conventional art form(media) in Korea following the slogan of Social Realism; “Socialistic Content and National Form.”However, this arrangement created one troubling problem. On the one hand, as a old and conventional art form, Joseon-Painting correspond to a demand of “National Form” but the other hand, It has the limit to satisfy the demand of newness in art. To solve this problem, North Korean Art world define the newness in art form the point of sensitive of people. In this perspective, esthetic senses like “bright, clear, vivid” is the sensitive of Joseon Painting as well as the new sensitives of people in Modern Soviet Nation. In the North Korean art world revolving around Joseon-Painting, the materialistic viewpoint which focus on the new media (photography, television, etc.) as a base of art’s development was weakened. As a result, The North Korean art has a characteristic so called “strange newness” This is the symptom of another or the other modernity in Art. And in itself, it suggest the fact that “modernity in art” is not a simple and static value but a complex and multi-layered phenomenon.
317 Viewed
Print this page
Download PDF