2021, Vol., No.50

Journal of History of Modern Art 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.77

pISSN : 1598-7728 / eISSN : 2733-9793
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kahoma

This paper attempts to examine the avant-garde artworks of artist Ri Sang Choon (1910-1937) during the Japanese colonial period, and thereby to establish his position in the history of Korean modern and contemporary art. This paper demonstrates that Ri turned out to be an excellent avant-garde artist who led such art organizations as Zero Association (1927-29), Street Theater (1930), Megaphone (1932), and New Construction (1932-34), working as a painter, illustrator, stage setter, magazine publisher, book designer, theorist, and educator in the context of Western and Japanese avant-garde art. Ri was ideologically inclined to nihilism, anarchism, socialism, and communism, and artistically used various media such as painting, collage, printmaking, illustration, stage sets, essays, drama, etc., all of which show that he was a truly avantgarde thinker and artist who tried to realize his social ideals by freely crossing such diverse avant-garde styles as Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. Thus, this paper expects to expand the horizon of Korean modern art by revealing that contrary to the interpretations of art historians hitherto Ri was not just a KAPF-type (socialist) realism artist but de facto an avant-garde artist, and to provide a foundation for reconstructing the historical genealogy of Korean contemporary art.

Jin Sup Yoon, one of Korea’s leading performance artists, worked as a critic, curator, and educator while pursuing avant-garde art throughout his life. Most notable within his long career is Yoon’s role as a living witness of the history of Korean performance art, and his seventy or so performance pieces that have been released to date. Many artists have practiced performance art since the genre’s introduction in Korea, but few have produced performance works consistently throughout their lifetime. In addition, it is rare to see artists with such diverse careers—Yoon worked simultaneously as a performance artist, a performance-related exhibition curator at home and abroad, a performance critic and a historical researcher. Therefore, examining Jin Sup Yoon’s works and the practices involved is a matter of examining the development process of the more than forty years of Korean performance art history. Although each era of Yoon’s performance shows its distinct nature, the ultimate motivation behind his works remains the same throughout. It is a continuous quest, explored through the medium of performance, to break free from the ideological dichotomy that modern and contemporary Korean art has been so obsessed with: ‘participation’ and ‘purity.’ For this goal he has traversed the inside and outside of the Korean art scene in order to bring a change of perception. Yoon’s performances, constructed freely and without any set path or strategy, are the result of the artist’s nomadic worldview. Less grandiose and more delightful, like a child’s play, they sought to create a fissure within the mainstream art scene instead of confronting it head to head. Yoon continues to create his unique kind of performance pieces to this day, using art as “play,” a new way of thinking that can free itself from hostile ideological divisions.

Min-su Ha (b. 1961) is a Korean artist based in Seoul. This article explores her development of a unique visual language through examining her artworks from the 1980s to the 1990s focusing on the small groups META-VOX and 30 carat. METAVOX is a ‘tal-modern’ small group, which aimed to overcome Korean modern aesthetics that prevailed in the 1970s. During the META-VOX period, Ha sought to express her own experience and feelings through the medium of objects and installation. In the 1990s, Ha took the initiative in forming 30 carat, which consisted of ten women artists in their early thirties. Through seven exhibitions from 1993 to 2000, Ha rigorously delved into subjects such as femininity and masculinity, Koreanness, and social and environmental issues. While 30 carat was one of the most significant small group movements in the 1990s, which took a different path from the feminist art movement affiliated with Minjung art in the 1980s, it has not yet received proper critical attention. This article points out that the blank space in Korean feminist art history caused by the absence of feminist discourse bringing women’s personal experience into the political realm, and relocates 30 carat in the context of Korean feminist art history.